Barrow of the Five Kings

By Dougal Cochrane
Self Published
Dolmenwood
Levels 3-4

Recent events have awakened the antler-crowned wraiths and the ancient mound now yawns open. The Antler Wraiths have begun kidnapping victims to bolster the ranks of the Wights that guard an ancient secret within the barrow. Bold adventurers descending into the tomb must navigate the perils of its haunted halls, and risk the wrath of the Antler Wraiths and Wights interred within. Time is short. The prisoners are running out of air.

This 23 page adventure presents a small barrow with about 25 rooms. Nicely themes, lots of rock edifices and ankle-high mist throughout with an abundance of wights and, of course, the five barrow kings. Actions have consequences, so good luck figuring out what to do. 

Hey man, here’s your warning: I like barrows. 

There are a couple of lameo hooks associated with this. Archeologists who are scared. LAME! No archeologists in our D&D. Or maybe The Church Needs You! Again, LAME. We don’t hire out. We are independent HR contractor who post our tomb diving on tik -ok, not middle-class wage slaves cleaning tombs for the church. But, also, there’s a decent hook here. At dawn you hear screams in the distance, leading to a wounded elf knight and warhorse at the crown of the barrow hill. “Earnest and honourable, besotted with her lost love, speaks in the manner of a Shakespearean play. Begs for assistance in rescuing her beloved Marion from the barrow. She made the mistake of crushing bones hanging from the central dolmen at Marion’s behest. “ Fuck yeah man! We  got some Polaris shit in that, yeah! We got maybe a magic sword loaned out to us also, Daisy Cutter, which is perfect for an elf knight named Sun On The Meadow. That’s a  fucking hook for a barrow full of antler-headed wraiths! A barrow mound, five dolmens atop it, a trilithon doorway of granite slab on the side of the hilltop, and in the middle of the five dolmen “Mist cascades from the hole like the smoking caldera of a volcano. “ Fuck yeah! Barrow time BITCHES! Lets kill those fucking wights and wraiths and barrow kings! Torches are fucking primed and the cleric is warming up the holy symbol! No more abductions of villagers! It’s clobbering time!

Oh. Except. 

Awhile back, as these things go, a bunch of tribesmen prevented an incursion from the Fey. They drew lots and five of them agreed to be interred alive, with some men, to guard the gate, an eternal vigil, preventing the ice giants and other fey from invading the land. From time to time they need new guardians for the vigil, hence the abductions and conversion to undead/wights. Kind of noble, eh? Not corrupt evil blah blah blah. This is all supported with some interesting rumors on the rumors table and all the weights carrying, like, cold iron spears and such. Hmmm, why would they do that? It all comes together in a kind of revelation over time as you are exploring the barrow And hacking down the guardians. Oops. It’s a more complicated situation than the princess is actually evil and the dragon the good guy, but, it does use blundering PC’s as a catalyst for change and consequences, much in the same way some Lamentations adventure do. The nuance is good.

Barrow exploration, above and below ground, is supported by some decent tables of weirdo shit, like birds falling dead from the sky mists and so on. “If any retainers or henchman are present, a randomly selected one will be swallowed by shadows.” Nice effect there, no quite insta death since you can rescue them, but, I like swallowed by shadows bit. 

Descriptions can be decent as well “Ragged roots and broken earth hang from the wound torn through the mound. Chunks of stone and wet soil litter the floor of an irregular chamber in the shape of a cross. Freezing fog seeps down through the breach, filling the room at ankle height.” Now, which of you fuckers have dead souls and don’t like ankle-height mist? Or, how about “Mist hangs beneath a forest of spear shafts thrust into a floor of packed earth. Each spear has a severed head impaled upon it like some unholy fruit. Groans and muttering drift softly through chamber” . Heads on stakes, also in a mist? Sign me up! Groans, muttering, ragged root, broken earth hanging. Great imagery in these descriptions. Some decent magic to be had as well, on point “Bag of Secrets (1,500gp) Contains 3 skulls trailing mandrake roots. If planted, each skull grows into a Root Thing (DMB) that serves for a single day before withering to ash” as well as more than few followers to picked up inside for those of you are chill with making friends with the dead. That bag could use a better description, but the contents are great!

Formatting here is decent. Nice little overview paragraphs of a couple of sentences followed up by bolded bullets with more information about certain aspects of the room, each with a couple of sentences also. We’re look at, general, about a column of text for each room, maybe a full page for the bigger rooms. So, for example, a few words about “4 bronze sconces” and “iron pots” and “heavy stone maces” and “south mural” and “north mural.” It’s fine, and the column long text is padded out a bit with whitespace so it’s not QUITE a column of text. It IS getting a bit long, but it’s nothing you can’t handle. 

There are, in places, some things that are out of order. One room has “Icy air rolls from chamber lit by wavering blue light” and this room is entered RIGHT off of another room. SO, that other room should really have that description, yes? We help the DM out by noting obvious things around us in the place they’ll be seen/heard/smelled, etc, not in the place that is generating them. (Or, ALSO in the place that is generating them.) 

Oh, hey, and some good surprises in here as well. One of the hooks, the church one,  has the party finding bodies at the top of the barrow mound, the former expedition the party is looking for. “At the summit of the mound at A3. they find a dog furiously barking at the corpses of two dead warriors, their icy flesh grey and withered. “ Oh, that’s nice. “2 rounds after the PCs arrive, the corpses rise as Wights” Gah! Kill it with fire! Better pay more attention to the fucking dog, eh? It feels right. It feels natural. Of course they are gonna rise and of course the dog is gonna bark at the unnatural thing. DId you pay the fuck attention? No? Then get your ass eviscerated. 

Big fan here. Love me some barrows. And, love me some complicated situations. It never feels abusive to the players, or retaliatory. It’s not really a set up. It’s the complexities of real life and all of its messiness. Should they be abducting people to turn them in to wights? No. But, also, hey, fey army incursion and the coming winter invasion if they don’t? This is all left unresolved. You can fuck things up by killing people. You can leave them alone to let them bolster their ranks again to guard their gate. But you can’t solve the underlying problem, there is no solution available that stops the abductions and keeps the fey at bay. This, the adventure notes, is something for the larger context of the game. Have you made friends or discovered resources in your previous exploration of the Dolmenwood Or in future games? This is where the ultimate solution to the issue will be found, buy the party putting something together on their own, as am onward goal. That’s fucking great. 

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages. More than enough to see the backgrounds, freaky rumors and effects and more than a few rooms. Great preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/574438/barrow-of-the-five-kings?1892600