OSR [Let's Read] The Valley of Flowers: Arthurian Weird Fantasy in a saccharine sandbox

[Libertad]

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Released around a year ago, the Valley of Flowers sailed relatively under the radar at first. Yet it’s steadily grown in acclaim, mentioned every so often with praise in OSR communities. Intrigued, I picked it up for myself, and it left such a strong impression on me that I was motivated to write a review on it.

With rules for playing it in both Old-School Essentials and Cairn, the Valley of Flowers’ pitch is Weird Fantasy with an Arthurian twist, positing a kingdom that has fallen into strife after the passing of Aerthur the Hornèd King and the golden age he helped usher in. It takes place in Gnolune, a miniature hexcrawl that is the wealthiest province of the larger kingdom of Wildendrem. The adventure spares no expense on adding classic fantasy tropes with whimsical twists, from sentient giant bees menacing those who violate their queen’s nonsensical edicts, to a town plagued with singing undead driven mad by the tomb of a cursed bard. The product has no suggested level range for PCs, but based on an educated guess it’s designed for low-level (1st to 3rd) PCs. Even so, it’s meant to sustain multiple sessions and character progression for them to grow in power and eventually make their mark on the Valley.

A Brief History of Wildendrem is a one-page lore dive on the setting. The earliest recorded history speaks of a cruel empire known as Once that was violently overthrown by a joint effort of holy saints and arcane sorcerers. They successfully fought the forces of the old gods and sent much of the world into ruin. A famous warrior known as Aerthur the Hornèd King rose up to rebuild society in Wildendrem, forming an order of knights to defend the innocent, slay monsters threatening the countryside, and clear out and seal dangerous dungeons. A new religion sprung up known as the Conclave of the Ordered Firmament, using techniques to better defend against the relics and remnants of the old gods while supporting the monarchy during the golden age. Things took a turn for the worse when Aerthur went missing, with the kingdom’s leadership filled in by a mystical suit of armor that speaks nonsense. The sun itself has grown monstrous and unpredictable, the nobility have become decadent and exploitative, and people continue unearthing the relics of old as they lose faith in the Conclave which itself does little to fix things.

Speaking of the Sun, one of the first pages in this book is a random 1d20 chart for determining What Is the Sun Doing Today? The results are more for setting the scene of how wrong things are right now, such as it shining blue rays that chill rather than warm; chanting at a low, barely-heard pitch; moving erratically across the horizon, slowly at times then suddenly lurching across; or slowly increasing in size until it fills the entire sky before vanishing all at once.

How to Use This Book briefly details adventure expectations and commonalities throughout the book. The Valley of Flowers is an open-ended hexcrawl in true OSR fashion, set in the province of Gnolune of the greater Wildendrem. Rumors, quest hooks, and overland travel is done in a non-linear format, and while there are set-piece dungeons, locations, and NPCs of various factions, their ultimate fates hinge on the PC’s activity/inactivity and who they choose to help and where they choose to go. The book uses image icons for Hooks and Events, the former representing informative opportunities pointing the PCs in the direction of encounters and quests, while the latter represents encounters chosen by the GM or rolled at random to spice up a location. While this module can be broadly used for most Basic-era OSR games, rules relevant to Old-School Essentials are highlighted in bolded blue, and rules for Cairn in bolded brown. While I am very familiar with OSE and similar retroclones, I am not as familiar with Cairn, so I will discuss the former ruleset when talking about mechanics in this review.

For starting locations, the book gives various pieces of advice of recommended starting locations, but cautions away from beginning the adventure/campaign in the capital city of Cimbrine. As said city is home to Gnolune’s movers and shakers, the book suggests letting the PCs explore the rural outlying hexes so as to get a view on things from an outsider’s perspective.

The Factions of Gnolune covers the five major organizations/alliances that seek to shape the land in their image.

Built as a feudal monarchy, the Silvered Nobles are the official ruling class, operating out of Cimbrine. The politically corrupt Knights of the Golden Promise acting as their tax collectors and enforcers. The nobility is a selfish, fractious lot, forming alliances and sabotaging rivals to steer the governing Argent Council in their direction. Their name is due to the fondness of applying alchemical silver to the skin of various body parts as a fashion statement, and most are keen to ignore the plight of the common folk save when it serves their whims. The Silvered Nobles are reluctant allies of the Conclave of Ordered Firmament, viewing them as rivals for control of Gnolune but fearful of angering the more faithful citizenry. Both hate the Riverkeeper League for its rebellion against the government.

The Conclave of the Ordered Firmament is the most popular religious institution in Wildendrem, whose headquarters is based in the kingdom’s capital of Lyddvin west of Gnolune. They have no recognized god, their priests instead rely on mystical interpretations of celestial bodies to divine the nature of reality. The Conclave views hierarchy in all its forms as a cosmic mandate, where those in power are fit to rule over and protect those beneath them, and the lower classes are to serve their betters. Those who rise in rank in the priesthood undergo secret rites which alter their bodies, with its leadership recognized by exceedingly swollen craniums. In spite of their own doctrine, the Conclave disapproves of the Silvered Nobles’ selfish excesses, but need their goodwill to operate in Gnolune.

The Riverkeeper League has its origins in the original religious traditions of Gnolune that revolve around pacts with river spirits in exchange for blessings from the natural world. The Conclave and Silvered Nobles conducted many bloody purges at wiping out the old faith, giving rise to this underground resistance. While the Riverkeeper League holds genuine pagans among its ranks, it also includes more secular rebels fed up with the aristocracy.

The Order of Inviolate Passage is a mercantile organization who holds a monopoly over Gnolune’s imports and exports. In spite of this, they are widely regarded as the province’s least-corrupt organization. They have their own order of warriors nicknamed the Stevedore Knights who provide protection to trade, and its current leader wants to reverse Gnolune’s poor state of affairs.

The Selenians do not exist in any significant numbers in Wildendrem anymore, and what few remnants can be found are lone survivors. But their historical influence lives on in the kingdom’s memory. Four-armed beings from the Moon who sought to take over the Valley of Flowers, their army were driven back by Aerthur’s forces. Conclave mystics dealt the death blow to the Selenian threat via the Incantation of Burning Heaven, a cataclysmic spell that decided the war in Wildrendrem’s favor but forever poisoned the region of Ylgotha with foul magic. Unlike the other factions here, the Selenians aren’t really a group that the PCs can have regular interactions with. This makes them feel out of place in this section.

Oaths & Quests details a new sub-system for enhancing the adventure’s Arthurian themes. While the realm’s rulers are flawed people who don’t live up to the romanticized edicts of knighthood, in-built rules for Quests and Oaths help reinforce PCs who seek to live by more chivalric codes of conduct rather than being opportunistic murder hobos. It doesn’t necessarily make doing the honorable thing any easier, but the rewards both personal and social are all the greater.

At certain points in the adventure, PCs have the opportunity to swear an oath to live in line with a certain ideal, usually with an entity of power and prestige dedicated to said ideal serving as witness. Oaths can be sworn individually or as a group, but once sworn a PC gains access to four broadly-defined questions that are in line with the oath. Said quests are open-ended to be filled in by the DM and the needs of the campaign, but there are opportunities in the default adventure for a PC to fulfill an oath. Generally speaking, a quest shouldn’t be a trivial task, and carries an element of danger and involves a significant undertaking such as slaying a powerful foe, the recovery of a sacred artifact, or changing the fate of an individual or community in a major way.

An oathsworn character who completes a quest gains 1 point of Renown. Renown can make a character more recognizable in general (NPCs have an x in 6 chance of knowing about their deeds based on the Renown score), and a number of times per day equal to their Renown a character may re-roll a die when undertaking an action done in line with the accordance to their oath. There is also Fleeting Renown that serves one-time rewards independent of oaths, usually for performing great deeds in the adventure or at the DM’s discretion, but unlike traditional Renown are lost once spent.

PCs are at liberty to change their oath to a new one or by betraying its values, but this causes them to become an oathbreaker. In addition to losing all of their Renown, NPCs and monsters aware of this generally treat the character much more negatively. Even if someone disagrees with the ideology and tenets of an oath, a traitor and turncoat of any kind is viewed as the lowest of the low. The oathbreaker status can be reversed, but is up to the DM on whether or not the PC manages to do enough deeds to get back into society’s good graces.

Standard Stats is a collection of 9 stat blocks for various generic NPC and monster archetypes. Many times throughout this book, the text will reference one of these stat blocks for a character or monster rather than giving them full-fledged unique stats. Sometimes an additional trait or attack will be referenced to make them just unique enough from the common rabble. This section includes the typical Knight/Magician/Priest/Rogue that are level 3 versions of the standard 4 old-school RPG classes,* while Soldiers are 1st-level Fighters serving as generic militia, thugs, and grunts. Layfolk are the noncombatant common masses, while the monsters come in three varieties of Beast (weak mundane animal), Monster (4 Hit Die creature that can be dangerous in numbers but aren’t insurmountable individually), and Terror (7 Hit Die creatures that represent more infamous and tough monsters that take a concerted effort to put down).

*Knights are Fighters, to be specific, most likely done to accommodate for retroclones that don’t have them as a distinct class.

Thoughts So Far: The land of Wildendrem is dripping in flavor, and while brief it has just enough detail for DMs to get the gist of things and a strong foundation without needless backstory. The heavy use of vintage art contributes to the feel of romanticized medievalism, and the Oaths and Quests sub-system is a great idea for reinforcing tropes of the genre. The sample factions are simple in goals yet easy for DMs to utilize. I do feel that there’s going to be a certain bias for and against some of them, notably the Silver Nobles. While I can definitely see anti-authoritarian parties gravitating towards the Riverkeeper League, the image of selfish, debauched nobles letting the realm fall into decay are exactly the types of unsympathetic antagonists that PCs would be eager to thwart or oust from power. The Selenians are too infrequent to really count, and the Order of Inviolate Passage is a bit too narrowly-focused and vague to feel as fleshed out as the other three. But I think that 3 major factions and 1 minor one hits the sweet spot of being just enough, but not too much, for an old-school hexcrawl.

Right now, the Valley of Flowers has a very strong start. Let’s see if they keep it up!

Join us next time as we explore the Verinwine Vale, home to an Ignoble Court of wicked fey, a Wandering Tower whose occupants seek to find and free a heretic king, and the bloody aftermath of Sunbelow Abbey!

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Seems interesting so far. My suspension of disbelief is somewhat strained by the apparent degree of erratic solar behavior, but I suppose this is fantasy and little concerns about apocalyptic disruption of weather patterns and the seasonal (and even daily) patterns of plant and animal life are safely handwaved away.

 

[Nikosandros]

Extremely intriguing. I have a campaign that features jumping from one pocket dimension to another and this one looks like a perfect fit for inclusion.

 

[Libertad]

Verinwine Vale​

Barring the capital of Cimbrine, each of Gnolune’s major regions take up one hex and follow a similar format: an outline of 7-8 major locations with relevant NPCs and events/quest hooks present; a d6 table of Rumors that can tip the party off to current goings on; NPCs local to the area and what they Want out of life or present goals; and a d8 table of Random Encounters, which includes hostile fights as well as less-hostile encounters for some local flavor. For the major locations, 2-3 of them are detailed as their own independent entries in this book, usually dungeons and the like.

Verinwine Vale is your idyllic rural valley with cozy-looking cottages and lush farmland. Imagine the Shire but being mostly human. It is also home to the city of Cimbrine, and its geographic position is equidistant and adjacent to all other regions. Some interesting locations include the inviting Ten Thorn Tavern that is actually a safehouse for the Riverkeeper League; Broggle Hill, which contains a ruined tower often home to altering groups of poets, bandits, and stargazers; and the town of Estelat, whose local legal loopholes allow people to duel on the other side of the river, and the ruling Quern noble family wear masks at all times. Regarding some interesting NPCs, we have Fortimus d’Anwin, the traveling minstrel who steers adventurers into dangerous situations in hopes of gaining enough inspiration to pen the bloodiest song ever; Sister Sussura, the owner of an orphanage who secretly supplies child laborers to Dagin Quern in order to pay off her gambling debt; Baron Scilis, a nobleman who murdered Dagin Quern and assumed that one’s identity in order to destroy the Quern legacy from within; and Thirsty Benyam, a wandering drunk who can be found in various taverns and can answer questions truthfully by going into a magical trance on the full moon, provided that he is first gifted an alcoholic beverage.

The Ignoble Court is a monthly gathering during the full moon, attended by fey, monsters, and outcasts of all sorts who act as the loose governing body of all those deemed outlaws and illegal by Gnolunian society.

If PCs fail to show respect for a dead monster or otherwise treat it cruelly, the Ignoble Court will send them a summons where they must stand trial for their crime. The Court runs on Unseelie fairy logic, where attendants are as good as their word but love various types of competition to make things interesting. Trials can be determined a variety of ways, with examples such as singing competitions, reading the entrails of a slain animal, or invoking the random nature of Chaos via a coin flip, die roll, or similar activity. Their more “fun” games include hunting kidnapped people through the forest and letting the victor eat them as a reward, playing a kind of Russian Roulette but with poisoned wine cups, and roasting each other with the wittiest insults they can think of.

The Wandering Tower is a mobile location, not tied down to any one place on the map. It is home to an order of Tower Knights, with civilian Stone Servants attending to its maintenance and upkeep. These people are all regular humans, having come to the Tower via dreams, and act as defenders of the common folk. The Tower is bound to no particular land, appearing where tyrants rule unopposed and the Tower Knights ride out to administer justice. Due to this, they are respected by Gnolune’s commoners and the Riverkeeper League, but hated by the Conclave and Silvered Nobles.

The Tower’s inhabitants have a secret mission; the search for Saint Selos, a former king who achieved enlightenment after receiving a heavenly vision. He came to the conclusion that the ideal society is one where everyone is equal and each person is like a king unto themselves. Saint Selos is a prisoner of the Conclave in the Tower of the First Heresy, bound by shackles that prevent others from finding him via divination. If freed, the Tower will learn of his location and seek him out.

But besides the freeing of a Saint, the people of the Tower have four sample quests and rewards for adventurers, such as retrieving the body of a Stone Servant killed by monsters or looking into the troubles of Little Motte in the region of Becqueshire (detailed later in this book). Four rewards are provided as well, such as gaining a tome full of secret knowledge determined by the DM, or a magical hammer that can easily break doors and other obstacles but makes a shrill, piercing sound upon doing so.

Sunbelow Abbey is the major dungeon of Verinwine Vale, a 21-room, 3-story complex that has seen better days. The former home of the monastic Vindiminine Order of the Conclave, a small group of monks learned of buried treasure in their vineyard and ended up resorting to murder in order to keep its location secret from the others. This evil act woke one of the fivefold facets of the Drunken God, who began hunting down and murdering the rest of the Abbey’s inhabitants and then turning them into undead. The undead monks now look for human sacrifices to revive the rest of the Drunken God’s facets, and by the time the PCs arrive two of them have manifested in the world. The Abbey was formerly renowned for brewing a unique magical beverage known as Deepshine Umbral, harvested from the fruits growing on Deepshine vines. The vines are the result of the Drunken God’s influence, and now they grow out of control, twisting through the Abbey’s rooms.

The Abbey has a Ritual Clock, a metagame measurement reflecting the monks’ progress in reviving the Drunken God. They need one sacrifice for each remaining facet. The Drunken God’s facets are moderately powerful monsters who each have their own unique special ability. For example, the Clown can tell a joke so funny that a target dies laughing on a failed save, while the Boor says a swear word that causes an inanimate object to break apart. The facets are immune to non-magical, non-silver weapons, and all have their own immediate desires on what they’ll do and where they’ll go once resurrected. For instance, the Bully will try to convince the PCs to kill the knights and wasps inhabiting the Abbey, or kill the PCs if he thinks they know too much. Their Hit Die and Hit Points grow based on the number of awakened facets, so in addition to being more of them they all get stronger, so PCs who take too many losses or leave too many bodies within easy reach and transportation for the monks can quickly get overwhelmed if they opt to fight the Drunken God.

The rate of the monk’s progress can differ depending on how much the PCs get involved. While murdering party members and taking them to the ritual space is one way for monks to advance the Clock, a second faction in the dungeon provides ample opportunity. They are the Knights of the Upended Goblet, a group of warriors who got addicted to the Abbey’s magically addictive alcohol and are unaware of the monks’ true nature.

The third faction in the dungeon are the paperwork wasps, giant sapient wasps who occupied the Abbey’s bell tower in the name of their queen and built a huge hive visible from the outside. The wasps are the exemplar of Lawful Stupid, viewing their Queen as a godlike figure without fault and enforcing her constantly-changing, nonsensical laws. These laws randomly update each time the PCs encounter a new group and there’s a d8 table for determining What Is Forbidden and Under What Circumstances. Three of the laws are random, but one of them bans talking in the northern corridor, for the vines located there grow in size from the presence of spoken words and can quickly overwhelm the area in dense foliage.

As for how these factions relate to each other, the Monks are obviously secretly hostile to the Knights, and regard the Wasps as a useful pawn to fight them. The Knights can’t stand the Wasps and there’s already been some fights between them, and the Wasps regard the Monks as potentially useful yet lacking in the brains department. One of the Knights secretly plots to betray their leader in order to keep more Deepshine Umbral for himself. None of the factions start out as hostile to the PCs by default, but this can change based on the party’s actions within Sunbelow Abbey.

Some of the interesting areas in the dungeon include paperwork wasps manning the entrance, who will ask for the PC’s names to jot down and warn them of a randomly-determined law; the murdered abbot’s body in his quarters, which contains a personal journal detailing fears of corruption among the monks as well as a set of magical chimes which can expend a charge to can kill undead who fail a saving throw within hearing range; casks and bottles of Deepshine Umbral that can bestow a variety of random effects, such as healing and restoring spent spells or causing hindering visions and addiction; a book of herbalism in a trashed infirmary, which if studied grants the reader knowledge in preparing a variety of recipes, which have their own sidebar of 6 remedies and accompanying rules; the chapel, which houses the ghosts of the three monks responsible for the murder, who all have their own conflicting desires and requests for the PCs, such as one who wants to move on and wants the party to use the magical chimes to destroy them, another who wants the Drunken God’s facets slain in hopes of reviving (this won’t return them to life), and a third who wants the PCs to conduct a necromantic ritual under false pretenses to consume the other ghosts and grow in power; the buried treasure cache out in the vineyard which can be found via two halves of a treasure map elsewhere in the dungeon; the wasp queen’s hive in the belltower, and PCs who obeyed her laws may be granted an audience and given minor quests in the form of Royal Tasks with magical scrolls as a reward; and a subterranean lake crypt that contains Saint Jeseldyr, a heroic slayer of gods.

For the last area mentioned, PCs who show respect via an offering of fresh vegetables will summon the Saint’s spirit. An opportunity to swear an Oath of the Harvest is provided, which basically involves destroying fonts of supernatural evil in order to make a better world, and a PC who swears will be offered a unique magic sickle known as Caladfalx. It’s a d8 weapon that deals additional damage to enchanted/constructed/summoned creatures, and can destroy a magical item. The sickle becomes dulled immediately upon destroying such an item, but can be restored to its former power after a day of cutting grain.

As for the outcome of the Drunken God’s fate, PCs who manage to banish his facets from the world cause the surviving monks to become living again as their souls return, and will reward the PCs as they set about cleaning up the Abbey and driving out the paperwork wasps. The surviving Knights will also depart, having grown bored of the place. If all five facets of the Drunken God are restored, he will use the Abbey as a base for spreading the doctrine of the Forever Feast, with the long-term goal of turning Gnolune and eventually all of Wildendrem into a riotous forever festival of non-stop partying. If the PCs are on positive terms with the God, they have the opportunity to swear the Oath of Revelry, which revolves around decreasing glumness and increasing merriment, finding ways to encourage celebration, and revolts against the staid and the powerful.

Thoughts So Far: Verinwine Vale provides a strong first impression of Gnolune’s weird yet deadly saccharine atmosphere. There’s a theme of selfish happiness present, from the Ignoble Court’s jaded sadism as enforcers of the Valley’s monstrous underbelly, to the Drunken God’s planned society. The paperwork wasps’ insistence on irrational laws serves as a contrast against the irresponsible-seeming Knights, painting a picture of an Abbey where just about everyone is mad in some unique way.

The smaller local locations and NPCs provide for nice touches, being more mundane and down-to-earth in comparison yet have their own eccentricities and dark secrets. There’s ample material when it comes to the DM fashioning personalized adventures from them, and the existing adventure hooks and rumors tie nicely into other locations and even hexes with listed page numbers for convenience. This chapter alone instills in me a strong desire to run this adventure, and I otherwise have no real complaints so far.

Join us next time as we venture into the Brobdin Wood, home of the Riverkeeper rebels, a cursed knight and remorseful monster, and a wizard’s tower turned upside-down from a literal fallen star!

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Heh. Of course paper wasps would hand out scrolls as magical rewards. "Spat this one up myself!"

 

[Libertad]

Brobdin Wood​

Superstitious outlaws who wear charms to ward off supernatural dangers, the smell of wild honey crafted by nature’s artificers, and local offerings of food and hand-crafted items in wild glades to unseen entities. The Brobdin Wood is a place where civilized people are but guests, a realm where one who respects the old laws can find refuge.

Some interesting locations include a circle of standing stones dedicated to a giant hero, and those who leave offerings have a chance of getting that same gift later but increased in size; moonshiners brewing illegal psychedelic alcohol, and one of their members by the name of Gluster Fumm will hire the PCs to retrieve an arrow of his that shot a star out of the sky; and the Festchrift Tree, whose branches bear many ribbons dedicated to fallen heroes, and those who sleep beneath its eaves can be visited by dreams of heroes from the past and thus create adventure hooks to other places in present-day Gnolune. For NPCs, our more interesting choices include Chay Logia, one of Aethur’s knights who is the warden of the forest as restitution for chopping down a sacred tree; Alyotta Truttle, a former Silvered Noble who gave up her privileges to join a band of outlaws to take revenge on the aristocracy; and Bebbin Gububbin, a distiller who will pay the PCs for bringing him rare herbs as part of his personal goal to create someone nobody has ever tasted.

Brobdin Castle was built by giants, and later came under ownership of the Gundlachs. This family of anarchists never sought to be a part of King Aerthur’s new government, and while the last of their members have since passed on, the Riverkeeper League has carried on their legacy by having its members pretending to be lost heirs as part of their conflict against the Conclave and Silvered Nobles. Brobdin Castle is equally deceptive, for while it looks massive and imposing on the outside, the castle’s interior is but a literal hollow shell given over to a sprawling outdoor encampment. The Riverkeepers take pains to keep up this charade, using rope ladders and bridges to provide access to the windows and balconies. Five of the Riverkeeper’s best agents make use of magic rings to take illusory disguises in order to give the impression that the Gundlach family is seemingly everywhere.

As one of the adventure’s major factions, the Castle and its inhabitants have plenty of quests for PCs seeking them out as allies. Examples include proving to the Ignoble Court that a bridge-troll is a Conclave spy; find out what’s happening to the missing orphans under Sister Sussura’s care in Verinwine Vale; steal a valuable relic from Archmystagogue Banbeaux’s apartment in the city of Cimbrine; and checking in on the well-being of the wizard Grymothy, who hasn’t been heard from ever since a falling star smashed into his tower.

The Champion & Blackguard is a popular gathering spot for shifty types unwelcome in wider society. The inn’s major tourist attraction and from whence it gets its name are the bodies of two duelists literally frozen in time as their swords clashed together. No attempts to dispel this have been successful, and they radiate an aura that prevents others from contemplating or committing violence in the vicinity. Due to this aura, a popular means of arbitration known as the Game of Vows arose here, where at least two parties agree to undertake a specific challenging or dangerous task. The challenged party agrees to a handicap in the performance of it, and the other party can impose a greater handicap on themselves, with the two going back and forth to try and outbid the other until one is unwilling to accept any more handicaps. Whoever wins is regarded as being in the right, but trying to get out of the challenge or reneging on deals earns a lifetime ban from the inn.

One of the regulars is Ballyhoo the Japer, who is a fixer for various criminals in Gnolune and PCs can take quests from him in exchange for gold and favors. We even have 6 sample quests connecting to other characters and places in the Valley, such as exposing Dagin Quern’s imposter to the public, or seeking a unique precious goblet from Lady Violeta’s Floating Chateau in Cimbrine.

Sir Amis & the Quest of the Weeping Beast is not a unique location so much as a quest that PCs can find from Sir Amis the Indefatigable, a knight who is a regular at the Champion & Blackguard. He should have died long ago, but he is cursed with immortality and his body is so broken that alcohol flows out of his wounds whenever he takes a drink. As to how he got this curse, he swore that he would not rest until he killed a monster known as Andragore. Sir Amis was successful, but instead of giving it an honorable burial he paraded the monster’s corpse through the region and left it to the elements. One of the monster’s spawn was growing in it, which would later become known as the Weeping Beast. It sprang to life while a party was held around the corpse meant to honor Sir Amis’ victory. The spawn killed everyone but the knight, and it escaped. Sir Amis is deeply ashamed of his technically failed oath, and believes that killing the Weeping Beast will let him earn true rest. But he is loath to tell others of the origins of his circumstance.

As for the Weeping Beast, it is intelligent and capable of speech, but is similarly cursed in that its very being urges it to violently murder others. The Beast will desperately attempt to tell others to run from it, and will mourn those he kills. The Weeping Beast also speaks in rhymes, and knows a bit of Sir Amis’ past.

While the PCs can end this quest by killing the Weeping Beast, the Ignoble Court will consider this as a violation of their laws even if they treated the monster “honorably.” Alternatively, one of several NPC mages of power and renown in Gnolune (the book lists 3 by name) can find a means of ending both Sir Amis and the Weeping Beast’s curses, but they will not do this for free. Sir Amis bears 2 magic items, the sword Humility that becomes a +2 weapon against foes with greater hit points than the wielder, and his boots Steadfast and Swift that treats uneven and otherwise difficult terrain as level ground.

The Inverted Manse of the Star-Shattered Wizard is the major dungeon of this hex, and in comparison to Sunbelow Abbey it’s both smaller and more linear in being a reversed tower that a falling star smashed through. The Manse is the home of Grymothy, a wizard sympathetic to the Riverkeeper League and seeks to find a way to share the secrets of magic with the population at large. After years of research he found a way to bring a star down from the heavens, but Gluster Fumm mistakenly believed it was a Selenian threat and shot it off course. This caused it to crash into the tower and emit magic reversing gravity within the now-submerged building.

The Manse is a 4 level dungeon with 8 rooms. There are no rival explorers or factions here, and the main threats are the weird magical malfunctions within the tower such as trap-like freezing blue fire or a four-armed suit of animated armor programmed to attack would-be thieves. There’s also appropriate magical items to be found here. For example, there's a cauldron enchanted to cook whatever is placed inside it and those who eat from the pot will have gravity reverse for them. But besides the star, perhaps the greatest treasure here is the Narcissus Mirror which can trap the reflection of a single person. When so trapped, that person no longer casts reflections in mirrors and similar surfaces much like a vampire, but the possessor of the Narcissus Mirror can effectively scry on their current location by showing what the person is doing as their reflection mimes their movements. The current captured reflection is of Lady Violeta, the head of the Argent Council and most powerful noblewoman in Gnolunen. Needless to say, various people would pay dearly to get their hands on this.

What happened to Grymothy? Well, the falling star caused his body parts to be sent into various mirrors throughout the dungeon, and in spite of his disembodied nature he can cast spells such as Ventriloquism to communicate with the party to try to convince them to gather together his various parts. Once done so, they can be combined in the Narcissus Mirror, allowing Grymothy to regain his physical form, but Violeta’s reflection must first be freed to make room.

And what of the star? Well, it’s not as gigantic as a real-world one, being six feet in diameter yet glowing extremely bright. A clutch of monsters known as star spiders are nesting in the wound dealt by the arrow, and their webs are all over the floor (in reality the ceiling) of the room. The arrow has made a “wound” in the star, which must be removed and cauterized with blue fire to heal it and prevent more spiders from hatching and emerging. The star exudes valuable magical essence that can be extracted by singing to it for 2 turns (20 minutes), letting one collect up to 500 to 1,000 gold worth of ingredients per day that are useful in creating a variety of magic items themed around light, energy, and antitoxin for the star spiders’ venom.

Should the PCs free Grymothy, he will commit to taking care of the star’s wound and defeating any remaining star spiders. PCs who want to aid his goals of magical empowerment to the common folk will be given quests in retrieving various magical ingredients elsewhere in the valley in exchange for gold. If they collect all of the ingredients, Grymothy will be able to spread a magic-based effect through Gnolune’s water supplies, granting virtually every person the ability to make a single wish each year. Most people will use their wishes for frivolous pursuits, and wishes that can change the world or society at large will end up counter-acted by others. Welfish wishes end up turning against the user, and when enough people catch on most wishes from then on will be used to benefit others in simple ways. This resolution feels kind of…orderly and optimistic for something that should be world-altering, honestly.

Thoughts So Far: While shorter in length than Verinwine Vale, Brobdin Wood is another strongly thematic and interesting region for adventure opportunities. Brobdin Castle and the Champion & Blackguard are good hub centers for PCs of the more lawless persuasion, and I like how the Weeping Beast quest can be resolved in ways beyond a typical “hunt the monster” manner. And even if PCs do that, the Ignoble Court’s attention is a good means of wrapping them up in another complicated scheme. I also like how the Narcissus Mirror and its preservation or destruction provides one of two potent aids to PCs: either they can use it to keep tabs on Cimbrine’s effective ruler, or gain the broad aid of a grateful wizard.

My main points of criticism are both in the Manse dungeon. The first is that while not immediately apparent, the star’s daily creation of expensive ingredients is way too good in how much value it makes, and for PCs primarily motivated by money they have little need to adventure further when they can get a baron’s ransom in valuables every day The other one is that Grimothy’s wish-granting experiment, if successful, doesn’t have as great society-changing implications as other long-term consequences in this book.

Join us next time as we visit the region of Becqueshire, home to feuding sisters and their botanic Flower Knights, an amphitheater where the spirits of performers possess visitors to bring out their inner actor, and a lyrical virus emitting from the tomb of an undead bard!

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

That's full of really clever stuff.

Naturally a castle built by giants would be imposing but just a facade, how would they even fit inside to build interior walls and floors, etc. in the first place? Also feels like a subtle nod to Big Rubble over in Glorantha, with its absurdly huge giant-made outer walls that now surround acres of ruins, wreckage and open land instead of a living city.

Sir Amis and the Weeping Beast's are pretty great, but it would be nice if there was another way to end one or both curses than either hiring an NPC mage or the Beast dying. I'm more sympathetic to the monster here than the hero, honestly.

The tower doesn't seem as flawed as it first sound. Even the greediest PCs can only milk the star for magical ingredients for crafting, but that's usually high-level magic beyond the reach of PCs who'd consider 500-1000gp daily a fortune. That's a fair chunk of change in OSR D&D games, but it isn't really a great workday for the kind of people who spend their time making magic items from scratch. So who are they going to sell to to turn a profit, and how long will it take their buyer(s) to decide to A) lower their offers due to oversupply and/or B) come looking for whatever's producing all this star-stuff and take it away from the PCs?

And the wish-a-year program - yeah, might not change much at first, but as more and more people work out the "rules" to how it works, you'll find people increasingly organizing into groups that pursue a given (and usually beneficial) agenda. At its extreme this is the road to a weird form of magical democracy. Everyone gets one vote a year, and if enough people agree to wish for something it won't be overridden. Doesn't even need to be a majority, since there will inevitably be many things any given person would like to support wishing for and how the votes split will be a big deal. Plus some people will say they're going to wish for a group cause (presumably one at a time until it sticks, and then turning it back on each time it's removed) and then betray the cause for something more personal (healing a relative, say) or shift their vote to another cause after reconsidering - or being coerced.

If Grimothy's little project works, there's a whole lot of long-term chaos a-coming.

 

[Libertad]

Becqueshire​

Misty hills surrounding a lake home to ruins from the times of Once. Quiet villages home to subtle magics woven into the land, and living embodiments of spell-warped weather a frequent danger. Several interesting locations include Beasty Hill, where talking animals gather during half and full moons to feast and party; Salmuri Chapel, a Conclave temple where the magically talented (and afflicted) feel an odd desire to gather, and whose head priest can remotely find hidden things in the valley via his third eye; and Saint Mairwenna’s Harp, a two-story magical instrument that plays in the winds and causes random magical effects, and due to this mages and alchemists of all sorts make their homes nearby. Some interesting NPCs include the gnome Skoldap Gnur, the greatest alchemist in Wildendrem whose services attract the attention of powerful people and thus side quests; the old and vengeful Silvered Noble Meldrim, who fell from power and his greatest Want is to see his old rivals destroyed; and the witch Evredeni Rasp, a collector of songs she stores in glass bottles that once obtained cannot be sung by anyone else.

The Hungry Amphitheater is a seemingly abandoned place with ten props scattered over an empty stage. Nearby is a belltower, and it’s common knowledge in the region that a show will be put on tonight when it’s rung. The props are inhabited by the ghosts of actors and actresses with their own personality traits, and will be able to temporarily bond with and silently speak to whoever touches their linked prop. The performances are improv, but the spirits will attempt to steer PCs into suggested titles and concepts for plays, which can be randomly generated with provided tables in the book. The PCs must then perform their own ad libbed play, and the spirits can use magical illusions to add a feeling of realism. PCs who perform well (this can be determined by relevant ability checks and good role-playing) will earn applause from the audience, rewarding the party with money. The unlucky PC who is determined to be the best actor will have the spirits offer a “reward” to them, to die immediately and join them forevermore as a spirit of the amphitheater. Should the PC refuse, they must swear an Oath of Spectacle or save vs death. The Oath revolves around encouraging the performing arts even when offstage, and quests involve activities such as doing such great acting that you can fool others into believing you’re someone else entirely, changing people’s minds on a subject via music or storytelling, and the like. PCs who leave the amphitheater before or during a show, or steal a prop, will have the spirit continually harass them into returning.

Nevruné Hall is the decaying estate of a noble family of two surviving sisters, Lady Gemna and Lady Scarlova. They despise each other, having been this way for so long that the original reason’s forgotten and they continually find and make up new excuses to continue their vendettas. The flower knights are humanoid plants who serve the Nevrunés, and being honorbound to both of them has caused conflicts in their duties. For you see, Lady Gemna and Lady Scarlova have the knights engage in endless contests of one upmanship, but when the PCs arrive the noblewomen will attempt to convince the party to covertly assassinate the other. The flower knights do not want this, not necessarily to prevent harm to the Nevruné line, but the fact that serving the Ladies is the only thing that gives their lives meaning, and will do what they can to covertly sabotage any assassination attempt.

Reporting one sister’s offer to the other will cause that one to offer successively greater rewards. But revenge won’t make the survivor happy, and should the PCs kill one of them she will grow to resent them and send flower knights and hired help to hunt the party down. The two sisters can be convinced to set aside their differences on a temporary basis, but the only one who can make them see the light for good is the ghost of their father who is interred in a family crypt in a nearby mountain. Said mountain and crypt isn’t mentioned anywhere else in the book, so I presume it’s either missing content or traveling there is uneventful.

The Perfumed Tomb of the Necropoet is Becqueshire’s dungeon, located in the village of Little Motte. The town was home to Lyra, a bard of great skill who was gifted supernatural powers by a spirit known as Moirlaga (book doesn’t mention gender or pronouns for the latter). Unfortunately one of the shade’s “gifts” made Lyra’s songs so powerful that it instilled in others the Swooning Sickness, a disease that causes one to lose the desire to do anything other than sing and engage in merriment. They will eventually die and rise as zombie-like singing undead known as Perfumed Dead, attracted to scenes of beauty.

Moirlaga had a crisis of conscience, but the spirit’s solution was horrible: to murder Lyra and force the townsfolk to inter the body in a tomb. Moirlaga then killed the people who worked on the tomb in the belief that this would contain the sickness, and then returned to the world of the dead. While the disease was contained for centuries, it slowly made its way past the magical protections and into Little Motte. Over the past few weeks up to 20% of townsfolk became infected, which has caused societal collapse and word to spread that something very wrong is happening in town.

While the saga of Lyra has since passed into myth and legend and few remember the true facts, the entrance to the concealed tomb can be found via inspecting the statue in the middle of town. It is surrounded by a group of Perfumed Dead (think zombie that can transfer the Swooning Sickness) who will become hostile at anyone who attempts to unlock the hatch at the statue’s base. The book mentions that Thornton Sprightly has the key, but the only NPC with this surname is Pinton Sprightly, the town mayor, so I presume it’s either a misprint or a spouse/family member.

The Tomb is a 10 room, 3 level dungeon, heavy on undead in the form of more Perfumed Dead and visitor shades that impose penalty on rolls on a failed save as they whisper hurtful things from the characters’ pasts. Non-undead include mournful hedges which are humanoid masses of animated brambles whose thorns bear poison that deal additional damage, and poetry golems which are carved animated statues with record players built into their chests that can play sheet music. Interesting rooms and treasure include a garden of poisonous flowers and mournful hedges, one of which plays a magical vielle by the name of Melody that causes listeners to weep and take a penalty on rolls while the song plays; an archive room full of Lyra’s songs and other writings of music and folklore, with a poetry golem that is hostile due to jammed sheet music in its chest playing discordant noise; a hidden room accessible by bringing two figurines of Lyra and a shrouded shade together, which contains a book containing six words that can be used to command a dead or undead creature to obey in exchange for the utterer, and living beings that hear it taking 1 damage. For this last treasure, the book causes the holder to suffer -2 AC as they neglect their self-preservation instinct, and risks cursing a wielder to become addicted to it, eventually losing the desire to eat and drink in a week’s time.

Lyra’s Crypt holds the bard’s corpse as well as flower blossoms that can be brewed into love potions, but release poisonous spores if improperly handled. Lyra will wake from the dead if her tomb is opened, and will be angry and confused, likely playing her magical vielle Cacophany* that will enrage all undead within earshot. However, she can be reasoned with in several ways, such as showing her the instrument Melody or reminding her of who she is via obtaining clues elsewhere in the dungeon. A hidden staircase below the sarcophagus leads to a cavern with a bridge to the afterlife, stretching into a black void. Those who walk on the bridge risk being tempted to cross over on a failed save vs death, effectively dying. Lyra, if present, will give Cacophan* to someone who was helpful to her before walking across the bridge to join her beloved Moirlaga. If Lyra is killed the old-fashioned way, she will reform in 2d12 days, making this a temporary solution to the sickness.

*Using it to enrage undead is possible for wielders besides Lyra, so it can be a fine contextual reward.

Thoughts So Far: While one can say that the supernatural is omnipresent in the Valley of Flowers, Becqueshire’s theme strongly plays to the idea of magic being suffused in the land itself. The other major theme is on spirits of the past, such as the ghostly playwrights or the late Nevruné patriarch being necessary for the happy ending to the feuding sisters. Lyra’s Tomb is a novel spin on undeath; while most dungeons with this theme emphasize darkness and decay, the Perfumed Tomb is a bright, sweet-smelling place, and whose monstrous inhabitants may not be overtly hostile but whose moods are highly subjective to the presence and absence of aesthetically pleasing sights and sounds.

I’m not as fond of the idea of Lyra reuniting with Moirlaga as the one true way to stop the curse, as well as the book’s use of “beloved” as an adjective in the text. While I’m aware that the Arthurian myth that the Valley of Flowers draws on has some rather outdated and toxic views on relationships, given that Moirlaga basically killed Lyra as the first course of action and then killed more people from a problem of their own doing, such a figure would (hopefully!) be viewed as a villain by most gaming groups and not someone Lyra should be with in the afterlife as a happy ending.

Join us next time as we venture into the foreboding Gnarl, filled with rotting undead, the sole priestess of a growing godling, and the haunted prison of one of King Aerthur’s fallen knights!

 

[Libertad]

The Gnarl​

This heavily forested region is bisected by a river, and a constant aura of decay can be found throughout. Some interesting locations include a smuggler’s hideout filled with skeletons (at least one of which can talk) and cursed weapons that frequently break upon use; an illusory stone bridge that spans a gorge filled with dangerous worms feeding upon the bones of those who fall down here; and an abandoned cemetery where plants with human faces grow upon gravesites and tell people the secrets of the dead. Some interesting NPCs include Gell o’ the Fens, the Speaker of Ends. She is a scholar of death, who wants to follow the party in hopes of improving her doomsaying skills by predicting how the PCs will die; Denisette the Sorceress, Lady Violeta’s twin who was exiled and her lineage kept a secret, and she hopes to gain enough magical power to kill her sister and rule Gnolune; and the Veteran, a human now turned into a talking elm tree after angering a Onceian god, who knows all there is to know about the Gnarl.

The Garden of Memory is a safe, well-tended place in the midst of wild woodland, overseen by a knight known as Sir Vahn the Recollector who lives in a humble cottage. Accompanying him are Spindle-Scribes, helping maintain a magical phenomenon known as the Memory Web. Threads woven between woven stakes are capable of holding memories, and those who know where to look via proper guidance can find a memory and access it, reliving it like the original owner.

Via a broken sword known as Self-Stealer or smaller shards of it, Sir Vahn can remove someone’s memory and imbue it within the Web. Sir Vahn is willing to let the PCs access the Memory Web in exchange for finding memories of great value to add to it. This serves as a springboard for quest hooks elsewhere in Gnolune. Sir Vahn has a dark secret: his romantic companion Lyam was stabbed by Self-Stealer’s original owner, a Selenian wizard, and he forgot who Sir Vahn is. The knight fruitlessly searches for a means of restoring Lyam’s memories, but keeps him imprisoned in a shed and will want to be freed if he believes the PCs can help him out with this.

The Midwife & the Breech Born are located in a well-defended fen. There are a variety of huts forming a small community, but the most visible feature is a pair of giant legs poking out of the ground and choked with overgrowth. A woman by the name of Camma believes that the legs belong to a growing godling who will fully form in a thousand years and become ruler of all the world’s forests. She can grow humanoid beings of low intelligence from the entity’s feet, which she refers to as her husbands and who form the rest of the community. Camma fears the Conclave finding the godling, and will order any obvious members to be attacked and killed. But for others who appear more open-minded, she may trust them enough for errands to act as agents in the wider world. Most of these quests tend to oppose the Conclave and Silvered Nobles. In exchange, she can give one Gift of the Godling, a ritual which after 3 days imposes a beneficial ability on the character. For example, one Gift causes a twin to grow on the godling’s feet that animates with the original’s soul should they die. Or once per week being able to ask a plant a question, and that plant taps into the collective knowledge base of all plants around the world to see if any know the answer.

The Prison of Sir Thibauld is the Gnarl’s dungeon, home to the ultimate fate of one of King Aerthur’s knights. Sir Thibauld was tasked with gaining aid from Gnolune’s nobility in the war against the Selenians, but they refused. Sir Thibauld and his warriors were taken advantage of by a trickster deity, convincing the knight to bravely offer up his own body to gain the wealth of the world to finance his King’s ventures. Sir Thibauld’s body painfully transformed into collections of gold and jewels, and asked his warriors to hack him apart and take his body as treasure. But this wasn’t to be, as Sir Thibauld became a maddened monster killing all but two survivors, who managed to imprison him in this cave.

Although concealed by a boulder, PCs can come upon this dungeon via tracking golden centipedes to the location, gaining visions of it from sleeping under the Festschrift Tree in the Brobdin Wood, or learning of the legend and location from a book at Vilhouse Neel’s auction house in Cimbrine. The prison is a single-story, twelve-room complex, home to vermin and undead as monsters. Two unique types of monster here are golden centipedes who have a venomous bite that bestows the effects of a Confusion spell, and golden skeletons whose forms are coated in gold and whose strikes cause gold leaf to fleck off into wounds. This makes it take longer to naturally heal. Several clues and a hidden room can be activated by placing torches into empty scones, which in one case can open a door and in other cases reveal writing on the walls giving cryptic messages hinting at Sir Thibauld’s curse.

Sir Thibauld is naturally present as a maddened being, who can instill in a character a desire to take another party member’s belongings on a failed save vs spells. Even while fighting he will beg the party to take his body back to Aerthur, saying that he needs the wealth within his flesh. Another knight in the dungeon is Sir Gregor, who will reanimate as a unique undead known as a Treasure Wraith who will hunt down the party if they take the coins held in his hands. He has a special Treasure Drain attack that causes 1d6 x 50 gold pieces’ worth of coins or treasure carried by the truck target to dissolve. There’s also a ritual circle which if someone sleeps within (clues from torch sconces can give hints to its purpose) allows a character to make contact with the trickster deity Xyxtyana. She offers to provide wealth and power in exchange for sacrifice of various kinds. The book gives several examples for inspirational purposes, such as having a character’s eye fall out and turn into a pearl or sharing a powerful or shameful secret of themselves in exchange for hidden knowledge of a powerful figure.

Thoughts So Far: I really like the Garden of Memory and Prison of Sir Thibauld, as both locations play into themes of gaining knowledge and/or power in exchange for a precious price, and Xyxtyana’s dubious bargains combined with the Breech Born’s weirdness show a darker side of the old gods from the days of Once. I like how that while it doesn’t make the Riverkeepers depraved cultists and the Conclave and Silvered Nobles are still authoritarian, it shows that the rebellions against the prior order didn’t come out of nowhere and likely had justified causes.

If I had any criticisms, it would be that the Gnarl doesn’t feel like it has a truly unique theme. The Brobdin Wood already serves as our haunted forest, we already had an undead-themed dungeon last post with the Tomb of the Necropoet, and the Riverkeepers are an already-existing pagan faction aligned against the powers-that-be but without any immediately off-putting weirdness of Camma’s godling. The Garden of Memory is a quality exception, but the prior sections had several novel places rather than one.

Join us next time as we explore the deadly wastelands of Ylgotha, containing dreadful places such as a cursed mine or the Tower of the First Heresy, the Conclave’s high-security prison!

 

[Libertad]

Ylgotha​

Our last major region for Gnolune is a dark, foreboding place. Dominated by dusty hills, sickness-carrying winds, and ruins from the days of Once, all tell a story of how victory against the Selenian invaders was a Pyrrhic one. Some interesting locations include a community of outlanders living in a gorge that peddle strange magical wares; an encampment of jackal-headed knights whose animalistic features come from the region’s cursed nature and they have a strained relationship with the Conclave; and the crater of Nothing Rock, the site of the Incantation of Burning Heaven that is filled with ghosts from the battle as well as newer seekers of dark magic. Some interesting NPCs include Sir Delphine, one of King Aerther’s knights who is a ghost that possesses new bodies regularly and seeks to recruit people to go on heroic quests; Exylpon, a Selenian deserter who has taking up the healing arts as a means of making up for the violence he caused during the war; and a skeletal knight and unaging living baby daughter, both cursed that way by a member of the Ignoble Court. Their curses can be lifted if a PC fights and wins a duel against the Court’s retainer.

The Cursed Mine of Gallows Hill was once owned by a family of Silvered Nobles, but long since abandoned it when a Selenian wizard cursed the mine with madness-inducing gas to prevent it from being used. The current owners are the Gallows Gang, a group of outlaws who have been driven mad and make a permanent camp outside, allowing adventurers to delve into it in exchange for a percentage of found valuables. The mine has no pre-set rooms or map, instead using various tables to determine terrain, notable features, dangers, and treasure. The cursed vapors bestow a randomly-determined debuff for 1d4 days upon exposure, and gaining 4 or more debuffs at once will turn a character into a crazed NPC. Beyond mundane treasure, there are 3 unique magic items that can also be found here: a magic rod that determines the value of an object it’s pointed at and takes into account the local economy of supply and demand, a pair of diamond-tipped clawed gloves that can make the wearer burrow and grants bonuses on rolls to destroy stone, and a moonstone pendant that grants a +2 bonus on saves vs illusion, charms, and madness effects.

Selenian ghosts are a new monster with their own statblock, being undead that don’t do damage but expose characters to cursed vapors with a touch and can only be hurt by silver weapons and magic. Vyxl-Mir, the wizard who cursed the mines, is still alive albeit insane. He is a rather accomplished spellcaster of 7 Hit Dice, can fight with a sword, and has a random assortment of 1st to 4th level spells. Due to his madness he also makes the party reroll reaction results every round, which means that he can be murderous one round, suddenly friendly the next.

The Shadow Farm is home to the Grayrose family, who lived for generations in the ruins of Fort Thelum that was destroyed during the Selenian invasion. The surrounding land is poor in resources, so they make their living by harvesting the shades of spirits from a nearby battlefield. At noon, every day, the spirits rise and re-enact the battle of long ago. Although these spirits can still cause harm to the living, the Grayroses are very good at their job and make use of unique magic and equipment known as shadow-shears to capture the shades and store them in bottles. These bottles are known as shadow ampoules, single-use magic items that come in six varieties. For example, Shadow Web lets the user teleport between shadows within a 1 mile radius, but there’s a 1 in 6 chance an evil shadowy clone will begin stalking the user to kill and replace them.

The shadow harvesting business is illegal in Gnolune, and people involved in its trade are subject to capital punishment at best. The Grayrose family, thus, isn’t going to trade their ampoules to a strange group of newcomer PCs right off the bat. By doing quests for them adventures can gain shadow ampoules as rewards.

The Tower of the First Heresy is the dungeon entry for Ylgotha, a highly-secure prison for the Conclave’s accumulation of forbidden goods and people who cannot be so easily destroyed. It was first built to house Saint Selos, a former king beloved by the people of Wildendrem who became disillusioned with feudalism and began preaching a doctrine of universal equality. Not wanting to martyr the man, the Conclave captured him, transporting him to the Tower and bound him in magical chains that make it impossible to learn about his fate through divination magic.

The Tower of the First Heresy is a five-floor, eight-room dungeon, with stairwells on the west and east leading to the second and third floors. A wall running north to south on these floors effectively splits them into two rooms each, with the fourth floor only accessible via the western stairwell. The dungeon is guarded by the knight Sir Morbeck, who can divide himself into clones, one for each opponent. These copies have weaker stats, and Sir Morbeck kills them after each battle, causing the area surrounding the front entrance to be littered with corpses looking exactly like him. The rest of the guardians within the Tower are of the artificial and unliving variety. They include noncombatant clay constructs known as Tower Wardens who will follow the party around quoting Conclave scripture in an attempt to get them to repent and leave; a golem made out of human finger bones that will attack the party if they don’t put a severed finger on a basin which opens up the gates for the stairwells; and a giant humanoid monster known as the Prayer Beast that is blind and covered in hands and mouths. It senses via vibrations, and it can shout futile prayers that can cause a despair debuff on a failed save and they are immune to magic from clerics. There’s also a rival adventuring party known as the Burnished Gauntlet who may be already present in one or more of the rooms based on random chance, and while the PCs can reason with them their first and only goal is to make off with the Tower’s many treasures. The four adventurers are all quite accomplished individuals, being 2nd to 4th level characters with their own unique stat blocks.

The Towers’ various forbidden works are mostly heretical texts, religious icons of forbidden religions, and pornographic artwork, but they also includes some magic items like a jar containing a polite-yet murderously violent Conflagration Spirit that wants to destroy things (a one-use AoE explosion), or a Choleric Tonic that temporarily increases Strength but instills a deep loathing for all other beings. For prisoners, Selos isn’t the only person present. There’s also Camille the Moon-Touched, an elderly woman who tried to violently overthrow the Conclave and is placed in a cell that seemingly has no security. But anyone who leaves it without trading in someone else to take their place will be overwhelmed by constant, great pain, and Camille will attempt to persuade the party in finding her a replacement, if not one of the PCs serving as one themselves.

Saint Selos is in the highest level and room, bound in magical shackles. The ceiling is enchanted to look like a starry night while nice music plays, which the saint claims is a simulation of the religious experience that brought about his worldview. Selos is a polite man, all too happy to expound on the circumstances of his imprisonment and how he received heavenly visions of the True Kingdom that caused him to renounce his crown. By freeing him, a character can take the Oath of the True Kingdom, which can be basically summed up as a Chaotic Good Anarchist. The Oath advocates for getting rid of national boundaries and social class distinctions, overthrowing tyrants, and helping the destitute and disenfranchised better their lot in life. If the PCs free Selos by removing his shackles, he will opt to wait in the dungeon, and the Wandering Tower to find and rescue him in 2d20 days. Unless of course the Conclave and/or Silver Nobles learn of this, in which case they’ll do what they can to intervene.

Thoughts So Far: Ylgotha invokes the feeling of a realm of dark magic and forbidden things, and how anything that lives here for a time ends up wrong in some way. The Cursed Mine and Shadow Farm provide useful treasure and items, but comes at a price of some kind. The Tower of the First Heresy also plays into the “sealed evil” trope, but is an inversion in that the dungeon was built to house a person who isn’t your stereotypical dark mage, but a political dissident who sought to move against those in power.

While of equivalent length of the other hex regions, Ylgotha feels briefer in comparison, and I imagine that’s mostly due to how the more detailed locations come off. The Cursed Mine is a place one would expect to be a dungeon, but it has a full-page artwork and two of the 4 pages are stat blocks and tables. The Shadow Farm is a neat location but rather predictable in how most PCs may deal with the Grayrose family, either by taking quests to get shadow ampoules or fighting them for their unholy ways. The Tower of the First Heresy is rather linear as a dungeon, and in comparison to more involved places like Sunbelow Abbey or the Perfumed Tomb of the Necropoet, there’s not as many divergent outcomes players will go through.

But with all that said, I don’t think that Ylgotha is a weak entry, and I like how it has a distinct vibe to set it apart from the others.

Join us next time as we finish this review with a visit to the capital city of Cimbrine!