{"id":3070,"date":"2016-06-06T07:16:51","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T11:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3070"},"modified":"2017-03-16T09:43:40","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T13:43:40","slug":"incursion-of-the-chained-devils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3070","title":{"rendered":"Incursion of the Chained Devils"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"chaind\"<\/a>
\nBy Jeremy Raedan
\nSelf-Published
\n1e
\nLevels 5-7<\/p>\n

Three nights ago, strange lights and screams were heard from the local temple of Ishtar (or equivalent in your game, perhaps Loviatar, Xochiquetzal, or even Dionysus.). Most of the lower level priestesses fled. Can the PCs save the temple of Ishtar from the incursion of the chain devils?<\/p>\n

This is a mostly-hacking adventure in a 20 room temple to the goddess of love that has been overrun with (mostly) chain devils. It is, essentially, rooms full of half-naked priestesses being tortured (in a pg-13 manner) with a full other encounters tossed in as well.A few of the monster encounters (the non chain-devil ones) are interesting, but the writing, while terse, is a bit bland for my tastes. Not terrible, but a little flat. Combined with the rather one-note design of \u201crooms with monsters\u201d then this one is hard to swallow. <\/p>\n

First off, the thing, while \u201c\u201cerotic\u201d\u201d this is not exactly prurient. \u201cChained to the wall is the temple librarian.\u201d or \u201cExcept for a number of piercings she is completely nude and being whipped by muscular humanoids, similarly devoid of clothing.\u201d \u201cA nearly nude woman on a divan.\u201d Ok, I\u2019 think I covered all of the middleclass morality. The middle one might be worse thing, by far. Also, there\u2019s one sex toy, a +2 dildo. <\/p>\n

The writing in this is a bit flat for my tastes. Here\u2019s an example, from the room with the librarian chained to the wall, above: \u201cTormenting her is an inquisitor kyton, a horrible monstrosity in a bishop’s outfit with tongs for arms. He clicks the pincers of one arm while heating the other pair red hot in a brazier\u201d The good part here is that something is going on in the room. A captive and a menacing monster, replete with a bishop’s outfit and pincer arms. The good news is that most of the rooms have the creatures actually doing something. This gives the encounters a little more \u2026 relatability? The writing, though, is just a little flat. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a ncie pool of blood that congeals into a blood golum, that\u2019s nice. There\u2019s also a pool of water with a devil in it that can drown characters though creating water in the lungs. Again, a nice little touch. But they don\u2019t really have much life or color beyond that. There\u2019s a encounter with devils munching away on bodies and even that doesn\u2019t really communicate the horror of such an encounter. <\/p>\n

Also: the treasure seems light for fifth to seventh level characters. There\u2019s some reward for rescuing priestesses, and the goddess give you a random bonus as well, but the gold=xp thing looms in the background. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a nice one page summary of the NPC\u2019s in the back, with each of their personalities present. One of the hooks also has a nice idea: characters want a cleric hench? Rescuing one from a devil-filled temple is a great way to get a hench!<\/p>\n

The creatures doing things in the rooms are good. There\u2019s an effort made to give it an evocative description. It\u2019s a little one-dimensional for my tastes (which the designer fully admits in the overview at the online store.) Rescuing a bunch of priestesses, and getting them out, is a nice little touch, as, perhaps, the traitor one. I\u2019m not often fond of \u201ctraitor\u201d NCP\u2019s, they tend to be used too much and thus the players never trust anyone in the dungeon. IN this adventure though the traitor is mixed in with quite a few other captives to be rescued, which leaves less of a bad taste in the mouth.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve talked myself into this being an ok adventure. Not necessarily one I would run, but an ok adventure for what it is. Maybe a 70% \u2018C\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jeremy Raedan Self-Published 1e Levels 5-7 Three nights ago, strange lights and screams were heard from the local temple of Ishtar (or equivalent in your game, perhaps Loviatar, Xochiquetzal, or even Dionysus.). Most of the lower level priestesses fled. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/chaind.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3070"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3072,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3070\/revisions\/3072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}