The Elemental Lords Awaken!

AL 7: The Elemental Lords Awaken! is a level 1 adventure written by Perry Fehr. The cover is by Jacob Blackmon with interior art by Brian Brinlee, Eric Quigley, and Ryan Sumo, and cartography by Dyson Logos. The publisher is Purple Duck Games.

Disclosure: I have a playtest credit on this product.

This adventure was intended as a sequel to AL 6: Playing the Game (also by Perry Fehr, and which I also playtested), and if taken as such has more of a narrative arc than if not. Nonetheless, it is perfectly playable without, and when I playtested it I did not use the same PCs as from Playing the Game.

As written, it is very much an old-school romp through the long-lost fortress-temple of people who worshiped the four Elemental Lords: Grom, Lord of Stone; Ithha, Prince of Air: Krakaal, Lord of Fire: and Splaasha, Princess of Water. If all of that sounds a little like it was inspired by Michael Moorcock to you, it sounds the same to me. Long before I actually read the Elric series, I had access to the first print of the 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Deities & Demigods Cyclopedia, and I was keen to read, in Dragon Magazine, how Ed Greenwood arranged the deities of his home campaign.

Perry Fehr's Elemental Lords are given fuller description in Playing the Game, so to make maximum usage of this adventure, you will need both products.

The product suffers a little from the use of stock art. In particular, the Earth Imp illustration was unfortunate, as it is unlikely that trees are growing from such a relatively small creature.

As previously mentioned, I playtested the adventure, and my playtest went well. I believe that my notes to the author were acted upon. On further reflection, if I were running this adventure again, I would end it with the Elemental Lords actually taking on physical form, to go striding off into the world. I think that this is because this product feels like the middle piece to a three-act play. In Playing the Game, the Elemental Lords are introduced, and the PCs can take service with them. In The Elemental Lords Awaken! we discover that the Elemental Lords have "slept" because enemies destroyed their cult. There really should be a third part where the PCs face those enemies with the Elemental Lords as their patrons and allies.

Get It Here.