This full-color pdf is 44 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement and 1 page back cover, leaving 40 pages for the first adventure set in Relistan, the campaign setting of Silver Crescent Publishing.

This being an adventure, the following review contains SPOILERS, so potential players beware!

Still here, all right, let's dive in!

This adventure goes an interesting route for a first adventure set in a campaign setting in the levels it targets, i.e. it is intended for 4-6 PCs level 5th - 7th. Relistan being a dark setting (in the literal sense, see my review of the campaign setting), the PCs are hired by the Illurian military (a handout is provided), with whom they are expected to have worked before as a kind of firefighters. The Illurian empire is a dominant force in Reilstan and necromancy is an integral part of the empire's culture, thus being perceived as anathema by their neighbors Valin. Valin is a nation led by druids and by lycanthropes, who are considered sacred to the nation's deity, being in turn perceived as abominations by the Illurians. I mentioned in my review of the setting, that I couldn't see these nations coexisting and lo! and behold, my pleas have been heard - This adventure sets the stage for some major upheavals in Relistan as there will be war between the nations!

The PCs, as a kind of covert-ops-team, has to deliver an artifact, the "Lycan's Bane" to the border in order to give the military an edge over their shape-changing adversaries. The problem is, though, that they'll have to hurry - in 2 weeks, there'll be war and thus they will have to cross-track through the necromantically-infused wastelands in order to be there on time. This adventure constituting a race against time, the DM is required to keep track of the time. In the wastelands, the PCs will encounter both a sufficiently hard ambush by poison-using Nightlings (savage Relistan halflings) and undead and there is also a (map-less) optional encounter with a bandit lord and his fellows. Once they pass the wastelands, they'll have to fight some lycanthropic covert agents and their wolves. Both encounters get stunningly detailed full-color maps with grids. After reaching their half-way point, the PCs can either end the adventure or bring the bane the whole way to the border fortress of Caer Gorinth.
Once the PCs reach the fortress, though, it has already been taken over by a Valinite squad, resulting in a potentially lethal ambush in the court of the small fortress. This encounter also gets its own battle-map and the fortress gets its own beautiful map. After the PCs defeat the ambush and the leaders of the strike-squad, they may yet save some prisoners and consider their foray a success.

The adventure also features appendices, offering stats for nightling hunters and shamans, Gavin Shorgan & his rogues and the Valinite soldiers. The nightlings and rogues get their own respective full-color-artworks. In another section, we get a 2-page narrative of a nightling and one of his hunts and a gazetteer-like, expanded section on Elvaril, the goddess of the Valinites, complete with holy celebrations and days. The final 4 pages feature 6 pregens, one of which is a summoner that comes with an eidolon stat-block. Nice.

Conclusion:

Editing has improved - though I noticed some minor typos, there are not many. I noticed no formatting glitches. Layout of this full-color adventure is beautiful, however, it adheres to a colored-borders-look, being not easy on the printer and unfortunately featuring no printer-friendly version. The pdf is bookmarked, but only in the most rudimentary sense, featuring a bookmark for the covers, the editorial (called pre-gens 1), the beginning of the adventure (called pre-gens 2) and the pre-gens (called pre-gens 3). My overall impression of this adventure is that it somewhat falls short of its own potential, both in execution and story-line.

Let me elaborate:
The artworks are stunning and beautiful and especially the encounter-maps rock.

However, we don't get blown-up versions for use with miniatures, which is a pity - their quality is high enough and their grids lend themselves to this. I also would have loved a key-less map of Caer Gorinth - being a military fortress, my PCs will definitely ask one of their employers at least for a sketch of the fortress and the map is nice enough to feature bigger versions. Secondly, there are some things that could have made the adventure MUCH MORE awesome - namely a better finale. Killing the Valinites and liberating the fortress felt anti-climactic to me - a minor siege or something similar would have gone a long way.

Another problem I see with the adventure is that not even a thought is given to the possibility of the PCs defecting to Valin's side or acting as a double-agents. If this had been taken into account, the adventure might have offered some cool political intrigue when talking to employers etc. - especially in a shades-of-grey-world like Reilstan, I think the possibility should have been taken into account. Beyond that, I don't like that no stats are given for the Lycan's Bane - it automatically reverses all Lycanthropes within 30 ft. back to their human form, but that's all we get to know about it. With this power, I can't really see why the artifact is that crucial to hold a fortress. What if the PCs want to sell the artifact themselves? There is not too much going on at the fortress, either - after the initial ambush and the boss fight, the fortress is rather empty and there is not much going on with regards to the finale.

My final gripe is that the pressure by the race against time does not really have any repercussions for being late, the fortress has fallen and even if the PCs are VERY late, there are no additional soldiers - a time-line of actions by Valinites at the border or their take-over of Caer Gorinth would have gone a long way there. The impending war with all its potential unfortunately remains a largely untapped backdrop in this module. That being, said, there's nothing truly wrong with this adventure, it's a rather average introduction to Relistan that hopefully culminates in more exciting adventures. It's just a pity that this adventure, with slightly more freedom/the implementation of some twists, blown-up maps and a better finale, could have been a plain awesome 5-star-romp. However, with my points of criticism and at the rather steep price of $9.99 for the amount of content provided, I'll settle for a final verdict of

[EDIT]

3 stars due to the upgrade for d20 pro map support on the official homepage.