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Jonathan Ely
Mini-Dungeon #019: The Goblin Warren
For 4 Characters of Level 1
Many centuries ago, the quasit known as Viletongue was summoned from the Abyss to assist his summoner in attaining magical knowledge beyond his understanding. Deliberately tricked by Viletongue, the magic failed his master at a key moment; he was immolated on the spot. Now free to pursue his own goals outside of the Abyss, Viletongue immediately began corrupting other greedy souls, tempting them into perversion and damnation. Finally identified as the creature behind the corruption of several well-considered magelings and apprentices, the velvety-tongued quasit was eventually captured and imprisoned in this hidden complex by a
group of ascetic clerics known as The Custodians.
Over the next five decades, Viletongue took great delight in attempting to corrupt the clerics into turning on each other (whilst secretly hoping that one may release him). Finally, he managed to break the mind of one of the Custodians with honeyed words, convincing him to murder the remaining members of his order before taking his own life.
Never freed, Viletongue waited and plotted in the gloom, until a warparty of goblins stumbled upon this complex. Taking shelter with their goblin dogs in this miserable complex, Viletongue delighted in his new company and has begun to whisper suggestions to Grom Hellscream, the leader of the warparty. Implanting ideas into Grom’s limited imagination, the warparty has already had a number of local successes, and his reputation is rising. As such, he and his warparty now warrant a bounty for their elimination or dispersal – enough for local adventurers to seek them out.
5E Mini-Dungeons are single page, double sided adventures for 5th Edition which are setting agnostic and are easily inserted anywhere in your campaign.
$1.99
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An Endzeitgeist.com review
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. Unlike most 5E Mini-Dungeons, this one does not come with VTT-maps or player-friendly iterations, which is a bit of a bummer.
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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..
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Still here?
All right!
Situated amidst a barrow thought to be curse, the quasit Viletongue has had a good run – what demon doesn’t delight in driving mortal priests mad and have them kill one another? Alack and alas, today, he is still imprisoned, though he has found new ears to whisper in – those of goblins. Bilemaw the Impaler (stats as a bandit captain – nice reskin) and his warparty, complete with worgs, has since moved in and followed the quasit. The PCs, sent to eradicate the goblins, may actually do the crafty outsider a favor by dealing with some traps – a desecrated shrine housed a mechanism that ironically makes it harder for the demon to escape. So yeah, the PCs may unintentionally unleash a pretty nasty beast…
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no significant hiccups. Layout adheres to a nice 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, but there is no key-less version of the map to print out and hand to your players. Stats, as mentioned above, obviously are hyperlinked to the SRD.
I wasn’t looking forward to Jonathan Ely’s Goblin Warrens, mainly due to hating the exceedingly generic hobgoblin lair. With an interesting shape and set-up, traps thrown in the mix and a background story as well as things to do beyond “kill everything”, this one is a proof of an author who is coming into his game – seeing how limited the space allotted is, I was pretty impressed by the level of detail provided and implied and firmly believe that a capable GM can make this warren rather memorable, in spite of the classic themes. Conversion-wise, we actually have a few skills, some nice environments and traps and a nice translation of the quasit’s motivation. Kyle Crider’s conversion is solid and retains the flavor of the original.
Now, sure, this does not reinvent the wheel, but is has fun ideas and deserves a rating as a good mini-dungeon, scoring a final verdict of 4 stars.
Endzeitgeist out.