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Beware of beautiful ladies approaching you in inns… or at least, expect spectacular adventure to follow! This lady seeks help in retrieving her inheritance, secured by her late husband in a dungeon under their house, the secrets of which he took to his grave. Needless to say, all is not precisely what it seems, and characters who take up this challenge will have to contend with two rival gangs of thieves as well as the perils of the dungeon itself.

The adventure provides characters with challenges both mental and physical, as before dealing with the contents of the dungeon they need to figure out how to get in! Interaction with various people, most of whom are not quite what they claim to be, provides scope for role-playing as well. Astute characters will ask around even before entering the villa, and talk to those they encounter within.

The adventure is presented in two sections: Events and Locations. Events can happen in any order, and each has set conditions which have to be met before they occur. Locations describe the places the characters may visit, and detail what happens when they get there. Hence it will be wise to read through the entire scenario in advance so that you are clear on where and when the various components of the adventure take place. Whilst no adventure survives contact with players, both Events and Locations entries are replete with suitable responses to likely character actions to aid you in coping with whatever your players throw at you. The NPCs are also well-detailed, and any who survive could easily be re-used.

As a bonus, there’s a beautifully-detailed villa suitable for a minor noble which could be repurposed after you’ve run this adventure, or if your characters ignore beautiful women approaching them in inns! As well as conventional plans, you also get an isometric view of the villa and battlemap-scale layouts of a few key locations.

Overall, this is very nicely done and well-presented, and the conversion to the Pathfinder RPG has been done with skill. One or two clumsy turns of phrase betray the fact that the author is not writing in his native tongue, but neither they nor the single typo detract from a neat adventure to occupy an evening when your characters thought they could sit back and relax over a drink!

Review by Megan Robertson

Tags | dark-fantasy, pathfinder