The Players Introduction sets the scene. Some three nights ago, the 12-year-old daughter of the local lordling vanished when a caravan was attacked, leaving a pile of corpses and blood, but not her body. The lordling has offered riches, magic items, you name it, for anyone who can get her back. Hopefully the party accepts the challenge but even if they don't, as they wander the city steets suddenly a child runs towards them yelling for help and annoucing that she is the Lady Alexandra, Princess of Dresburg...

The background for the DM doesn't elaborate much although it provides a little more detail on what anyone investigating the remains of the caravan might have found. The city of Dresburg (change the name as suits to fit your campaign world) can be the party's home town or a place that they've just arrived in: all that is needed is an inn, a fortified palace and a sewer system... the rest is left to you.

Given the introduction, you might be thinking that this is an easy job, and so it appears to begin with. The folks chasing her are seen off and the party is soon occupying rooms in the best inn the city boasts with a fat purse apiece to buy fine clothes for a gala in their honour where medals are to be bestowed upon them... but of course, nothing's that simple! The party soon finds itself in trouble with the very authorities that were lionising them mere moments ago, and sloshing through the sewers rather than attending a gala in their honour. Such is the life of an adventurer.

A nasty new monster is introduced and the magic item is the medal - more than a shiny bauble on a piece of ribbon, as the party will discover if they manage to save the day and get awarded it after all... about the only flaw in the entire adventure is that the text promises that it has two magical functions, then only details one!

This is a cracking little adventure that should prove appealing to parties who enjoy interaction and intrique as well as a good (if smelly) delve with traps and monsters to overcome.

I ran this over 2 sessions for my current Black Company game. The only differences I made that it was set in Beryl, the group got arms and armor instead of the Desburg magic item and I switched the shapeshifter's type from Terror fiend to Forvalka (wereleopard). In the tunnel section I switched out the water based monsters to alligators, although my party managed to avoid all of the alligators.

spoiler (some):

My group went the fastest route to Sebastian's house, and made a stop at the TTESSFFTT__ trap; it stumped them for a good 10 minutes or so, but I gave them several hints (ie "There are 10 spaces, 9 are filled and the last space is blank"). My suggestion to other DMs is to let the group roleplay it out, instead of using a Decipher Script roll. One of my players loved this trap so much, she is going to use the trap and part of the module in her home game.

I did up the HP of the terror fiend/forvalka some. My group was 5th level while playing this module, and are heavy hitters, so they would destroy a 50 hp creature within 2 player's turns. (However, I used the Terror Fiend's AC instead of the Forvalka's AC, and it took them a while to be able to hit it, before they dazed it and brought the AC down).

My top complaint is the layout of the module, where you had to assemble into a packet before you were able to read it completely through. The map was also very hard to read in the shades of grey (to see where the ledges where in relation to the rest of the tunnel was hard for the party), so I'd suggest at least making the map in color. If the DM's map is not possible to make in color (I copied the map included in the module and gave it as a hand out to the party), maybe make a Player's Map that is in color, as the party kept saying "oh, we're going towards room 10 or avoiding room 8" etc comments.