[OSSR]Bastion of Broken Souls 2002

[ishy]

Mod Edit: Ishy's review is incomplete, but Ancient History starts over with a complete review about 3/4 of the way down the page.

[Schleiermacher]

Not that most people who ever played this adventure probably care, but it was in fact the finale to the 3.0-introducing proto-adventure-path line of modules that began with Sunless Citadel, and there actually is a fair bit of foreshadowing of Ashardalon in several of those adventures. (Most blatantly in Heart of Nightfang Spire, about a mad vampire wizard who worships his original heart -hey, I said he was mad.) So it's not completely fair to say he was "just introduced."

Anyway, I've actually gotten a lot of use out of this module. Although I never played it as written (because the adventure is pretty much a string of fights contrived to somehow solve the problem), a bunch of the NPCs and locations are inspiring.

[Silent Wayfarer]

Delicious, delicious Cathezar.

[Username17]

Not sure why Stan is the only one with an exclamation mark and without a last name though.

That's Stan Brown. He likes to be credited "Stan!". He's an unremarkable workhorse game designer, but people actually know who he is because he puts an exclamation mark after his name.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

So it's working, then.

[Kaelik]

This is super duper depressing that more of this doesn't exist.

[Maxus]

'overcome a deity stripped of his divinity'.

Sure, he's still a deity. It's like how overthrown kings still get the 'your majesty'.

[infected slut princess]

Can someone else review Bastion of Broken Souls? This review isn't insightful or funny at all. Possibly the worst review ever on TGDMB

[Ancient History]

Hmm, only 50 pages. I guess I could do it if no one else wants to.

[fbmf]

Why did Ishy stop?

Game On,
fbmf

[Aryxbez]

Hmm, only 50 pages. I guess I could do it if no one else wants to.

I'm all for you doing so, I had liked the concept behind this adventure originally. Though it's concerning that it's just a "string of fights", what are ideal ways to avoid such linearity, and consciously "Don’t prep plots, prep situations."?

[Ancient History]

Well, it's important to realize that this is really just an overbloated Dungeon adventure in format. It's not like, say, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

[Ancient History]

So: new thread, or keep this thread?

[virgil]

Keep this thread, easier to keep track

[Ancient History]

So, let's take this from the top:


Bastion of Broken Souls
Between 2000 and 2002, Wizards of the Coast released a series of eight linked adventures ("adventure path") to promote the then-nascent 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Each of these adventure modules was capable of being run stand-alone, but featured art and characters straight out of the D&D3 main book as the pre-generated characters:


Mialee!


Tordek!


Lidda!


I don't remember that human guy, but there was a half-orc in there somewhere.

Anyway, the obvious goal of these things was to create a memorable adventure path along the lines of the classic G-Series/D-Series/Q1 of last edition fame. Together, this series of adventures was more or less supposed to take the PCs from 1st level through about 20th...well no, not really, but that's seriously the character arc they obviously intended to go for.

Unfortunately, Wizards of the Coast decided to trust the writing of said modules to Bruce R. Cordell, Skip Williams, Richard Baker, James Watt, Bruce again, John D. Rateliff, and Bruce once more. Honestly, I think Bruce would have written all of them except churning out 8 adventure books in 3 years with whatever his other writing commitments were (Call of Cthulhu d20, Epic Level Handbook, Magic of Faerun, Tome and Blood, Sword and Fist, Kingdom of Kalamar Player's Guide, Enemies and Allies, Manual of the Planes, Psionics Handbook, etc.)

The thing is though...I don't think Bruce Cordell actually knows how to write a proper adventure module. His adventure modules come in two flavors: the set-piece exploration adventure (The Sunless Citadel) and the disconnected series of scenes (Bastion of Broken Souls); actual plot, character development, twists, etc. While they tie in to a bunch of the other things Bruce wrote, they don't actually build to a whole that's more than the some of their parts.

And they're amazingly short. The Sunless Citadel isn't a bad adventure module, and it's 32 pages long with no real set-up or resolution; the gamemaster is expected to figure out how to get the PCs there and back again. It's really just a tournament module, but that's okay - Tomb of Horrors did more or less the same. Bastion of Broken Souls on the other hand is 49 pages long. That works out to exactly one extra page of material for each level the player characters are expected to have gained in the past seven adventures. Everything is left up to the gamemaster in this one - Bruce basically gives no consideration that player character options might have expanded in the last seventeen levels, and Bastion of Broken Souls is just an extra-large Dungeon Magazine adventure with more broken plot and setting than you can shake a stick at - because Bruce thinks its cool!

Anyway, let's go over this a section at a time.

Cover: Typical 3e faux pretty-book framing a picture of a) an unfinished red dragon, b) 3 adventurers, c) who are standing in what looks like dragon poo with faces on it. It's not the high point of D&D art, even for 3rd edition. In fact, it looks like one of the less-memorable M:tG cards.

Inside are five maps crammed into a single page:

Page 1 is the table of contents, copyright statement, and a long list of "Credits." Many of these names are familiar, which is not a good thing (seriously? You let Teeuwynn "WoD: Gypsies" Woodruff playtest this monster?) Most notable is maybe how many chiefs and how few indians this book has - there's Stan! on Development, a Creative Director, an Editor, Art Director, Business Manager, Production Manager, and Project Manager...is it just me or is that a lot of overlapping levels of management handjobs? I mean, who the fuck was running herd on the "Cartographer" Todd Gamble - the Art Director or the Creative Director? My guess: both.

Anyway, continuing on with the dire forebodings, the book is broken up into an Introduction, Part One (Six Scenes), Part Two (Two Scenes), a one-page Conclusions and four appendices. So that sounds like a good breakdown for this review.

Introduction
Ishy covered some of this, so let me handle the rest: this section is 1.25 pages long and covers Preparation (with Adventure Background), an Adventure Summary, and Character Hooks.

Preparation starts out by telling you that all you need to play is the three main rulebooks (this is a lie), and that Manual of the Planes would be helpful "if you want to expand the planar travel in this adventure." This is another lie, because you start off at 18th level (supposedly), and your first encounter is EL 21, so really you should be using the Epic Level Handbook. I mean fuck, Bruce Cordell wrote part of the Epic Level Clusterfuck with Andy Collins, who was also one of the playtesters, so they really should have been all over that shit. Why it isn't mentioned here I have no idea. It's a mystery.

The Adventure Background concerns the Demon Prince Demogorgon, who is Bruce Cordell's favorite Demon Prince.



Long story short: each of Demogorgon's baboon heads is a sentient entity in its own right, and they hate each other. But because of handwaving, neither of the monkey heads can kill the other without both being destroyed unless they get a supercharged demonic soul. So Demogorgon A (I'm not writing down their names, they're both silly) learns of Ashardalon, a supersaiyan advanced red dragon whose original heart was replaced by a demon, and which is currently on the Positive Material Plane's Bastion of the Unborn sucking up "preincarnate souls" (cue incarnum inspiration).

But Ashardalon is so bad-ass, Demogorgon A needs an edge: a descendant of the ancient bad-ass druid Dydd. Whom happens to be one of the player characters.

Okay, so we've got a needlessly complicated not-plot going on at this point: one of the PCs is the Chosen One, and demon A needs to insert PC C into Dragon slot D to do whatever, and Demon Head B tries to stop them. You'd think that maybe Demogorgon A would just hire the PCs, since slaying a half-demon dragon feasting on the souls of the unborn would be a very adventurer kind of thing to do, but Demogorgon didn't get where he is in the hierarchy of the Abyss by making rational, carefully-thought out appeals to characters' natures.

Also, this background leaves out...well, quite a bit. There's no discussion here of the two occult societies involved, any of the encounters the PCs are going to go through, the artifact they need to get into the Bastion of Souls, or much of fucking anything else.

The Adventure Summary is a lie. It looks like the rough outline that Cordell submitted when he proposed the adventure, and it doesn't include all of the adventure scenes. The basic gist of the adventure goes something like this:

A Mystery: Shit happens. The PCs get involved.

Gathering Information: Nominally a phase for PCs to figure out what's going on, but really the PCs are given two options: look for the Guild of Sleep or the Church of the Elements. Organizations so cool and awesome and useful that they were never mentioned again in any product ever.

Each of these is presented as a step the PCs need to take before they breach a celestial prison to pick up an artifact to get into the Bastion of Unborn Souls.

Except I've run this adventure, and I know that's not how it goes. That is, in fact, not more than two-thirds of how it goes, as it leaves out two entire scenes, and that's if the PCs don't get stupid and/or creative.

Nitpick: Why is this module called the Bastion of Broken Souls, when everything in the book calls it the Bastion of Unborn Souls? You might expect with a name like "broken souls" you'd be expecting there to be soul fragments or undead or something hanging about, and you would be wrong. The only thing I can think of is that one of the managers decided that Broken Souls either sounded cooler, or would seem less like an anti-abortion ad.

Probably because the initial hook for the plot is non-existent as presented, Cordell provides a section of Character Hooks. The primary hook is that the PCs are attacked by an agent of Demogorgon A, which is actually the first scene in the book. The first supporting hook is that a sickness is cropping up in newborns (because Ashardalon is eating their souls), and the PCs set out to investigate. The second supporting hook is that divinations are failing to address the sickness cropping up in...wait, that's the last fucking hook again! Who the fuck are you trying to fool, Cordell? The alternative hook is that the PCs have been on the trail of Ashardalon for ages, and finally have tracked him down.

So we've got one hook where the PCs are minding their own business and attacked, and that's supposed to get them to find out who attacked them and...somehow lead them to the dragon? Then hook 2 & 3 is a sickness in the newborns, which is fine and appropriate. Hook #4 is just handwavium for the gamemaster to skip the bullshit and go more-or-less straight to the dragonslaying, which I tentatively approve of. What's lacking in pretty much all cases are a) a connection to the plot of previous adventures, and b) real hooks. Seriously, this isn't hard: have somebody, anybody pay the adventurers to go kill the dragon. Have somebody offer to sleep with the PCs to slay the dragon. Point out that the dragon has powerful magic that the PCs can loot and they'll probably happily go off and slay the dragon all on their lonesome. This chosen one bullshit is for hooks way below 18th level characters.

Aside:

I'm vaguely reminded of the debacle that was the Artifact adventures for Shadowrun. It had started out as a proposal by, I shit you not, Loren Coleman where he wanted to write some tie-in novels with immortal elves and planned for a floating island of immortal Atlantean sorcerers to come back in the Sixth World. This was (extensively) revised and repitched by various people, and eventually I pulled together the rough outline of the thing (scavenger hunt for 4 artifacts), and then later submitted an ending campaign to be called Harlequin's Gambit to tie it all together. Except the books stalled coming out (and weren't that great), and then when I left that sank Harlequin's Gambit and they went with the Dragonball plot device...yeah, anyway, I get the same vibe off of this adventure series. If there ever was an overarching plot from Sunless Citadel to Bastion of Broken Souls, it broke down fairly quickly (probably on the non-Cordell products) and never came together in the end. I want to say that Dungeon Magazine actually learned from this when they did the whole "Age of Worms" adventure path years later.

Tomorrow: Part One!

[Whipstitch]

I don't remember that human guy, but there was a half-orc in there somewhere.

That's Jozan, the cleric iconic. There's also a human male fighter iconic named Regdar. The easiest way to tell the two apart in any given piece of art is by remembering that Jozan is the one with a white sash while Regdar is the one who looks like he's about to get his overmatched ass whupped by the local wildlife. Apparently that's because Monte Cook & the boys hated the guy, since he only existed because marketing didn't think Tordek was generic white male enough to take center stage in store displays, which led to some acts of quiet rebellion such as the Heroes of Horror cover featuring Regdar's empty blood-soaked armor being hung from tree branches. Personally, I don't really care why they decided it was a good idea to have the generic pure fighter die a lot, since I salute truth in advertising regardless of motivation.

[Starmaker]

Jozan is most famous for being seen casting Symbol of Pain in 3.5, thus inadvertently revealing the evil of Pelor. This is probably the only picture in which he isn't wearing a helmet.

[Ancient History]

Part One: A Mystery
In Bruce Cordell's head, the math goes something like this:


Kyton (Chain Devil, CR 6)




Maralith (Demon, CR 17)




"The Cathezar" (Half-Devil/Half-Demon, CR 21)

...

BULLSHIT

Anyway, this is yet another Dungeon Magazine-ism, which is putting in characters that blatantly break with/vary from the established rules and setting of the game. You would think that when creating a hopefully iconic adventure path designed to highlight your system and setting material you might actually, I dunno, use said system and setting material, but the fact is that by and large the established designers played fast and loose with stuff - so that you get things like this, where it's obvious that they want stats for half-dragons and half-fiends of every race, but they obviously cannot be fucking bothered to do that shit in any organized manner, so they just stick in generic templates and then pull this shit out of their ass whenever they want to feel special and creative.

Anyway, the intro to this adventure isn't "You meet in a tavern," or "A mysterious plague has been afflicting the newborn," but "This random asshole you've never seen before shows up to kick your collective asses." It's a complete non sequitur, and it means that your game session immediately grinds to a halt as you play out a combat between 4-6 18th-level adventurers and one of Bruce Cordell's wet dreams. Bruce is too lazy to actually give any set-up at all to where and why and how this happens. Seriously, here's his entire thoughts on it:

Choose a time and place where the player characters will be all together to be set upon. One possibility includes a public street or tavern of your choice where screaming commoners and other secondary NPCs provide interesting flavor. Another intriguing possibility is an attack on the NPCs while they are involved in an unrelated adventure.

Dark gods dammit Bruce, this is an adventure, which you are selling people, not a random NPC encounter you posted on the website. You're supposed to do some of the work for Mister Cavern here.

Anyway, Bruce doesn't actually care about that. While the PCs are presumably caught flat-footed, the Impossible Critter is given a Power-Up Suite. That is a literal sidebar for every significant opponent in this adventure, telling you what buffs they apply to themselves to gain an advantage, because at this point D&D was embracing buffs in a big way and hadn't nerfed any of the spells yet.

Impossible Critter isn't meant to die right away, though, so if the PCs look like they're winning she teleports without error way the fuck away - preferably after the PCs meet Demogorgon B's lackey, a 5th level Rogue/Death slaad named "Nurn."

"Don't wear it out."

Nurn is there to answer questions/lie to the NPCs, although considering he's a backstabbing giant fucking chaotic frog I wonder why he doesn't become the next target. Presumably the offer to parley throws the PCs off their game.



To Bruce's small credit, he does acknowledge the possibility that the PCs might kill the Cathezar (worth 200% XP if it's permanent!), or beat her the fuck up and interrogate her. He also includes a sidebar where Nurn joins the party as an NPC and gets a full share of the XP, and I have no idea why Bruce thought that was actually going to be a thing since the player characters I know would stab him in the fact after the first fight when they realized they were getting shafted.

Scene Two: Gathering Information supposes that after getting randomly attacked, possibly in the middle of doing other shit like saving a princess or something, and then solicited by a creepy-ass giant backstabbing frog that openly admits to working for a demon lord, that the PCs might want to figure out what the fuck is going on. General information-gathering spells and abilities (augury, Bardic Knowledge, etc.) are explicitly crippled because Bruce wants you to jump through the requisite hoops in this adventure. This is partially explained to be because of the Ban of the Unborn:

By an edict as old as the multiverse, the deities are prohibited from influence, or dealings with pre-incarnate souls in any fashion whatsoever. This is to prevent their meddling with the sanctity of the free will that all creatures possess at birth. For the PCs, this means that they cannot appeal to the deities once they figure out what is going on. Similarly, summoned planar allies will not accompany PCs into the Bastion. Divination spells and the like that touch directly on the Bastion of Unborn Souls are simply not answered, while questions that bear indirectly on the Bastion are skirted or only answered partially. It is the Ban of the Unborn that prevents divination and similar spells from determining the cause of the infant "sickness" described in Character Hooks. Repeated or clever questions garner only the following answer: "The Ban of the Unborn may not be set aside." Knowledge (religion) checks reveal more (see below).

Despite the Ban, clerics who enter the Bastion continue to receive granted spells; likewise, items or artifacts that feed off divine power continue to function.

There's a lot there, but let's break it down.

1) This presumes that all living creatures (with souls!) have free will from birth. Fuck it destiny and racial alignments!

2) This presumes that there is something greater than the D&D gods. And presumably greater than the generic D&D overdeities. So yeah, it's sort of like how God in the Marvel Universe is the One-Above-All.

3) This is all obviously bullshit because there was a god and there is currently a demon-dragon mucking about with these "pre-incarnate" souls, so this "don't fuck with pre-born souls" thing is really more of a guideline than an actual hard rule of the universe. I mean fuck, the whole Incarnum business is about channeling soulstuff. I don't even want to think about how reincarnation fits into this shit. Where do souls come from? Where do they go? IT'S A MYSTERY!

4) Yes, the whole pre-incarnate souls business doesn't make a lot of sense and isn't explained well in D&D cosmology terms, just as the "final destination" after souls exit the Outer Planes is never given any sort of explanation. At least they don't get all right-to-lifey and decide that all fetuses have souls, but they avoid that argument entirely so that they don't have an actual abortion debate.

5) Also, since when does the Ban of the Unborn mean that the deities can't at least talk about this shit? Wouldn't they actually hold lectures on this? "Yeah, look, we're not supposed to touch that. So if you do, I'm flinging you into a sphere of annihilation, capice?"

6) Yes, this whole thing is just to dick with the PCs and limit their options and abilities arbitrarily.

So, just to make this clear: the PCs are attacked (randomly), with one getting focused on more than the others. A death slaad with a dagger to grind and who doesn't quite know what's going on but obviously knows more than he's telling wants to join your party, and then Mister Cavern is supposed to sit back and let you decide what to do from there. If you decide to say "fuck it" and make a beer run to the kitchen while waiting for the actual adventure hook, the MC is suggested to have more NPCs try to murder you, which just gets out of hand. What you're apparently supposed to do as NPCs is make a bunch of Knowledge skill checks and divinations and hope that the random, evasive answers you mysteriously get give you enough clues to actually follow the fuck up on. I shit you not.

Anyway, there are two real random threads (that Bruce prepares for): 1) references to the druid Dydd, the PC's until now unknown ancestor, and 2) this whole preincarnate soul business.

Ad Hoc XP Adjustment: Award experience to the PCs for having the wherewithal to use their resources to pierce the shrouds of this mystery, and move on to the next scenes. This experience is awarded once only, even though the PCs may attempt to gather information multiple times throughout the adventure. Grant the PCs as many XP as they would get from an EL 16 encounter.

Well, thank for that. Nothing like clawing your way up to 18th level to get some XP from making a bunch of gods-be-damned skillchecks.

Scene 3: The Cathezar's Abode
Assuming the PCs don't give a fuck about this Dydd thing or preincarnate soul business and do care about the Impossible Critter that tried to murder them, they can track her down to her lair. Which, given that this is a plane-spanning adventure of cosmic importance should seem to be somewhere exotic, but is really a cavern beneath a warehouse in a large city on the same plane. It's not quite "this is Wolfram & Hart's home office" as a reveal, and actually feels distinctly unglamorous for demons to be doing worse than the Mafia or local Thieves' Guild, which can at least afford a discreet building in the nicer part of town with lead pipes to take the sewage away and everything.

Anyway, the Abode isn't an actual scene, it's a set-piece embedded in the middle of the adventure in lieu of actual plot, so very much like the Sunless Citadel in that it's a room-by-room series of encounters, except Bruce didn't have the space or wordcount to do a proper job of it so it's seriously just six rooms with one entrance. I'd personally just flood the place with holy water and sort shit out from there. Along the way we get this gem:

When the PCs find out that Demogorgon (or at least one of his heads) is behind their troubles, they may simply want to travel to the Abyss and take the fight to the Demon Prince. This is a bad idea.

No it isn't Bruce, shut the fuck up.

Honestly, once you defeat the Cathezar and raid her lair for the 60,000 gp or so of treasure there, you're probably in hours 4-6 of the adventure, or maybe even session 2, and PCs might call it there. I wouldn't blame them. Of course, if they get the Cathezar to talk she immediately rolls over on her Demon Prince.

Scene 4: The Church of the Elements
This is a stone circle, with druids, so "church" is not actually a relevant or useful term. It's assumed the PCs aren't going to start any shit, but even if they were I doubt the Dire Tiger on guard duty around the magical sapling in the middle of it all is going to be more than a speed bump. Yet somehow, coming down here and asking questions earns the PCs the XP from an 18th-level encounter. You get the idea that Bruce is just flinging out the XP willy-nilly, or he really wants the PCs to level up before they get to the good fights.

Anyway, the church tells the Chosen One about Dydd and then shuffles them along to the Guild of Sleep.

I find the entire Dydd thing nonsense, by the way. It would be one thing if Bruce had a spell or something behind the ability, but really it's just one of those random ass-pull fantasy things where Mister Cavern is supposed to wave their hands and go "Magic!" even though magic in D&D doesn't work that way.

See, D&D is High fantasy. That doesn't mean it isn't comedic or that it has more magic in it or anything, that just means that magic has rules. Low fantasy just has magic do anything, and restrictions are random and arbitrary. The Lord of the Rings is high fantasy because it has a consistent internal setting - anyone who puts on the One Ring, for example, disappears. Ewok Adventures is low fantasy because the abilities of the fucking teddy-bear aborigine wizard change from episode to episode, and previous abilities are often forgotten. D&D, by definition, is high fantasy - there's an actual system in place. There is no need to make random statless shit up just for story purposes, and it actually detracts from the setting when you do.



Scene 5: Guild of Sleep
This is another random set-piece where the PCs get yet more information, this time from a Night Hag sorceress that sleeps in a magical pod.


I am okay with this.

...protected by "Sleep Golems" (variant iron golem).


Works for me.

Now, scenes 3, 4, and 5 are not actually in any particular order, so you could totally go see the Church and then the Sleepers then raid the Cathezar's abode, or raid the abode and say fuck it to the rest of the adventure, or burn the druid grove down for lulz because at this point you've been getting XP just for asking fucking questions and you're wondering when the actual goddamned adventure is going to start. But you sort of have to go to the Guild of Sleep because they're the only ones (apparently) that will get you to the Well of the Souls Bastion of Unborn Souls.


Wrong adventure, move along.

I strongly suspect that Cordell wanted the whole Guild of Sleep to tie into the Demiplane of Dreams, which he's always had a bit of a hard-on for if I recall correctly, but considering the blistering pace of this module I suspect he just didn't have time for it.

Scene 6: Desayeus's Prison
The long story short is that one god did try to add unborn ("virgin") souls to their portfolio. It lasted seven hours, during which time he created one artifact, and then he got demoted to titan, kicked out of the god club, and imprisoned in Pandemonium, more or less in that order. Which isn't how being a god in D&D works, since his fossilized ass should be floating in the astral plane. But I digress.

Anyway, the artifact Desayeus made was the soul totem, and among other things it allows people to enter the Bastion of Unborn Souls. Ashardalon has one third of it, somebody else has another, and Desayeus has the other third. Naturally, the PCs need to go rob him of it so that they can continue their mission (wait, what?) and go to the Bastion of Unborn Souls to confront Ashardalon (why? Unborn plague, I guess? For lulz? For loots?)

This represents the first actual planar travel in an adventure that's supposed to literally be all about planar travel, and it doesn't cover how the fuck you're supposed to get there - Cordell's particular methods suggests a slightly convoluted scry, plane shift, and teleport without error combination and leaves it at that.

Anyway, this is another set-piece, where the PCs go through a series of fights against solars and shit in a rather linear cavern to get to a demoted god and murderize him. Talking isn't really supposed to get you anywhere, which is sad because you'd think you could explain things. Aside from the soul totem, the only really interesting bit that Desayeus has on him is a +5 brilliant energy gargantuan warhammer, which I nicknamed "the Whammer" the one time I ran this adventure for a group.

That brings us halfway through page 19, and the end of Part One. The PCs have, if they have followed Cordell's logic carefully:

1) Been randomly attacked by an impossible critter,

2) Solicited by a giant talking frog,

3) Awarded a great deal of XP for simply doing some legwork,

4) Maybe took out some demons/druids/golems/and a sleepy nighthag

5) Invaded a planar prison and threw down with a demoted deity and all of his many good-aligned but creatively bankrupt former followers.

At which point you're still in Pandemonium, you're probably above 20th level, and you have another artifact for your collection. Next stop: the Positive Material Plane and a giant demonic dragon.

[Red_Rob]

Given that at 18th level the game is so far into crazytown that Wish is just one of the Wizard's daily abilities, I am very disappoint that the best they could come up with for an iconic adventure was "Fight a demon in a cave, ask some NPC's to tell you the plot, get blue key to open blue door." I mean, sure at this level party strengths are so wildly divergent that the difference between easy cakewalk and TPK are impossible to judge without scrutinising the players character sheets before each fight, but I was at least hoping for something more interesting.

[Username17]

Sunless Citadel was kind of neat. I mean sure, it was basically just a little dungeon sandbox to play in with no reason or attachments, but it was fun. I enjoyed exploring that thing and discussing things with the kobolds and shit. That series lost the plot pretty fast. By The Speaker In Dreams, things were thoroughly off the rails, and we didn't even try to play the later ones. Lord of the Iron Fortress was just a joke.

By the way, if you want to really understand how fucking incestuous D&D is, the wikipedia for The Speaker in Dreams notes that Dungeon Master for Dummies lists it as one of the ten best 3rd edition adventures. The Speaker in Dreams was written by James Wyatt. Dungeon Master for Dummies was also written by James Wyatt. These books are not only being reviewed by people being paid by the same people as are publishing the books, they are being reviewed by their actual authors.

James Wyatt gives himself five out of five on the James Wyatt scale of how much of a James Wyatt he is. Fucking fuck!

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

James Wyatt gives himself five out of five James Wyatts on the James Wyatt scale of how much of a James Wyatt he is.

[Ancient History]

Part Two: The Bastion of Unborn Souls
Scene One: The Positive Energy Plane
Okay, so once again this is not a "scene" as much as "This is all the stuff I need to tell you about playing on the Positive Energy Plane." PEP (formerly the Positive Material Plane) has only rarely been given any sort of detail in D&D because, frankly, you're not supposed to go there. The Positive and Negative planes aren't Heaven and Hell so much as Yin and Yang, the north and south poles of the multiversal magnet, and even that is never gone into in great detail - really, before Planescape almost no one ever thought of going there, and even then the Negative Energy Plane at least has an inherent connection to undead, and this was long before Eberron's undying were even a drunken twinkle in the eye.

The basics: Everything on the Positive Energy Plane swells with energy. The good news is, your character heals so quickly they gain Fast Healing 5 as an extraordinary ability - and at full hit points they gain 5 temporary hit points every round. However, if your temporary hit points exceed your normal hit point total, then you have to make a Fortitude check each round or explode. So yeah, it's the plane of constant save-or-die effects unless you have one of the protections listed in one of the appendices.

This is the text Bruce expects Mr. Cavern to read to the PCs as they arrive:

This is a place of brilliant white. Pulsating brilliance bleaches out the spectrum and creates stark shadows. Anything more than 5 feet away becomes an indistinct blot of darkness moving against the white background - the blots nearby are certainly your companions. Distance is impossible to gauge within this brilliant environment.

That's three uses of brilliance in four sentences. I think we need to update the SCP containment protocols.

Anyway, you can't see shit, you're on the verge of exploding, but the Drow's okay because technically this isn't sunlight and despite everything glowing there are somehow shadows, because Cordell doesn't know how light works.

Who designed this plane, Steve Jobs?

At this point, Nurn (NURN!) if still alive, shows up and levels with the PCs, because he thinks that teaming up is the best way to preserve the balance between Law and Chaos - and yes, he's a giant chaotic murder-hobo frog, but he thinks that if Demogorgon A kills Demogorgon B then Chaos will be diminished.

There's also a sidebar about how all the shit that makes the Positive Energy Plane unique and interesting is sort of nerfed inside the Bastion of Unborn Souls itself:

The Bastion of Unborn Souls is not really made of crystal, but of a substance far harder - solidified positive energy. As such, it is unbreakable, impenetrable to magical/psionic entry, and unresponsive to magical/psionic methods to even learn about the interior. Its impenetrability means that creatures (and PCs) on the inside cannot summon aid with summoning or planar ally spells (no calling or summoning spells work within the Bastion). Only a deity could conceivably bring sufficient force to bear and physically force an entrance - but no deity would attempt such folly, in rightful fear of the Ban of the Unborn. All other spells work normally, though divination and commune spells dealing specifically with the Bastion remain as unhelpful as ever.

Inside the Bastion, the visual brilliance of the Positive Energy Plane is absent, except as noted; however the supercharge effect of too much positive energy remains, and must be dealt with.

Inside the Bastion, gravity becomes objective, creating a definite floor and ceiling.

The gemlike ceilings in the Bastion are all 60 feet high.

There are pretty typical fuck-yous designed to railroad player characters - who should all be at least pushing level 20 right now - into what is essentially a smaller version of exploring the Sunless Citadel, only with a much bigger dragon. These are pretty typical, and I'm not going to bitch about them too much - the flaws are obvious, but they're also narrative necessities harkening back to classic dungeon modules, because every player character knows that it's much easier to cut the Gordian knot than to walk through pre-scripted fights-to-the-death, withering away at their hit points, daily use powers, and spells so that they finally come to the big boss exhausted and in need of a quick piss break.

I do find the notion that you have to make "solidified positive energy" (what, matter?) unbreakable except for a deity, considering that most of the PCs are pushing demigod status as it is.

Last note: turns out that eating a preincarnate soul is equivalent to sucking down a goodberry.

Scene Two: The Bastion of Unborn Souls is, as stated, just another set-piece - it's the longest one, to be sure, but really no more than a big glowing dungeon on another plane. That's really Bruce Cordell's entire conception of the character arc for D&D characters: you start off in a ruined dungeon with some kobolds and their adorable pet dragonling, and your end in a giant glowy crystal dungeon on another plane inhabited by demons, one really big dragon, and all the stupid positive energy monsters that nobody used from the Manual of the Plane. There's even a Random Encounter Table, where you have a 1 in 20 chance of encountering a Mature Adult Red Dragon - because Ashardalon is not one of those dads that just boots his kids out into the street!

Things start off at the entrance, where Demogorgon A has stationed some troops (including, if she survived, the Cathezar with another chunk of the soul totem) to intercept the PCs and...uh...okay, it's obvious Cordell hadn't quite thought this out. I mean, obviously Demogorgon A's original plan was to kidnap the Chosen One PC, grab a shard of the soul totem, then have his demonic army march in, kill the dragon, and bob's your uncle. So the PCs showing up free and with their own chunk of the soul totem should probably be a spanner in the carefully-laid plan, but Cordell seems to assume that's what is going to happen anyway. So really, there's just a bunch of demons camping out on the doorstep of a soul nursery for vaguely defined reasons. If you kill them, you can take their elf jerky and and torture bracelets (more on those later), and gain entrance into the Bastion, which is full of crystal trees where preincarnate souls hang like fruit.

Note: the demons are supposed to be "well paid" for guarding the thing that nobody is supposed to be able to get into without a special artifact, but that really amounts to 50 pp and some assorted golden idols that come up to less than a grand. These demons must have a terrible union, or the PCs just don't recognize their AbyssXpress Black Cards as currency or something.

After mopping up the demons, the PCs meet the welcoming committee - a rather motley collection of Ashardalon's favorite kids. These include Po (Half-Dragon Kobold Fighter 18), Krushar (Half-Dragon Ettin Barbarian 10), Thalidorious (Advanced Chimera...maybe he was adopted?), and Grisly (advanced Half-Dragon Dire Bear).

...okay, that's not exactly the epic struggle you might have been hoping for, but when I ran it I had good fun with them all calling each other "Bro!"



Bruce notes that "The treasure for these creatures is their equipment."

You can interrogate any of them you catch, but this isn't very helpful.

At this point, I should tell you that there is no full map of the Bastion because it is supposed to be miles long, and because Bruce pulls out the Bullshit Card and tells you that there are hundreds of "nodes" in the building, each slightly out of phase with each other, and to get to the center (where Ashardalon is), you have to become "attuned" by passing through all eight secondary rooms off the center Node. This basically accomplishes two functions a) it serves as a puzzle for the adventurers to solve/beat the answer out of someone, b) it allows for rolls on the random encounter table.

Now Cordell brings out some of the native life to the Positive Energy Plane. In older editions these were little floating balls of energy called "energons" or weird one-armed dragon things that animated shit just for the hell of it.


Fuck off, xag-az, nobody wants you here.

Anyway, these adorable little balls of pulsating life energy eventually evolve, pokemon-style, into things called soulsippers and soulmaruaders and whatnot.

These things actually live off eating preincarnate souls, which again begs the question: why the fuck do we care about the dragon again? I mean, if these guys are here and evolved here, then there's going to be a certain number of soulless babies born all the fucking time, am I right?

Anyway, the PC's fight might bring them into contact with "the Gardener," a soulscaper that wants Ashardalon to stop hogging the goodberries souls but doesn't feel up to fighting him itself.

PCs still not quite sure what the fuck are going on will be pleased to find Oyalui, an advanced half-dragon satyr (CR 12) who immediately surrenders and asks to parley because he knows he's outgunned by...well, everything. So this is Bruce Cordell's saving throw infodump.

A little later on the PCs run into some more demons, bastard dragon kids (Jeebus, is there anything Ashardalon didn't stick it to?), evolved poke-energons, and finally a save point Peaceful Grove, containing the body of an adventurer where the PCs can rest before their final battle. Mister Cavern is told there are no random encounters here, but then MC is also told that said adventurer had his soul eaten by a passing cosmic parasite while he was taking a nap, so I don't know that the PCs are going to be happy bedding down next to the corpse.

Actually, what the fuck does happen to a corpse on the positive material plane? I mean, I guess all the bacteria should explode with life energy or something without protection, so you've either got a slowly-liquifiying corpse or a slowly-dessicating one. Eww.



Ashardalon itself is a half-fiend Great Wyrm Red Dragon with 700 hitpoints. Next to him is Pemoka, a half-dragon kobold bard 13. Together, they're CR 27, although I don't trust that math. Ashardalon actually starts off pretty nicely, trying to diplomance the PCs and offering them immortality if they stay here and eat goodberries souls together forever, like bros. Until/unless one of them admits that great-great-great granddad was Dydd, in which case he goes straight to "Motherfuckas die!"

Which is fair, because if Dydd had not cut out Ashardalon's original heart without finishing the goddamned job, then he would never have taken a fucking Balor to use as his artificial heart, and he'd never have had to keep it going by eating preincarnate souls. Really, all of this could have been avoided if the druid had either finished what he started, or if Ashardalon had hired some gnomes to work him up a bad-ass steampunk heart. But I digress.

To make the giant dragon fight more challenging, in the node the positive energy flow is doubled, so now everybody has Fast Healing 10 and player characters are once again at risk of exploding from too many hit points.

The Chosen One can do their stuff at this point. If they do the incantation correctly, then Ashardalon suffers what amounts to a crisis of confidence for 5 rounds. He loses 1 full round of activity, won't attack the Chosen One directly for 4 rounds after that (unless the Chosen One attacks him first, or all the other PCs are killed), and takes a penalty on attack rolls, saving throws, etc. and loses his Fast Healing 15. Also, the Chosen One only takes 75% fire damage from Ashardalon's fire breath, which is nice.

Still, even with that miserable little breather, the PCs are either superfucked or just going to wish Ashardalon into turning inside out, and I'd bet on the latter.

Once the final battle is over...ha, I kid. Once the dragon goes down, his fucking demon heart jumps out of his fucking chest to fuck the PCs with a post-boss fight boss fight. This takes the form of an Advanced Half-Dragon Balor with an artifact whip called Helltongue, which I think proves once and for all that Bruce Cordell is not to be trusted with templates ever again.

Because he spent his whole hoard on this venture, the PC's treasure consists of Ashardalon's fragment of the soul totem and a Daern's instant fortress. Whoo.

The Conclusion hopefully has the PCs "win," by which I mean having killed everything in sight, which has five soulscapers come down and give them a "soul jolt" - basically an automatic true resurrection the next time they need it, including right now if they happen to be dead. Otherwise they get the sad ending (Failure!), or the angry sidebar ending (PC/Ashardalon Alliance). The final paragraph on page 33 is pimping the Epic Level Handbook, since the PCs are now probably about 20th level.

Of course, considering that the PCs have been fighting >20th level threats the entire fucking book, I'm not really sure what the point of mentioning the ELH now is. Either Bruce Cordell didn't want to pimp his own product, or more likely Bastion of Broken Souls was written before the ELH was even finished but pushed back in the production schedule so far that it didn't see print until after the ELH, and this was added after-the-fact as a plug rather than rewrite the adventure to conform to supposedly epic statliness.

Next up are the appendices, and I wrap this review up!

[OgreBattle]

If you talk to the giant snake woman with the spiked chain bra about her parents, does she tell you anything useful about how a demon/devil comes to be, or is that completely ignored.

[Ancient History]

It's pretty much ignored, but if you break into her boudoir you can read her diary journal, so maybe there's something in there about it.

[OgreBattle]

Could a "Wish" spell restore Ashardalon's heart?