This is the set-up for Against the Faerie Queene: A Celtic Campaign for Legends of Avallen & 5E Queene, a campaign for Legends of Avallen: A Tabletop RPG Inspired by Celtic Mythology in Roman Britain. Published by Adder Stone Games, Legends of Avallen is not, despite it inspirations, a roleplaying game about the conflict between the invaders and the invaded. Rather, it is a roleplaying game about two cultures attempting to keep the land and its people safe, protect it from incursions from the Otherworld, and about men and women who grow beyond their ordinary lives to become heroes and forge legends that the bards will sing of in tales down the ages. Against the Faerie Queene is the first campaign for it, published following a successful Kickstarter campaign. The campaign not only uses the card-driven mechanics of Legends of Avallen, as its subtitle suggests, it gives stats compatible with ‘5E’ or Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, opening up the world of Avallen to devotees of that game system. However, in opening up Legends of Avallen to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, what Against the Faerie Queene does is provide a lot more than just a simple campaign.
Against the Faerie Queene begins with an introduction to the setting of Avallen, its history and its peoples, along with a map. The latter consists of the native Vallic, divided between five clans, cattle-herders, charioteers, and blacksmiths, renowned for their song and poetry, and the Raxians, invaders from the Ataraxian Empire, known for their architecture, structured society and military, and application of logic and reason to magic. All five Clans are detailed through their legends and songs, before Against the Faerie Queene presents five new Legendary Paths linked to the roleplaying game’s professions.
The Automaficer is an Alchemist or a Crafter who constructs an Automaton which can be used to fight or pass messages or even be piloted in combat. The Enwyr is a Bard or Tamer who studies the knowledge and use of true names, pulling at the Threads of reality to discover them and then use them to place someone at an advantage or disadvantage, force them to speak truthfully or accept the Enwyr’s lies, to change into an inanimate form, to summon someone temporarily, and so on. The Faceless is a Thief or Scavenger who is able to change his face and body. The Paragon, either a Priest or Socialite, champions an ideal and can make allies out of enemies. Beginning as either a Scribe or Merchant, the Philosopher learns to change the world through words, whether this is to remake a failed check to spot, learn, or uncover something, to set someone up to succeed with enlightening advice or fail through inscrutable paradoxes, and so on. All of these have Legendary trials which the Player Character must undergo or achieve to grow into the Legendary Path and gain the abilities that each grants.
Against the Faerie Queene does not give any new Classes for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Instead, it adapts the five Legendary Paths given in the supplement as well as those in Legends of Avallen into archetypes. Thus, the Automaficer is an Artificer archetype, the Enwyr a Monk archetype, the Faceless a Rogue archetype, the Paragon a Paladin archetype, and the Philosopher a Cleric archetype. For the Barbarian, there is the Gladiator Primal Path, the Fili is a Bardic College for the Bard, the Druid enters the Circle of Oak, the Fighter becomes a Primus, and so on. Effectively, there is an archetype for each Class in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, sometimes more than one, and although a player does not have to pick one of the archetypes for his character provided in Against the Faerie Queene, doing adds to the flavour and feel of the setting. One other difference between most worlds for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition and Legends of Avallen is that the latter is a Human world. Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes are not unknown, but they reside in the Otherworld and thus deep into the setting. In addition, Against the Faerie Queene provides rules for Parleys, scenes where the Player Characters try to persuade others to some course of action or support in spite of their objections; the use of Fate Cards to represent risk and the passage of time; and entertainingly, ability tells for big monsters, giving a sign that a boss monster is about to unleash a devastating attack which will affect all of the Player Characters and thus the chance for them to prepare or react. Part of the campaign in Against the Faerie Queene involves travel, so there are rules for journeys as well, these providing different roles for the Player Characters to fulfil and challenges being created by drawing cards from the Fate Deck. These journey rules are similar to those seen in other fantasy roleplaying games. Overall, the adaptation of Legends of Avallen to Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition is solid and should provide a Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition game with plenty of interesting options ready for the campaign Against the Faerie Queene.
Against the Faerie Queene: A Celtic Campaign for Legends of Avallen & 5E is designed to take Player Characters from Third Level to Tenth level, in both Legends of Avallen and Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. (Parts one, two, and three—‘Caer on the Borderlands’—of the campaign are available to download for free, starting here, but are not required to play through the campaign.) The campaign is divided in five acts and each part is divided into three branches. However, calling them branches is a misnomer since what they are not branches in the sense that they have different or alternate storylines that the Player Characters could follow. Instead, they are more like chapters, with the first chapter setting the situation for the act, the middle chapter containing the main events, and the third chapter dealing with the climax and its consequences. However, not all of the acts are structured like this, as will be explained below. In addition, although the first act introduces and sets up the campaign, and the fifth act brings it to a climax, the middle three acts can be played in any order. This can be a problem for the Game Master as one act is far more complex than the others.
In the first act, ‘The Hunt’, the Player Characters come to the Pen Baedd forest to hunt down Ysgithyrwyn, a vile, otherworldly boar that attacked the royal wedding of the daughter of Daedica the Brenin, one of the chieftains of the five Vallic clans. They quickly discover that not only are they not the only ones hunting Ysgithyrwyn, but that the creature is also unkillable. They will be given information as to what they need to gather in terms of magic to defeat the beast and to cure the wounds that they may have suffered in facing it the first time. This requires a number of sub-quests to be fulfilled and in addition to this, there are side-quests which will grant the Player Characters boons that may come in handy later on in the campaign. ‘The Hunt’ has a mythic earthiness to it, played out across a land scarred by the Otherworldly darkness of Ysgithyrwyn’s rampages, but leavened by encounters with often playful, even whimsical Otherworldly figures. Also appearing in this early part of the campaign are its villains, the Faerie Queene of the title and her son, though their villainy is not yet apparent. The son appears as a fellow hunter and the Faerie Queene as herself rather than his mother to thank the Player Characters for their efforts. Throughout this act, the Player Characters are advised by the blue-tattooed Myrddin the Wild, and here at the end, he tells them that he suspects the Faerie Queene to be a villain behind the release of Ysgithyrwyn and asks them to investigate her activities further. The Player Character will also be approached to visit other parts of Avallen and in doing so, find other signs of the Faerie Queene’s activities.
As the title of the second act suggests, ‘The Heist’ is a complete change of pace and tone. The second act takes the Player Characters to Raxian city of Vallonium, the capital of the Ataraxian Empire’s presence on Avallen. Here Commius the Collector, a wealthy merchant who has a love of both Vallic and Raxian culture, and he asks the Player Characters to steal an important Pen Levi idol said to be linked to the Vallic god of death. Currently, it is in the possession of Fulvia Pilius, the Princeps Collegium Commercia, head of the shipping guild in the port city. She plans to host a viewing party in five days and then ship it to Ataraxia as a gift to the Twin Empresses. So, the Player Characters have five days in which to plan and carry out the eponymous heist, but before that they have to get into the city itself. The problem is their weapons—which are banned in Vallonium unless they are commercial items. Which can be taxed! So, the Player Characters had either better pay up or find another way in and be very careful about displaying their weapons. As well as finding a way to get into the domus of Fulvia Pilius, the Player Characters will get mixed up in the city’s gang politics and try their very best to avoid any imperial entanglements. The act includes details on what the city guard will do to the Player Characters if they are caught committing any crime and it is not good. Overall, ‘The Heist’ is typical of its scenario type, but decently done and gives the Player Characters plenty of leeway in how they carry it out.
The third act again switches tone and style, but also ramps up the complexity. ‘The Horror’ is set on the island of Arainn, one of the islands belonging to the mysterious Pen Afanc clan, perhaps best known for the highly imaginative masks that its members wear. Once the Player Characters get to islands, which lie in the north-east of Avallen, and that is a challenge in itself, they find themselves trapped, waking up at the start of the same day again and again. The islands have been beset by a curse, which the Player Characters will need to find the curse and then find a way of breaking it. Although they do not know it, the Player Characters also have a time limit before the curse takes full effect. There is a lot going on in this scenario, almost too much and certainly a great deal of information that the Game Master has to relay to her players so that they can understand it and have their characters act. Consequently, this is the hardest of the five acts in Against the Faerie Queene for the Game Master to prepare and run. To that end, a better breakdown of the act’s set-up, what the Player Characters have to do to break the curse, and where they have to go would have been useful. Once the Game Master does grasp what is going on, then this is a horrific treatment of the classic time loop, infused with Celtic mythology. It has some great scenes too, such as when the Player Characters have to descend ‘Beneath the Waves’ to enter the Otherworld version of Pen Afanc and challenge mirror versions of the NPCs they have already encountered on dry land.
The penultimate act in Against the Faerie Queene is ‘The Games’. After the events of ‘The Hunt’, Brenin Ena of the Pen Draig, Avallen’s most famous clan, invites the Player Characters to attend the Cabar Games. These are held annually to bring the clan’s tribes together, but it does not seem to be working this year. The Player Characters arrive late, but are quickly asked by Brenin Ena to attend a banquet and mix with the clan’s leading figures and perhaps determine whether tribes do all fully support the current regime. It is an excuse to have a party, play some games, and pick up on some politics before the action begins the next day. The Player Characters are expected to participate in the ‘Y Tair Tasg’, a triathlon race which combines chariot racing, a delve into a cave, and a fight with a monster back in the arena. The race around and out of the amphitheatre and up a mountain to the caves is handled as a series of complications generated by the Fate Cards before the Player Characters enter the caves in search of what turn out to be magical cabars that they will have to toss at the beasts in the arena to defeat them. Unfortunately, the friendly competition—primarily between the Player Characters and Peredur, the son of Brenin Ena and hunter the Player Characters encountered in the first act, who has recently returned to his family after going missing as a child—takes a darker tone, when those who had been preparing the prize for the winner of the Cabar Games are found dead and the prize missing. All evidence points to the Pen Gwyllgi, a rival borderlands clan being responsible, but is it? The Player Characters’ diplomatic and interpersonal skills are sorely tested to prevent an outbreak of hostilities. The games come to a climax with a battle to first blood between Peredur and his allies and the Player Characters and by the end of the act, the Player Characters should have confirmation as to who Peredur really is.
The last part of Against the Faerie Queene is ‘The Cairn’. The Player Characters are charged with tracking down signs of the Pen Gwyllgi and Faerie Queene’s activities in the swamps where she is said to make her home on the Borderlands. Following signs of a terrible battle between the Pen Levi and Pen Gwyllgi clans, the Player Characters can gain clues as to where to find the Faerie Queene from a Pen Gwyllgi prisoner held by Pen Levi survivors. These will point them to the entrance to the Ever Stranger’s Cairn on the Stranger’s Mound and enable them to access the Otherworld where the god of death has built his Cairn, which is as much prison as it is fortress. Again, gaining access, this time to the Otherworld via the Stranger’s Mound, is a challenging task, either involving answering a question with something learned earlier in the campaign or with a Player Character sacrificing himself. Fortunately, this is not as campaign ending as might be first thought. It is in keeping with the epic fantasy of the campaign and the Player Character does have a role within the Otherworld and if the Player Characters are successful in defeating the Faerie Queen, it is also perfectly in keeping with the campaign that the Player Character who sacrificed himself returns to the land of the living. Inside the Cairn—the nearest that the campaign has to a dungeon—the Player Characters will be faced with a series of puzzles to solve and traps to overcome in order to finally confront the Faerie Queene, her son Peredur, and even the object of her plans. This is an epic battle, but much more than a simple stand-up, knockdown fight, which brings the campaign to a rousing climax. The campaign ends with an otherworldly conclusion that is nicely judged in terms of how the NPCs react and decently rewards the Player Characters.
Physically, Against the Faerie Queene: A Celtic Campaign for Legends of Avallen & 5E is a fantastic looking book. The artwork is excellent, though it is used again and again throughout the book, and the individual acts are nicely colour-coded. However, the book does need an edit in places and the writing is not always as clear as it could, especially in some of the more complex parts of the campaign. The book does not have an index, unfortunately.
Against the Faerie Queene: A Celtic Campaign for Legends of Avallen & 5E is a solid supplement for Legends of Avallen, a decent introduction to the setting for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. The campaign is better, nicely showcasing the setting of Avallen and its different cultures, and giving the Game Master and her players the opportunity to both experience and save it from the dangers and wonders of the Otherworld in an epic storyline.
