By Ian Hickey
Gravity Realms
2e/5e (For real this time!)
Levels 5-7
Mistress Lentel’itz-Abar, Matron Priestess of the Mother of Midnight and head of House Bu’Rin, was sent to the Rift under political pretence, ordered to prepare a waypoint to launch the next attack on the Dwarven city. Tragedy struck when the Great Rift flooded, killing nearly all. Her eldest son, Breet, a high wizard, survived by sealing off the lower levels of the house. Blaming rival houses for the disaster, Breet made a pact with the Mother of Midnight, seeking power to take revenge; he sought lichdom. Resurrecting his mother and sisters, he found the knowledge he sought, only for them to turn on him. Expecting it, he trapped them beneath the waters. Now a lich, Breet experiments in secret, while his undead family plots revenge from below. The Wraith Queen awaits!
This 95 page adventure uses about fifty pages to describe about a hundred rooms scattered across five levels and three bonus regions. This is a raid, with monster zones and empty spaces to recover in and leverage to your advantage. There is little beyond hacking to appeal, with only the occasional interesting area, but, when the monsters are stuffed with loot, hack on! The 2e min/max crowd will love this.
The pretext here is quite flimsy, enough so that it probably didn’t need to be included at all. Two deputies disappeared while searching near the “elf ruins” for the local lords son. The sheriff don’t wanna send in anybody else, but he can’t you from looking. Sounds like a dead sheriff to me, but whatever. You find signs of disturbed ground and follow it to the lake, or get attacked at night by a giant ice spider who abducts you to the underwater dungeon. And this is where an interesting thing happens …
Level one is almost all completely underwater. It’s inhabited by a bunch of wraiths. 5+HD with an eight and the 15HD wraith queen, as well as a few other creatures, eels, oysters and the ilk. But, also, there’s a tower with a stair inside of it that leads you the upper four levels, al NOT underwater. One of these has a lich in it, the rest of the levels under his control; a prison, servants quarter, a former “magic school”. Doors lead to an outside area with a small mine area (along with the (Creature From The Depths”) and some orc/goblin caves, the former slaves of the household of which the lich and wraiths were once a part of who now are at odds. You have access, through the tower and the layout of the initial underwater level, to almost all levels immediately.
This almost certainly leads to some interesting play. Water Breathing will be needed for that first level, and I suspect most parties will be without it, at least initially. This could lead to some interesting play as the party tries to find a way out, eventually finding the nearby tower/stairs up. This gains you access to the next level, with the upper levels being “locked” until you find some signet rings. Once you do then the upper levels, humanoid areas and mines and such become available. The party is almost trapped, searching for safe spaces and/or an exit to recoup and take a mental breather. We can imagine some desperate incursions in to the very dangerous first level or the safer second, finally finding the main entrance to get out or delving deeper to the upper levels and perhaps some safety with the humanoids or in the mines. But, of course, everyone is preying on weakness AND looking for some help with their situations. The lich needs a problem taken care of, the wraith queen wants revenge on her son, the lich, the goblins/orcs have some turmoil between them and are also looking for more living space … the lich and wraith levels.
There are individual creatures on each level that can be tough, but, except for that first level, the levels are generally full of lower level creatures. Skeletons, zombies and ghouls will pose little challenge, and even the masses of orcs and goblins can be handled. This mitigates the level drain of the wraiths and provides a hostile environment but one that can be managed by a thinking party. For a raid/hack, it is a surprisingly interesting set of circumstances to manage.
There are, also, some issues. As there always are.
I am not exactly thrilled with the amount of exposition in this. “Along the way, the driver shares a tale from the region’s past, providing valuable background on the area and what lies ahead.” Yes, or he could just do it. As recently mentioned, the designer doesn’t need to tell us what is going to happen right before it happens every single time. For a larger and more complex situation I’m open to this and enjoy the context for the framing to come. Then, many rooms have some exposition about them “This huge room was the main church for house Bu’Rin. Mass was held every morning, and it was mandatory for everyone to attend. Read the following to anyone seeing the room for the first time“ There is nothing in this that is gameable. Well, Bryce, maybe it helps the DM with the description, eh? To note old church features of the room? Sure. Maybe. Except the room is called “House Bu’Run Church”, the read-aloud describes a church, and the DM notes describe a church. I don’t think that even I (at least in the view of my detractors) need much more framing here to understand that its the House Bu’Rih church. Read-aloud can be long in places. Descriptions are not exactly the most evocative. The usual set of complaints.
Moving on to more specific ones, though … There’s no real order of battle here. The notes on how the various groups react to organized incursions are a little sparse. Here and there we get a tidbit, like wraiths send out a super patrol if two of their patrols go missing.Kind of a lame response. Maybe they deserve to die? And then in other places the adventure is weirdly non-specific. A good example of this is the prison level where you can find an old drow prisoner. “The dark elf captive is a political prisoner sent from one of the lesser houses to liaise between the dark elf city and House Bu’Rin. He was quickly locked up and replaced with one of the mistresses’ daughters, allowing them to spy on the city. If needed, he can be used to replace a dead PC” It’s weird to not give him a name, or maybe a personality quirk or something? I guess the hand wave here is maybe its not needed since he can replace a dead PC? I mean, it’s even missing the required “stabs the party in the back” clause for drow. And then there’s this “An ancient suit of glowing elven chainmail bikini armour gleams on its busty mannequin: +3 suit of ancient elven mithril chainmail bikini armour” Ever the prude, I know.
But, then also, the design suffers a bit from that core interesting trapped situation. We’re told the first level is filled with water with a few air pockets … but get none of that in the adventure/map. I think the core setup here is super intriguing, what with henchmen perhaps being left behind while the party water breathes, or the spellcasters starting with depleted spell slots because they had cast water breathing (a tax upon the surface dwellers!) Huge masses of undead on the “outside” get little. The intrigue that is implied throughout is not given much attention except for a “they want new living quarters and might be open to negotiation” or something like that for each group. On the one hand it’s clear which direction to go, but, also, there’s little flavour or color to get there. Figuratively and literally “Just like the mess hall, both of these rooms are covered in moss and fungal growth.” Is that enough for you? It might be. I’m looking for just a few words more though.
Interactivity here is limited. The core trapped/five level/faction thing carries a whole lot of weight here, in a good way. Beyond that you’re going to get, maybe, one elements per area. A straight out crossword-like riddle for one. A two-way portal. There is a great deal of lower-level interactivity though: bend bars/lift gates, doors to find a way to get past, non-obnoxious traps and the usual dungeon dressing. A piller to chase you around. “A ring made of 12 skeleton arms are nailed to the door, if someone other then Breet tries to open the door one of the arms will point a finger at the person shooting out a black ray of energy!” So, not really exploratory wonder interactivity but still enough to keep a hack/raid interesting.
I am moderately surprised by this 2e adventure. The core of it is quite good and its large enough to support enough play that the local town probably needed just a little more to it in order to support the party visiting a few times. It gets lengthy in places (that church is a page long, though its also a key room.) And it looks like this actually IS a 2e adventure that was then duel-stated for 5e. This is a decent enough adventure that I’m going to go look for others by the same designer to add to the list. If you’re in to 2e then this is a no-brainer.
This is $14 at DriveThru. There’s no PREEEEVIIIEEEW! I want a preview!
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/526921/shadows-return-house-of-the-wraith-queen?1892600