Review: Arawn's Challenge
An underworld adventure for when you TPK
You find yourself in the land of the dead, fighting your way back to the world of the living. Bargain with the Ambassador to the 18 courts of Hell, face the judges of the dead, battle Garan the Fallen and riddle with the skeletal sphinx, and only then will you be worthy of Arawn's Challenge.
This is a 3rd-level adventure meant for letting the PCs escape back to the world of the living after a TPK. The adventure itself is 28 pages long, but appendices full of magic items, random encounter, spells, a “how’d you die” table for one-shots, thirteen pre-gen characters, and more bring the page count up to 58-pages (including the covers). I’ll also note that Vance Games has published some other adventures, but this seems to be their most polished piece.
I ran this adventure as a one-shot when my group TPK’d in the Shudder Mountains. However, this adventure is not built to be a single session adventure so I haI didn’t want to spend more than a single session on it, I cut down some rooms. But it still barely fit. For those who’d want the edited maps for that, I’ve include them after the adventure overview.
Overview
The adventure starts by providing some pretty cool rules for dead adventurers. There’s examples given for added clarity, but my players really dug these.
The actual adventure begins with the players at a crossroads. Do they walk towards the white light or explore a dark tunnel? If the do the former, their story is over. They accepted their death. If not, adventure awaits. They need to find a way out of the underworld. As written, its a little unclear as to how to do that, but they need to collect obols to pay Charon the boatman. He’ll take them across the river Lethe to an area of the underworld that’s a little closer to the mortal realms. There, the PCs can find a way out.
To help establish a clear goal, I moved the Ambassador from the Eighteen Courts of Hell up to the front of the adventure. He’s a lawful devil who will trade obols for the PCs souls. There’s no double-crossing here. He’ll patiently wait for them to die before claiming there souls and seems to be very polite. But don’t try to fight him or his bodyguards. They’re absolute beasts.
Most of the adventure is rooms that feel very disconnected from one another. There seems to be lore and myth taken from a great variety of cultures and reworked to fit a fantasy adventure. This gives the adventure a bit of a gonzo or funhouse type feel. But if that’s fun for you and your group, then you’ll probably love it.
One of my favorite rooms is the Hall of Doors. It’s essentially a 1d30 table with lots of crazy things. The result that my players got was “An endless plain of mist is seen through this doorway. Four gods carry a black throne in the distance, but are too far away and too quick to interact with the adventurers. Curious travelers could easily become lost in such a vast expanse.” I improvised off of that and the players shut the door as quickly as possible.
Other favorites would be Corridor of Coffins where there’s 12 unique coffins for the PCs to interact with. They can find obols inside, but they may also find monsters, or things that are just plain creepy. I also really enjoy the Hall of Garan The Fallen. He’s a titanic skeleton who the PCs must negotiate with if they want to pass by. He is one tough, but manageable fight if they want to try that method though.
After the PCs pay Charon his fee (they do not want to start a fight with him), they arrive at a dance party! The dead frolic under the Black Sun, a powerful source of death magic. Not only that, the PC face danger from both the party goers who try to sap their energy so that the party keeps going. The Black Sun is possibly something that wizards can call upon after they return to the world of the living, but it carries great danger with it. Great stuff.
My favorite rooms from here on out are the Feast of the Dead and the Rulers of the Dead. I always love an opportunity for the PCs to eat something gross. Most of the feast food is terrible but a few items are actually beneficial. Meanwhile, the rulers of the dead sit in silence, beckoning a PC to sit upon the ninth throne and take the crown. If someone does so, they become the Ninth Ruler of the Dead, which grants them great power but also responsibility.
There’s a few exits that the PCs can take in order to escape the underworld. And they do feel distinct. One involves sneaking (or, if that fails, fighting) passed Cerebus. Another involves playing a Mesoamerican style ball game for your souls. Another involves simply choosing the correct “portal”. Succeed and the PCs are back in the land of the living! But it's left to the judge where and when they arrive. Is it moments after their death? Or years?
Making It A One-Shot
The first step was identifying which rooms felt important within the context of the adventure. This was pure preference, but I tried to rearrange them so in a way that would make sense and still be true to the adventure. I used Google Sheets to organize this. The green cells are “key rooms” and the blue cells are “hallway” rooms, and the light red cell is where the PCs begin the adventure. I arrange them so that the players could choose different pathways and I didn’t make it a railroad. I ended up with three possible paths to escape the underworld.
Then I just edited the map! Here’s are my edited versions of maps 1 and 2 so that other folks can use them.
Summary
I’d definitely recommend having this adventure on hand for that eventual TPK. I think Last Stop, Perdition! touches upon some of the same points (it contains the literal train to hell) but I’m not aware of much competition in this particular theme. That said, my recommendation is coming from the fact that this was a really fun adventure! Pick it up and see if you can arrange a Halloween game where the PCs need to escape from the underworld!
Do you have any “escape from hell” or “for after a TPK” adventures to recommend?
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