Previous installments in this readthrough of Drakar & Demoner / Dragonbane:
- Dragonbane, first edition
- The Pyramid of the Spider King and The Twin Mountains
- Dragonbane, second edition
- The Island of Mist and The Wolves of the Sea
- Dragonbane Expert
- The Monster Book
- The Dead Forest (part one of The Path of Glory)
The campaign Ärans Väg (“The Path of Glory”) that started out in the previous installment here continues with Maktens Portar (“The Gates of Power”). Last time, my complaint was that the open-ended nature of the adventure, while nice in itself, didn’t make it a particularly good fit for the first part in a series. Let’s see how it goes on.
The adventure starts out by giving a bit more backstory for the setting, which states that the elder races – elves, dwarves, halflings and giants – used to rule the land, but fled with the coming of humanity. Some of the dwarves hid their kingdom behind a pair of magical gates, the Gates of Power, which were locked with three keys. Alas, the keys were lost, and the dwarves ultimately felt that they weren’t safe anymore and had to flee towards some unknown fate, leaving behind a great many treasures in their abandoned mountain halls.
Flash forward about 700 years, and there’s a war going on in the lands to the east. The warring parties are the necromancer Dakoth, the noble servants of the god Eledain, and the sinister-but-not-actually-the-problem-this-time minions of the god Sathmog. All three are scrambling for troops and equipment. Mogdath, a “death wight” in the service of Dakoth, discovered the Gates of Power. The treasures inside interested Dakoth, and so did the still-viable mines and foundries of the dwarves, so he sent Mogdath and a bunch of orcs, ogres and skeletons into the dwarven city through a magical portal. The orcs immediately managed to trigger some traps, so large parts of the city collapsed on top of them. Mogdath is now running a mining and weapon-forging operation with what manpower he has left while waiting for reinforcements through the portal.
Meanwhile, the players are assumed to have gotten hold of the keys and used them to open the Gates (it’s suggested that Doriath recruits them for an expedition through the Gates if they haven’t played the previous adventure). Things are about to get frantic.
Before the players get any further, though, a major NPC pops out of the bushes. His name is Tefalas and he’s a monk in the service of Eledain who’s been sent to killinate Mogdath. He’s been given a magic dagger who’ll suck Mogdath’s spirit into itself if he’s stabbed with it (which will be relatively easy with prudent use, since it’s got a single-shot spell on it that gives a +50% modifier and +10 damage to the first blow you strike with it, and he only has to take 1 hit point of damage to get dagger-sucked). Since he’s kind of crap with daggers, he’s happy to lend the thing to any player character who feels called upon, though.
After that, the major enemy NPCs get introduced. Mogdath is, again, a “death wight,” which is an evil ghost that’s so powerful that taken physical form. This is actually a hindrance in some ways, because it means it’s vulnerable to regular damage, but it does mean you can lift and carry things, which Mogdath makes use of by having magical weapons and armour. Mogdath also has two “dark wights” with him, who are a sort of in-between points between barrow wights and death wights – they are semi-solid, so they can kind of pick things up but it’s difficult, and they’re immune to any damage but fire and magic. They’re called “Daz” and “Gozer,” because this game doesn’t take itself terribly seriously. Anyway, his last lieutenant is a grouchy “night worg” named Sharch who’s an evil soul bound into the reanimated body of a two-headed wolf whose howling paralyses people.
There isn’t really a plot here; rather, the entire adventure is a big dungeon. We get told where all the NPCs are at the start, and also that Mogdath will get informed almost immediately after the Gates are opened. The GM is instructed to decide how he reacts to that news, with a few suggestions – he might investigate on his own, send Daz or Gozer to spy on the players, gather his troops to hunt them down, or just wait and see if they will oblige him by stepping on a trap. It’s noted that he will try to protect the orcs and ogres, since they double as his work crew – again, he’s less interested in the remaining treasure than he is in using the city as a mine and forge.
Some treasure is certainly to be had, though it’s inconvenient to get to – half of it is in the throne room where Mogdath is sitting, and half is still trapped and under guard to keep the orcs from trying to grab it and bringing down even more of the ceiling. Still, if the players can get to some of it, the sort of items they can wield are game-changers – there is an amulet that heals 3d6 hit points, without the need for a roll or the expenditure of Power Points, for instance, and that right there will turn the game a whole lot less gritty in a hurry. Of course, it’s noted that if Doriath is along, she’ll totally call dibs on everything magical.
The idea is for the players to fumble their way through the mountain, constantly attacked out of the darkness by terrifying creatures, and hopefully at some point be able to dagger-suck Mogdath. Though the GM is also mischievously informed that Tefalas doesn’t know what Mogdath actually looks like beyond “a wight,” so the players might end up catching Daz or Gozer instead, and after that the dagger is useless. Oh dear.
They are then supposed to get to the eastern land. They can technically do that by trapping a wight in the dagger and then tapping on the magic portal with it, which will cause Dakoth to think that a wight wants to get through and activate the portal… but not only do they have no real way of knowing that, but it’ll put them smack into Dakoth’s stronghold, so it’s probably not a great idea. What they are meant to do is break open the floor under the lavatories and follow the underground river beneath it out. I… am honestly unsure how they are even going to know that they need to do that, instead of just retreating out through the Gates like sensible people, much less how you can expect them to think of that particular, highly specific solution. Yes, Tefalas might tell them that the dagger needs to get to the east quite quickly so that it can be ritually destroyed, but come on, surely he had some plans for doing that himself that didn’t include underground rivers?
So the same problem that applies to the last adventure applies even harder to this one. But, other than that, it’s actually not bad, and the darkness and terror makes a nice contrast to the pastoral whimsy in the last one. Having actually run it, I can also vouch for it going pretty well, though I admit that I can’t actually remember how the players found their way out. Probably I railroaded them shamelessly. Oh well.
The trilogy will be concluded in The Heart of Darkness! Before then, though, we’re going to get our first look at the game’s main setting Ereb Altor in Kandra.