GameMastery Encounter: Dark Elf Sanctum (OGL) Compleat Encounter

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In a darkened chamber deep below the sunlit world, a diabolical dark elf priestess weaves rhymes of magic over an ancient portal arch. What foul entity answers her summons, and what will happen when it emerges into the world of man? A Compleat Encounter, scalable to any level, featuring a dark elf priestess, a summoning arch, and an otherworldly monstrosity.

• Written by Mike Mearls
• Designed by Wayne Reynolds
• Sculpted by Neil McKenzie
• Cartography by Christopher West

Paizo Publishing's GameMastery™ Line is designed to help GMs run interesting games quickly and efficiently.
Compleat Encounters provide everything you need to run a single encounter:

  • 3 brilliantly sculpted, high-quality, 25mm-scale one-piece metal miniatures
  • 4 double-sided full-color 5"x8" minis-scale map cards
  • a detailed level-scalable microadventure with statistics compatible with the world’s most popular roleplaying game.

"Adventure Only" products include only the adventure and map cards, and do not contain the miniatures.


Miniatures painted by Stephen Radney-MacFarland.
(The product includes unpainted metal miniatures.)


Original sculpts for the miniatures.


Desktop wallpaper of the maps
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Desktop wallpaper of the concept artwork
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Desktop wallpaper of the painted minis
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Average product rating:

4.00/5 (based on 3 ratings)

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Pretty Forgettable, Apart from the Artwork

2/5

SPOILERS!

Dark Elf Sanctum was the first of Paizo's "Compleat Encounters" line of products, each of which includes three miniatures, four gridded cards that form an encounter map, an encounter key, and artwork and stats for some new NPCs, monsters, and magical items. From a name like Dark Elf Sanctum, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect with this one: drow! More specifically, the idea here is that the sanctum is that of a drow cleric named Sarthessa Zyltaris--she's pretty much a stock drow with cliched goals. Her sanctum is guarded by a much cooler monster called a Horned Demon that wears a special belt made from human faces that can cast spells separately while it's fighting. The set also features a new artifact called the Dread Portal of the Maw, but it's pretty much a plot device only as, once a year, it can send 500 evil outsiders someplace for an hour!

There's not much of a story here. Sarthessa plans to use the artifact to invade the surface world somehow, but her plan doesn't really make sense. I did use this adventure in a campaign. A few vague adventure hooks are included to lure the PCs to attacking her sanctum, but the encounters within are pretty basic, and the whole thing is forgettable. To me, the best part of the set is the artwork by Wayne Reynolds. My set didn't come with the actual miniatures, but the Horned Demon one looks great in the pictures. As for the map tiles, I couldn't really figure out how they were supposed to go together, and everything is too cramped to really have separate encounters. Overall, I'd have to call this one a miss.


Grand Lodge

I was intrigued by the idea of these mini-adventures and I would have probably bought one at Origins if they had been there, but since they weren't, I don't have any idea what they are like. Can anyone tell me how these adventures are??

Does anyone have any of them, and which one is the best do you think?

Thanks...

Jamie

Contributor

I just picked up The Vault of the Whispering Tyrant. You're looking at three minis and approximately a dozen cards. I described the Vault over on the thread about that product.

I don't have Sanctum yet, but since Mearls wrote it I'm sure it's full of devious evil. He has a certain Lovecraftian way about him.

They're worth the price, is all I can tell you. If you're not into miniatures, just grab the mini-adventure.

Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

I really liked the two I have picked up so far very nice maps and high quality miniatures with short scenarios of the quality we all expect of Paizo.

As an interesting crossover note some of the gear carried by the NPC's in the Encounter series have made appearances in the item cards. Which raises a question for me:

Does anyone have any ideas as to what the Horned Demon's belt should do after the PCs defeat the demon?

I don't want to give the players an extra sorcerer spell every round (as a free action) like the demon gets, nor do I want to deal with an evil intelligent item right now (my PCs are in the abyss in the middle of an AP) but I'd like to make use of the monster and the treasure card.

I'm thinking about having the souls trapped in it escape when the horned demon is slain. The belt would still be magical but more like some of the items in the Magic Item Compendium. Maybe like those items that use 1 or more charges and the charges refresh each day or have it function like a runestaff.

Any ideas?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Necroing the thread and comments fifteen years later with an Interesting Note: given the release timeframe (c. June-July 2007), I *believe* this was the first-ever release that contained what would, by turns, eventually become the Pathfinder Kalavakus (and is here just referred to as a "horned demon"). Obviously it's looking a bit more hunched-over here than what we think of Kalas today (who, especially as of Owlcat Wrath, are much more famous for standing ram-rod straight) but it's still very recognizably a Kalavakus, and from a time when Golarion and Pathfinder barely existed!

Paizo Employee Creative Director

5 people marked this as a favorite.
SpaceDrake wrote:
Necroing the thread and comments fifteen years later with an Interesting Note: given the release timeframe (c. June-July 2007), I *believe* this was the first-ever release that contained what would, by turns, eventually become the Pathfinder Kalavakus (and is here just referred to as a "horned demon"). Obviously it's looking a bit more hunched-over here than what we think of Kalas today (who, especially as of Owlcat Wrath, are much more famous for standing ram-rod straight) but it's still very recognizably a Kalavakus, and from a time when Golarion and Pathfinder barely existed!

Correctly identified!

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