Living Darkness Vol. 1: Legacy of the Shadow Princess

 Four(ish) adventures for levels many, by Matthew Austin\
​Written for Shadowdark
Ah, a good ole’ compilation. Been a minute since I’ve gotten one of these in my “to review” pile. This one’s a review copy sent by online friend Lord Matteus, including one that’s a modification/reprint of an itch.io module I bumped into a while ago. In this compilation, we’re looking at four adventures (okay, three and a smaller scenario/trap room) written over for over a hundred thirty pages. It’s…a lot. I don’t object to the plan here, but I do get a little nervous when I see high page-to-site ratios. Still, there’s some Art Stuff and Layout happening here, so it’s not heavy blocks of text. Let’s dive in.
First, a caveat. These are, by and large, horror adventures. I don’t usually go in for horror-focused adventures. Touches, sure, and I’m not particularly squeamish, but it’s not something that’s a core appeal to me. So, when I’m reviewing these adventures, it’s going to be primarily me looking for them as adventures qua adventures. I leave the judgement to how hard the horror hits to the LotFP fans and other such enthusiasts. Fortunately, all of these are legitimate locations to explore, so this lens should be fruitful.
Before going into adventures, the module does make a point to explain the elements of horror. Obviously given its Shadowdark there’s a strong recommendation to heavily use torch timers and the menace of darkness. The game master is also instructed to focus on depleting resources steadily, limiting agency naturalistically, and to give false hope before making the situation even worse. All of these are more module-design than game running, but the final bit of advice, to play up descriptions in lieu of shorthand…it’s not a zombie, it’s a rotting corpse, etc. All good advice/goals for the given set of objectives. It’s a short one-pager and then we’re off to the races…

 Adventure 1: The Haunting of Ashtonshire Keep
Probably the most traditional adventure, this one’s your classic “ruined keep haunted by dead witch” setup. In this case the witch was a baroness who’d sunk her claws into the noble and good Baron Ashton and got herself hanged for her troubles. As usual, the hanging didn’t quite take…now children are being enticed in dreams, mists and shadows arise, all good signs that more fightin’ is needed. The village nearby is given enough description to run as a base for expeditions along with a few clues about what’s going on if the players are sleuth types. Hooks are a good mix of “you’re noble”, “you’re hapless bumblers”, and more interestingly “lost knight” and “lost heirloom”. All fair, c’mon, it’s a ruin, let’s explore because otherwise we don’t have Shadowdark tonight.
Maps are solid. As is standard with realistic fortification maps, layout is pretty stolid and predictable, broken up by the fires’ destruction in some places. The two-story keep and dungeons beneath do have multiple linkages, which is good, and chimneys are also noted for climbing. Exploration of the site’s twenty-eight rooms should take up a good solid session, or maybe two if the players waste a lot of village time and need to retreat once or twice. It won’t be a highly pressured trip, at least…

    Because this is a dead ruin. You know what that means…undead and vermin as monsters. No interactive/intelligent creatures to talk with, which is correct for the atmosphere going with, but it means the gameplay can be somewhat languid. Despite the static nature of the location the fights are reasonably dynamic once an individual room gets wandered into. Random encounters aren’t monsters, it’s “witch is messing with us” effects for spooky portents, torch/morale effects, and at the top end a sudden witch appearance to attack for one round. Much anger to the players, but a good way to show the endboss early. The final confrontation happens if a noose is hung on a tree, which can stop the witch from respawning every single equinox. Nasty fight, but the real cost is the fact that the noose is also a valuable magic item.
I note with approval that unlike most horror adventures, this one is not treasured like a one-shot. This dungeon has legit treasure, both in cash (just remember to increase amounts if used in gp=XP systems) and in magic items. A righteous hammer is given at the outset, a magic shield can be found in the biggest-loot room, there’s the noose, the witch’s spellbook is a nice boon for chaotic witch characters or can be otherwise burned for XP. Solid mix and distribution.
Use in games will be campaign-dependent. I dig the map layout and I think the spooky ruin atmosphere is something I’d run with, the witch herself is a good fight-monster. The lower dungeon has relatively understated but still obvious theme of child torture/sacrifice, which ain’t a subject matter I host at my table. Easily elided, however, and if that’s your jam then that’s something to add to the horror. Good solid adventure site.  

 Adventure 2: Return of the White Wizard
So I’ve reviewed an old version of this one before; it’s a transmutation adventure themed around blobby-squick mutations. This version does a lot more in the initial setup, with a the titular White Wizard, having Returned, spreading mutation-effects among the locals, including the PCs if you want a really hooky darn hook. The mutation table is pretty gnarly, with some genuinely beneficial results but definitely averaging on the terrible. A 2d6 table, snake eyes means you die and boxcars means you become a possessed thrall. Yeah, that’s some motivation to go down the ol’ goop-hole. I’m using this table.
Before reaching the lair, there’s a lot going on with the hex its within. The local village is given a brief sketch, mostly boiling down to “this sucks, we’re all mutating”, but then you travel through a woodland with the local wildlife also full of mutations and some of the local points of interest quite interesting. The mutant couple is just kind of gross but I like the rival adventure party camped out and confused what to do with one of their number turned into a monster-mutant-thrall. Good method of building tension and showing stakes.

NOW we're in proper dungeon territory.

    The lair proper, a ruined two-story structure with two levels of dungeon underneath, has a simple but effective map. I like the teleporters making the uppermost story the default way into the belowground. It’s more linear than Ashtonshire Keep but there’s also a little more room in general, with enough nooks and crannies to make a satisfying two-session exploration by default…although a sufficiently panicked/determined party in a hurry to cure Dave’s dwarf might make it to the end in four hours. The cure is for the infection only by default, but kind GMs are told to let it undo mutations if the players hate ‘em.
This dungeon is most assuredly not a dead one. Random encounters are a whole gamut of custom mutant monsters (plus dire rats or gibbering mouthers, natch), plus plenty of nasty goop-beasts among the room keys. Traps are mostly in the “mess with the vat” style, making for an extremely hazardous environment. It’s a high level (well, by Shadowdark standards) adventure, that’s fine, your PCs are big boys. The final boss is once again Traxar the White Wizard, an evil bald bearded elf(!) loaded down with custom transmutation spells (and yes, his spellbook is available). He’s not an easy fight, and we’re in lich territory with him not being fully destroyed unless his clones and brain are destroyed along with his robes.
Oh yeah, the White Robes are back from the first edition. It was my favorite bit of the original and I think they’re my favorite once again…wearing the robes gives a huge set of bonuses, but each adventuring day there’s a Charisma check or the wearer starts turning into Traxar. Nice. The other treasure is a bit low on cash but good on magic items, there are some excellent weapons along with stuff like a master-crafted loom to make enchanted cloth and the spellbooks.
There are quite a few added transmutation spells here too. Most are in the “touch to make goopy” or buff/debuff type, but those are good. To replace the Shadowdark-standard wizard magic mishap table there’s a much nastier (and more flavorful) transmutation mishap table. Powerful magic around but again this is big-boy level.
Campaign integration on this one is pretty easy. It’s a hex troubled by a problem who happens to also own a ton of filthy lucre, we’re in every game’s happy spot. Content-wise, the gross stuff isn’t nearly as easy to sidestep as the dead kids were before, so groups comprised of 90’s kids traumatized by Nickelodeon programming might want to skip, but it’s otherwise a well-written adventure/site.  

Love the scale. Love the scope. 10/10 would loot again.

 Adventure 3: She (The Final Rehearsal)
So, how do you feel about Suspiria? If you’re most people, the answer is “what’s that?” If you’re a smaller number of people, then it’s “oh yeah, that’s the trippy 70’s movie, right?” If you’re the smaller number of people who answer “heck yeah” then I think this adventure is for you. That’s not to say its not broadly applicable, but it means we’re definitely in cult classic territory.
Speaking of cults, this is one of those. In particular this is a cult dedicated the She of the Eternal Spring, a demoness who oversees a ritual that drains youth from dancers for adherents to imbibe. This cult is designed to be a big campaign-spanning organization, complete with networks of various levels of eternally youthful patrons and artists. It’s an entire campaign plot, essentially, with enough details to run an urban 0-10 campaign with this as one of the main antagonist factions. Or, it can be more minor, even just the Academy of St. Hebe as the cult locus. There’s a unique Shadowdark class, the Warlock of She, who is all about being pretty and eating youth.
St. Hebe is a school of art run by these metaphorical vampires, and boy howdy it is big. Massive realistic two-story 19th-century building map, designed to be wandered through as guests, students, or sneak-thieves. Given scale and openness of the environment, full of living people, this is not a place to treat like a dungeon, it’s more of a setting.
As is most important with an open/social setting, St. Hebe’s inhabitants are the focus. The various teachers and headmistresses and such all supernaturally beautiful and youthful and evil, and the students are mostly victims, which leads to the actual adventure part…
The Final Rehearsal, which is set up as a 0th-level gauntlet where your player characters are prospective initiates or sacrificial victims. This is a social adventure, so there’s a whole subsystem dealing with favor points and earning benefits via performance or artistry while ideally the players figure out what’s going on. Gauntlet adventures are supposed to be highly lethal, so I dig that there’s a “you get sacrificed” failure state but its going to be a very complicated thing to run. Which is probably a plus if you want to be running a social campaign in an urban milieu, might as well toss you into the deep in.
If you want this kind of thing, this is exactly the best example of this kind of thing. If you’re just going to want to dungeon crawl, the big maps are nice but it’s not statted or looted ideally for that (frankly wasteful) use case.  

 Adventure 4: I Like You
This isn’t really a full adventure; this is an escape room. The setup is that this is a catastrophically negative result on the Shadowdark carousing table, where a demon grabs the party while drunk and they wake up in a Saw movie. It’s a tiny sub-dimension in Hell, just the size of a room, packed with pain-causing deathtraps. The puzzles are all pretty solid, the demon is enjoying the pain anytime a PC screws up, and if the players succeed they escape. It’s a very specific, very punishing, encounter/trap, which is what the module says. If you have multiple players who love puzzles, this is heaven for them. If you, as most of us, have a table where there One Puzzle Guy and everyone else wants to just go stab…maybe this is for 1-on-1 play. Or, just use the puzzles in other dungeons as parts of a greater whole. The demoness is statted and a decent fight.

​The whole compilation is hard to break down on simple star ratings, because as is so often the case with horror, it’s going to be up to you and your table how much you want. The horror can be genuinely horrific and moody if leaned in to, but it can also be pulled back, especially in the first couple of adventures. Everything is well-executed, and I think I’ll have use for pieces from every single one of them even as Not Particularly a Horror Guy, which you can take as an endorsement. It’s one heck of an accomplishment regarding its scale and ambition, and also an easy-to-parse module. Well done there.  

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