Adventure Site Contest: Glen of Shrikes (Ebony Coast Hex 45.26)

​Written by Giant Goose.
AD&D, Mid-high level?
Forested hill hex.
  The Fenevian Forest, of which this is but a small cut of, was once the seat of an Elven empire. The elves turned inwards, focused on fell magics, and were cut down by ascendant men four centuries past. Some claim the Elven cities were built atop older, stranger races. Their baleful influence and that of vengeful Elven magi has left these woods chaos-weft.
  What is better than an adventure site to place in a hex? How about a whole hex to place in your hexcrawl. That’s the theory put forth by Giant Goose with the Glen of Shrikes, which details not just one adventure site but instead breaks out seven sites within a 6-mile hex, with a lot of backstory suggested by the keys and setup…there are fallen evil elven psionic sages, seductive werewolves, magic-item-using deer men, psionic lolwut-meme pears, a vast ancient obelisk surrounded by evil moth-sized corvids entombing precursor giants who necrophagically grant psi powers, and of course giant shrikes. It’s…a lot, needless to say, genuinely impressive to have it all fit within two pages. Makes for a hard evaluation, though. 
  Despite the density, the adventure looks neither scrunched nor splinched, its clean two-column text organized into the reasonable sequence of overview-> random encounters-> faction motivations-> visibility-> hex key-> obelisk key-> bestiary. I’m fond of the bold monsters and italic treasures style found within the keys, makes things extremely clear. Prose is about as economical as possible, but it doesn’t flatly avoid adjectives and sensory language, there’s some decent depth here. It’s a surprisingly textured reading experience.
   …which unfortunately is not a compliment that can be given to the maps. You knew there had to be a catch somewhere, right? The big hex is subdivided into smaller 1-mile hexes where the seven main features are called out (plus, amusingly, a star that says “place monster lair here”). Geography within the hilly hex is not particularly complex, annoyingly the feature most likely to be missed by parties is probably the titular glen of that giant shrike. The two hex features that get sub-maps are the aforementioned obelisk and a ruined thorp, but the maps are so simple as to be unneeded; I believe I can picture three linear levels in an obelisk or four houses next to each other without the map. That’s not a problem for a hex exploration, just noting that they don’t add much.
  That hex exploration though? Potentially a great time. Although also a highly, highly weird time…I don’t know how to best convey the encounters without just quoting every one, but I think the druid guy is probably a good example. Near the northeastern edge of the hex there’s a sod house with a thirty-foot pear tree next to it; 50% of the time the hermit here (who’s a druid 7/sage multiclass) is wildshaped into a porcupine up in the pear tree. Giant psionic pears with laughing mouths orbit said trees, very cheerful, dangerous to attack but not hostile. The filthy druid guy wants to kill the hex’s elf population and to end the chaos taint to the area (kill a precursor giant in the bottom of the obelisk). He’s also decently loaded with magic items and is a complete coward. What do you do with that? Well, it’s organic, none of that is explicitly a quest, but there’s definitely stuff to reward players with if they feel like it, or on the other hand if they want to have a toked-up weirdo acid trip of a fight they can just kill the guy and take his stuff (and the teeth of the pears, it’s a long story). Hope you don’t mind quickly figuring out the prepared spells of a level 7 druid, because those aren’t in the text. Everything is like this, very interesting, ripe with gameplay potential, but very slightly underbaked.
  Rewards are all over the place but tend to be nicely commensurate with risks; treasures run the gamut from coins in a purse for a skewered shrike victim, to magical weapons from werewolf victims inside of a tainted fountain, to the combat gear of enemies in straight-up brawls. Nontraditional rewards are excellent, from purified water out of the fountain granting +1 hp and WIS to the preserved bodies of the precursor beings able to be eaten for massive psionic power and sudden alignment shift. A king’s ransom in magical booty is available in this hex, with just a few murders in the way of it all being the players’ very own.
  This is not going to be easy to place in a map willy-nilly. Sure, forested hill hexes are a dime a dozen but there’s a very specific geography to match. More than that, there’s a crapton of settings assumptions being made by module that might make it hard to fit…elves being chaotic and a little evil actually fits a lot, and many settings have precursor races, but psi-pears? Dire shrikes? Calygraunts? (Stags with man-hands that can activate magic stuff remotely) It’s a lot of baggage to bring to the table, requiring either seeding or adaption. What’s here is good enough to be worth the effort, I deem, but it’s definitely going to be an effort. 
Other reviews:
​EOTB
Owen E

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