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
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.
(based on 3 ratings)
