This is the set-up for Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death, the seventh scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed by Harley Stroh for a group of six to ten Fourth Level Player Characters, this is a swords & sorcery-style city-based adventure that takes place in Punjar, a city in the land of Aéreth, which previously appeared in earlier iterations of Dungeon Crawl Classics scenarios, mostly recently, Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex. Where that scenario dealt with one aspect death in the world of Aéreth, Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death deals with the other, so in some ways, it might be seen as a companion piece to Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex. Consequently, it does suffer from the same issue as Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex, and that is that the lack of information about Punjar readily available. Fortunately, the scenario does include some knowledge—common and uncommon—that the Player Characters might know, ranging from what serfs, peasants, and common freemen know to what priests, the nobility, and sages know. This at least, should provide the players and their characters with the basics. Also provided is another hook to get the Player Characters if they have not lost a companion to death and want to see him returned to the land of the living. This is a job offer by a pampered son of a merchant lord for the Player Characters to steal back his lover. Now, of course, as the scenario makes clear, Dungeon Crawl Classics is not a roleplaying game that has much truck with the dead coming back to life and even lacks the equivalent of a Raise Dead spell. So, a scenario for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game which does deal with the Player Characters bringing someone back from the dead has at least to be some different, if not something special, and definitely not to be taken lightly.
The quest consists of three acts. In the first, the Player Characters pay a visit to the Witch of Saulim, a seemingly mad old crone who will perform a reading for them using her tarot-like deck of cards, plaques of Thoth-Ruin. These predications both provide a course of action for the Player Characters and the direction of the scenario’s plot. The reading boils down to four cards—all nicely done as full-colour handouts that the Judge can lay out before her players—of which the Witch of Saulim informs them they must choose one. For the players there is no wrong choice. Whichever card they decide on, their characters gain an immediate blessing that lasts the whole of the adventure and also grants a permanent bonus if they survive. In the second act, the Player Characters undertakes the quest’s first task proper. This is to break or sneak into the Temple of the Moon and from there steal the cult’s most sacred relic, the Argent Falx. This is a legendary weapon said to be capable of cutting the chains of death. Stealing this is no easy task as the sword only manifests at the culmination of a ceremony held on the night of the full moon and so the players and their characters have to be both timely and clever if they are to carry of the heist. Staged in the great pyramid Temple of the Moon, this has an epic if sinister feel and once the Player Characters pull the heist off, they will have greatly enhanced their reputations in some quarters. If, however, the Player Characters are careless and leave clues behind as to their identities, the Temple of the Moon will send thief takers after them to capture them and bring them back to the temple for retribution!
The third is where the scenario crosses over with Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex as the Player Characters descend into the Charnel Pits below Punjar’s streets. This is a place of foul unreality in which a combination of desire, madness, and revenge have gummed up the works, preventing hundreds of souls from crossing over into the lands of the dead, suffusing the house with ghosts and other undead. There is a tragedy at the heart of this act, one whose groundwork is laid at its start, that perceptive players and their characters can use to their advantage, but to do so, they must pick their way past a perverse bureaucracy and a Masque of the Red-like banquet for the undead. If the Temple of the Moon is ancient in its feel, then the Charnel Pits have a gothic tone of death and decay. Lastly, once the Player Characters have overcome the impasse prevents the dead from passing on, they can, by following in their footsteps and enter the Realms of the Dead. In gloriously classic fashion, here the Player Characters have to play a game of cards with Death’s concubine and vicereine (and if they dare it, even with Death himself), gambling with their souls for the return of their friend (or the mistress of the merchant lord’s son). The game makes use of the cards used earlier in the scenario in the Witch of Saulim’s reading. It is a great ending to the scenario.
Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death is a tough adventure—well, the Player Characters are going up against Death—and it may be too tough for Third Level Player Characters. Like the earlier Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex, it does feel as if it would be suitable addition to a campaign set in the city of Lankhmar as detailed in the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar Boxed Set, though unlike Dungeon Crawl Classics #70: Jewels of the Carnifex, it is not directly inspired by the tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Again though, being designed for Third Level Player Characters for standard Dungeon Crawl Classics play, it is probably too tough an adventure, given the comparitive lack of healing and magic in Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar, for similar Level Player Characters, but adjust that and the Judge will have a fine addition to her campaign. That aside, whether the Judge decides to set it in the city of Lankhmar or not, it is still a great Swords & Sorcery-style scenario.
In addition to the main adventure, Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death also includes a second adventure, ‘The Abbot of the Woods’, also by Harley Stroh. This is a mini-adventure for a party of five to eight Player Characters of First to Third Level in which they follow the legend of the Abbott’s Hoard, which tells of a high priest who led his congregation into the wilderness in search of a life free of vice and sin and who took with him much in way of treasure and relics. There are also whispers of heresy and rumours of the priest’s true aims, so more than enough to attract the Player Characters. In fact, it turns out that both whispers and rumours are true, for like many a villain in fantasy roleplaying playing, he sought out a way to live beyond his years and stave off death. What the Player Characters discover is a giant reliquary which contains both the treasures that the priest brought with him and the various parts of the priest that live on immortal. As the Player Characters investigate and loot, they quickly unleash him enabling him to take control of the dungeon and turn it against them. It is a really entertaining twist on immortal evil and mad NPCs and dungeons as the enemy, though slightly too tough an adventure, especially for Player Characters of First Level. They are recommended as being accompanied by a ready supply of Zero Level NPCs ready to step up in case of Player Characters death, which suggests that the scenario is not quite suitable for player Characters of First Level. Nevertheless, ‘The Abbot of the Woods’ is an entertaining dungeon, which with its theme of immortality could carry on the theme of death from the main scenario in the book.
Physically, Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death is well done. The scenario is decently written and the artwork is overall good as is the cartography.
Dungeon Crawl Classics #74: Blades Against Death takes what is almost a formality in some Dungeons & Dragons-style games and turns it into an adventure. In other words, instead of simply casting Resurrection to restore a Player Character to life, the other Player Characters have to go and rescue him from Death! And if they manage to do so, not only will they have had a memorable adventure, then they will also have cemented party comradeship. This is definitely a scenario that works better if the Player Characters have to rescue one of their own number, rather than doing it for an NPC because in the case the latter, the stakes are simply not as high. That said, what the player of the dead character who is being rescued is doing in the meantime is left for the Judge to address. In whatever way the scenario is run, it provides a great mix of combat, stealth, and roleplaying encounters.
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