The Darkness Beneath Dalentown, a Review

This is an unsolicited review of The Darkness Beneath Dalentown, an adventure for 4-8 characters of levels 8-12. It is written using the Swords and Wizardry ruleset. There will be some spoilers in this review, so players beware! It is written by brothers Tim and Matthew Bannock.

The cover is by Dean Spencer and shows an elf fighter with one leg partially encased in a gelatinous cube. The elf is in the process of swinging a sword, and to me it looks like she is trying to cut off her leg to escape the cube rather than attacking it. I will admit that I've got a soft spot in my heart for oozes, jellies and gelatinous creatures, and was attracted to this module both because of its contents but also because it is a higher level adventure, which are relatively rare.

From introduction to Appendix it is 30 pages. The introduction starts out explaining the premise in broad strokes -- an urban expansion project in the sewers of Dalentown has opened up a passageway to an ancient dwarven mine tragically abandoned. It is recommended that at least one character be a cleric or paladin, for access to magics that can deal with various ooze related conditions.

The module is organized in logical fashion: there's a brief introduction to Dalentown and background explaining the events that led to the staging of the module, followed by a summary of the adventure itself and a listing of what books are needed to play (both the S&W Monstrosities book and the Tome of Horrors Complete), although it is noted that all monster stats are given in the back of the book.

Briefly, Dalentown was settled unknowingly above an abandoned dwarven mine. The dwarves were mining an especially hard crystal, and decided to take a shortcut by hiring a wizard to help them out. The magic-user, named Sedeen the Conjurer, decided to conjure some oozes to dissolve the softer surrounding stone to make the mining got faster. Needless to say, hijinks then ensued with the demon lord Jubilex (spelled that way in TOHC) interfered and sent more oozes than could be dealt with. The dwarves blamed Seldeen and threw the magic-user into a pit of oozes, where the demon-lord transformed her into a demon!

There's a map of Dalentown, a brief overview of the town itself with some notable NPCs and locations noted, including some plot hooks that could be used beyond the adventure itself. When the PCs arrive in town they find out that, upon discovering the ancient dwarven ruins a team of adventurers were hired to explore; they were routed and almost all were slain, with their being only two survivors. These two can be pumped for information about what they saw, which isn't much, although one of them swears to have encountered a ghost. The adventurers are low level, so it comes as no surprise that they were slaughtered. Dalentown itself is fairly generic and designed to be placed as desired in an existing campaign world, and can be expanded upon as needed.

There are four hooks given to get the adventurers interested in the adventure, and a neat timeline that spells out what happens the longer the infestation of oozes goes unchecked, including a timetable of events that occur over the period of a couple of months. It's a neat touch, and as the timeline advances there are mechanical increases to the sewer random encounter rolls to include greater threats. We're given a map of the sewers and told to place the entrance to the dwarven stronghold as desired in the sewer, and to limit the number of entrances to the sewer itself, so it allows for some customization.

Once the adventurers travel through the sewers -- where they risk only random encounters -- they enter the dwarven stronghold itself. The maps are fairly basic, created using Inkwell Ideas Dungeonographer, and easy to use. One nice touch is that the remains of the previous adventuring party can be found throughout the upper levels in different places as they meet their demise. I won't go into too much detail about the adventure itself, but will note that the primary monsters in this dungeon are oozes, with a golem, ghost, ratlings and some cursed dwarven lords making up the rest, in addition to Sedeen, the Faceless Demon Ooze. The dungeon itself is relatively small -- which I actually like, as I've gotten a bit tired of enormous megadungeons -- but there are a couple opportunities for the DM to expand it beyond its current borders.

Defeating Sedeen is not enough to prevent the oozes from eventually making their way up to the surface, so the players should have to come up with a way to end the ooze threat, or they might jsut assume that defeating Sedeen is enough to end the threat, leave town and then receive news that all is still not well in Dalentown.

The Appendix lists a couple of unique magical items and the stats of all the monsters encountered in the book, with a brief listing of their abilities, which is nice. The second section of Appendix gives some options for placing specific books within the dwarven library and presents 20 different tomes that can be found, some harmful and some beneficial. I'm a big fan of handing out books as treasure, especially those that can have game benefits down the road (for research or whatever).

Overall it is a solid adventure, but I feel that it could benefit by including more material. Not by increasing the size of the dungeon, but by fleshing out Dalentown and the surroundings a bit more, and Sedeen herself. Her long-term plan is somewhat limited in scope -- she's driven by vengeance against the dwarves who slew her and wants to unleash a plague of oozes upon the surface world, but that's about it. She feels kind of shallow and undeveloped as a rather potent demon, and I think could use some work to expand on. She is explicitly given the ability to speak through oozes, and we're told that she will mock and rage at the adventurers through her jellied mouthpieces, which seems rather petty and shallow to me. Mabe it is meant to be that way? I would much rather have her silent and inscrutable, with the only clues the adventurers recieve to her presence is the strangely intelligent behavior of the oozes they face, as the seemingly mindless creatures act with cunning and guile far beyond what is expected.

One of the things I like about this adventure, though, is that it can be utilized in different ways; it could be run as is, or it could be run as an isolated dungeon, sealed off from the rest of the world that the adventurers encounter during their travels: at the back end of the cavernous chamber you discover a locked door of what looks to be dwarven manufacture, locked and untouched for centuries. Runes above the door warn in dwarfish to beware the Magician's Folly!