In the distant past, the ancestors of the reclusive kabandha made a bargain with some unknown entity or power to grant their people long lives in exchange for agreeing to serve as wardens of the hidden places of the world, such as the confluences of ley lines and other sites of mysterious power. Kabandhas have kept this pact through the millennia, and today they serve as tactically minded guardians with great longevity.
As the PCs pass through a heavily wooded region, far removed from any major community, they come across the badly injured Thurgrimm Eyelord slumped under a tree. Weakly requesting their help, the softly spoken kabandhas explains that his clan were ambushed, and their ancient home is being desecrated by the foul cyclops Gordok Wyrmbreaker and his retinue of ogres. If thePCs can drive off the invaders whilst their forces are depleted, and return Thurgrimm to his sacred home, they are well-rewarded.
Mini-Dungeons are single page, double sided adventures for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game which are setting agnostic and are easily inserted anywhere in your campaign.
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This pdf clocks in at 2 pages and is a mini-dungeon. This means we get 2 pages content, including a solid map and all item/monster-stats hyperlinked and thus, absent from the pdf, with only deviations from the statblocks being noted for the GM. Oh, and the series now comes in an archive that also contains...*drumroll* a .tif-version of the map! Yeah, that's pretty amazing
Since this product line's goal is providing short diversions, side-quest dungeons etc., I will not expect mind-shattering revelations, massive plots or particularly smart or detailed depictions, instead tackling the line for what it is. Got that? Great!
This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion.
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In the middle of the wilderness, the PCs come upon a kabandha - badly wounded, he relays the tale of his tribe being subject to the attack of an evil cyclops and his retinue of ogres. Thus, it falls to the PCs to find the home of the reclusive kabandhas and stop the desecration of this place. From a vine-tangled circle of standing stone on the surface, the PCs will have to open heavy portals towards the small complex and deal with the adversaries within, while gaining some nice insights into kabandha culture: A marut hero depicted, a hall devoted to truth-finding and the eggs (and future) of these beings can be found within - provided the PCs survive the ogres and the deadly cyclops, that is.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to a beautiful 2-column full-color standard and the pdf comes sans bookmarks, but needs none at this length. Cartography is full color and surprisingly good for such an inexpensive pdf. The .tif version included here, which you can easily cut up and hand out to the players as they progress is a huge bonus. The pdf does sport one nice piece of original full-color art - kudos!
Jonathan Ely's exploration of this complex takes a cool, often-neglected critter and adds a bit of cultural dimension to it; for that, I do like the pdf. Similarly, the flavor of the complex is nice and clever PCs can employ the stone circle outside to level the playing field a bit. At the same time, the module does not have that much going on for it beyond the flavorful tidbits and combat - no social skills, no traps or the like. This does not make the module bad, mind you...but compared to other mini-dungeons, it does render it more straight-forward and less versatile. My final verdict will hence clock in at 3.5 stars, rounded up due to in dubio pro reo.
(based on 1 rating)