A compilation of old-school-style monsters compatible with Labyrinth Lord (and therefore the 1981 edition of the world's most famous fantasy RPG). A decent set of beasties, as far as fantasy RPG monsters go - most aren't very innovative, but there aren't any bad inclusions. (My pick of the litter was probably the murkbeast.) There are some hiccups with the presentation, however: a few monsters were duplicated (presumably to avoid having to edit the bestiaries from the original adventures), the two goblin variants aren't clearly identified, and the kytyllen swarm is missing its statistics. (I'm also not sure it was worth including common monsters like giant rats or giant spiders.) But none of these are deal-breakers, especially when you get the product for free...

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This module clocks in at 28 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 25 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This adventure is intended for characters level 3 – 5, and, as far as old-school modules go, is dangerous, but not a meat-grinder – though there is one instance that can be considered to be brutal. It still should be noted that death is very much possible, and that a well-rounded party is recommended, with particularly a remove curse being a recommended thing to have. The adventure takes place in the Whisper Vale introduced in Whisper & Venom, and uses the same rules – descending AC, HD-ratings, etc. – use in most OSR games should not be an issue. While it can be used as a stand-alone adventure, it does lose a bit of its impact when divorced from Whisper & Venom. As a minor nitpick: The pdf’s formatting is a bit off, using primarily bolding for everything – magic items, statblocks, etc., while italics are generally not employed.

The adventure features no read-aloud text, and if you do use it in conjunction with Whisper & Venom, I suggest using it as either an epilogue of sorts, or when the PCs are moving towards the end of the module, to avoid spoiling one of the most effective scenes in the big book.

The pdf contains a total of 3 different encounter tables for different regions in the vale, an appendix containing 5 monsters, and something that was a hugely pleasant surprise to me: PLAYER-FRIENDLY MAPS. Not only the gorgeous isometric full-color pieces of the vale, but also of the respective adventure-locales! Awesome! The artworks herein, which often are full-color, are btw. ALSO provided as handouts – a total of 5 of these are provided!

All right, that’s a good start, so let’s see whether the module can hold up…but in order to do that, I will have to go into serious SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

… .. .

Jarls Mitby has gone missing – and just after he had been incarcerated for ostensibly having an affair with a landowner’s daughter. That is a nice little rumor, and piece of local color. A capable GM can seed another component at one point – namely that Jarls had only 3 fingers left on one hand. This becomes relevant, and allows for a brief investigation lead-in for this one…for Jarls, alas, has met his end.

The tale of this module, is one of retired adventurer Færgo Cromworth, the best tracker around – who has found something that he shouldn’t have. As the PCs find his burned down cabin, the body left in its smoldering ruin will be Jarls, and two different trails can be followed by capable PCs towards where Færgo now is – provided they survive the resident dire wolves attracted to the ruins’ remnants. (And yes, the scene is one of the handouts, providing a visual clue – cool!

You see, Færgo has become the eponymous “First Sentinel”, and two paths lead to his watch-post – one with a rigged rockfall, and the other leading through a cavern inhabited by cave imps, which represent one of the most dangerous encounters in the module, and the most problematic. You see, the cave imps’ battleground features more holes than Swiss cheese, and the humanoids favor hit-and-run attacks. Considering the different means of tackling initiative for different OSR-systems, this can be a bit weird. While the module does manage to provide a tactical encounter here, said encounter is based in a way on “readying action” attacks and a counterattack engine, which, while reasonably depicted, makes for a very awkward insertion – after all, once you use it, it should be an option all the time, right? I’m pretty sure that this could have been solved more elegantly. On the plus-side, there are means to bypass this encounter and grant the PCs an edge via magic, so that’d be a plus.

The true dungeon, though, would be a strange, military-style tower that appears as a hazy mist with no apparent detail; it is solid, though ethereal it may be, and may be entered and explored. It is, obviously, a symptom of the Corruption spreading from the Nexid Mouthgate, and indeed, the exploration of the linear floors pits the PCs against three types of Nexids, rewarding them with strange chemicals (including random tables for mixing the volatile materials), blackmetal items…and, well, the truth. Atop the tower, Færgo uses a strange device, a spyglass, a weird helmet atop his head – the combination of the nexid’s influence, spyglass and helmet have started to control the poor man, subsuming his identity under the irresistible compulsion to watch and guard for the approach of his masters, flooding his mind with touches of the alien nexid’s world and their strange thought-patterns….a fate that will break him sooner or later, but then again…he only has to last until proper nexids can take the mantle of sentinel…

The pdf provides its own table of strange locales the spyglass may be pointed at, as well as featuring several, unique spectra that it may be adjusted to show – but whether the PCs can free Færgo from the corruption, or whether the tower and its sentinel will be but the first of a dread invasion – only the PC’s prowess can answer that. (As an aside: An unchecked tower will run through attracted folks, littering the vicinity slowly with desiccated corpses, which is a rather grim picture – so if you want to go grimdark here, you have your work cut out for you…)

Conclusion: Editing is very good on a formal and rules-language level. Formatting is slightly less impressive and sports a few inconsistencies. Layout adheres to a nice two-column full-color standard, and the artworks deserve special mention – they are riginal pieces, with 2 b/w-artworks and quite a few nice full-color pieces. The inclusion of handout-versions of them is a great plus. Cartography is isometric full-color for the region, b/w for the adventure-locations, and once more, we do get player-friendly, key-less versions. Nice! The pdf comes fully bookmarked, is layered (!!) and has a navigation panel at the bottom of the page, allowing you to swiftly and painlessly jump to and fro from maps to the text and back again. Kudos indeed!

Edwin Nagy’s “The First Sentinel” is a great further exploration of one of the strongest components of “Whisper & Venom.” It almost feels like a transition, or like a means to get PCs on trek. The atmosphere it manages to evoke is nice, and in spite of being pretty much the definition of a railroad, structurally, it sells its linearity very well with details and unique, weird flavor and adversaries. Usually, this would, as a whole, make this clock in at 4.5 stars, rounded down, but the sheer abundance of supplemental material regarding handouts and player maps, regarding these small comfort-enhancers, makes me round up instead.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This adventure clocks in at 21 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page back cover, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 17 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This module uses the Swords & Wizardry rules, but can be easily converted to other OSR-rulesets. It is intended for characters level 3 – 4 and works best when used in conjunction with Whisper & Venom, as it takes place in the Whisper Vale and basically presents an overland sidequest. The module provides stats for all creatures from Whisper & Venom it uses, and sports a couple of magic items on the quirky side of things. The fantastic overland maps of the Whisper Vale are reproduced here, but, unlike in the big book, they, and a few of the artworks herein, look slightly pixilated in the pdf. New maps are also provided, and these are b/w; no unlabeled version for these is provided.

The adventure comes with read-aloud text that is rather well written, as well as random encounter table and rumors. We also have new fantasy animals as critters that haven’t been introduced before.

All right, this is as far as I can go without diving into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion. … .. . There was a festival – the town’s finest have gone off to hunt – but alas, but one should return, only to pass away shortly thereafter. The hunters, in their ignorance, destroyed the home of a fairy – which, on its own, would but have inconvenienced them, but the fairy’s assault coincided with them biting off more than they could chew, in the guise of one of the ill-tempered rhacos birds. (These birds have a very valuable feather on their head, but are rather deadly…) Add a murkbeast, and we have a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances. All of this background is, generally, pretty optional – the module has the PCs basically follow in the steps of the hunting party.

The lavishly-illustrated Distaff-region of the vale where this takes place manages to feel like a linear, yes, but also fantastic world, where strange fish exist, where dangerous predators prowl and where the fantastic cinereous eagles and aforementioned rhacos roam, where goblin bootleggers may be encountered. The PCs basically have to find the rhacos nest and deal with the dangerous creatures, hopefully harvesting the valuable feather of the male…though this, obviously, will not make the dead come back to life. It’s a humble hunting trek, but a well-crafted one.

The magic items noted include a bowel blockage cursed scroll or a dust that incapacitates the target for 24 hours with bodily functions on a failed save. Not the biggest fan of that save or suck there – it’s an instance of player/PC humiliation, which, while funny in doses, imho works best when the PC actually did something that warranted being made a laughingstock – you know, the type of thing that’ll have the player smirk and say “fair enough”, at least somewhat amused.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level; while it deviates from some conventions, it is consistent in such instances. Layout adheres to a nice two-column full-color standard, with a surprising array of really nice full-color artworks. Both these artworks and the internally hyperlinked buttons at the bottom of the pages, though, look somewhat pixilated. The pdf is layered, allowing you to make it more printer-friendly. It also comes with a ton of bookmarks.

Zach Glazar and John Hammerle provide a fun little sidetrek, one that works best when used in conjunction with Whisper & Venom. This is an unpretentious, well-crafted, but painfully linear hunting sidetrek that is ultimately structurally not that exciting. While it probably won’t blow most folks away, it is charming in the simplicity of its angle, in how the nature and fantastic fauna featured within renders it plausible – even though the background story, in a way, is pretty convoluted without much payoff for its complexity. All in all, my final verdict will clock in at 3.5 stars, rounded down.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This massive hardcover compendium of Whisper & Venom clocks in at 99 pages if you take away the editorial SRD, etc. for the OSR-version; for this version, I have consulted the hardcover, which a generous patreon supporter has sent my way as a present; while the person in question told me not to worry about a review, I figured it’s time to cover this.

I also have the PFRPG-version of this book, but I have that version only as a pdf. It clocks in at 142 pages, 3 pages of SRD, 1 page front cover, 1 page back cover, 1 page ToC, 5 pages editorial/dedications, leaving us with 131 pages of that iteration.

To sum it up: I have the hardcopy of the OSR-version, and the pdf-version for PFRPG; I assume that the hardcover version of the PFRPG-iteration is akin to the OSR hardcover, that the OSR-pdf is akin to the PFRPG pdf, but I don’t have the means to check that.

It should be noted that the pdfs’ additional pages that account for the increased page-count are something awesome – they contain all the monster/NPC/environment artworks as full-page handouts, greatly enriching that aspect of the module. Additionally, there are 4 pages of reference tables to render the experience easier to run for the GM. This makes getting the pdf as well a good idea.

As far as the OSR-version is concerned, it adheres to the Swords & Wizardry ruleset, and conversion to other systems is easy enough. The module part of this massive compendium is intended for levels 3 – 5 (or 4 – 6), though it should be noted that this is an old-school adventure. Careless PCs can and will die if they don’t act carefully and think they can slaughter everything. As a genre, one can call this a blend of an old-school sandbox and a more straight plotted adventure, and it blends these two rather well.

Originally, Whisper and Venom was a massive boxed set with various booklets, all of which have been compiled in a single hardcover tome here. In the print version of the OSR-iteration of the book, the book at times refers to guides and page-numbers that have been integrated into this tome, which is a bit unfortunate. On the plus-side, the digital version does have a TON of internal hyperlinking, allowing you to seamlessly navigate the massive pdf.

The first 36 pages (for PFRPG)/ 19 for the OSR-version, details the regional setting guide – basically a gazetteer of the Whisper Vale (which btw. comes with a gorgeous isometric full-color overview map, which, though, doesn’t feature a scale) and a detailed and similarly impressive full-color map of the environments of Whisper itself – though this one is top-down. While the pdf version is layered, it is, alas, not possible to turn off the labels and keys from the other maps included. Said other maps are btw. rendered in b/w, but also are rather impressive in quality. They have a grid where needed, but note no scale – but then again, the book does a good job of making the environments plausible.

The first thing you’ll note here would be level of density and detail presented here: The Whisper Vale sports a couple of very evocatively written natural wonders – the gelidstream, the strange tundra, the massive wall in the north, a natural, steep incline. Beyond that, the settlements provided include Whisper, a bucolic place famous for its alcoholic beverages, and, less commonly known and less universally celebrated – a temperance union of anti-alcohol wives. Beyond the thorp of Whisper, we can find Cleft, a dwarven settlement where the younger generation ceased working, thanks to an ingenious machine that simulates the sounds of working, pawning off the legacy of their forebears while no one’s the wiser. Finally, the goblin settlement of Swindle is known for its rotgut – immensely popular, its super strong alcohol has been made thanks to the still, though it has recently seen competition from the L’uort goblins that have since taken an old monastery as homebase. Then again, that is probably not that bad – Swindle is not a nice place; the goblins have an indentured class of enslaved and horribly mistreated pixies working for them.

Said pixies are kept enslaved due to the magical, addictive watersource they were supposed to guard having been traded to the goblins by Thopas – the malignant and thoroughly wicked gnome represents the mightiest spellcaster in the vale, and he is, indeed, a most deadly foe that the PCs should think twice about before they challenge him. The flavor here is surprisingly distinct: The prose is suffused with an unobtrusive, wry humor, and the fluff-only NPC-write-ups for the important personalities made me think of Charles Dickens of all – in the best of ways. The section also sports quite an array of unique and pretty fun hooks and angles – miscellanea and angles, if you will…for example about a clockmaker whose clocks always seemed to be running 69.3 second later every 30 days, and about the root of the conflict between two locals. These write-ups, and indeed, the whole section, breathe a type of universal compassion for the diverse cast of characters that inhabit the Vale.

So yeah, this gazetteer does provide a pretty great start for the supplement, and has an interesting leitmotif, namely how alcohol and similar substances can act as social glue – or as something destructive. This could have easily turned into a finger-pointing exercise, but the depiction of this complex topic via the various settlements and themes is surprisingly well-rounded. In an age where opinionated writing tends to easily fall on one side of very aggressive dichotomous disputes, it has been a boon to see how differentiated and compassionate the adventure depicts its chosen subject matter.

The mega-adventure section, then, would deal with 5 different adventure locations – these are fully mapped and illustrated, connected, and embedded into the context of aforementioned settlement and character-dynamics. They can be run in a linear manner (and indeed, some doe require to be in sequence), but you don’t exactly have to do that – you could relatively easily take apart this adventure into a couple of constituent mini-adventures. The respective keyed locations do get excellent read-aloud prose. Prose btw. is generally amazing, but has a few instances where it slightly dips in quality and sentence-structure complexity – this wouldn’t be as readily apparent in another supplement, but considering how great the prose here is overall, these few instances do stand out.

The book contains 4 random encounter tables of creatures, and a pretty massive bestiary. This bestiary section include apex predator flightless birds, the Rhacos, as well as quite a few other beings: Stats for the two types of goblin to be found in the Whisper Vale, are included, alongside stats for animals, etc.

Murkbeasts are strange crustacean/lamprey-like ambush predators, and crabs that conceal themselves beneath rubbish collected; there are monster beetles, and two types of creatures more crucial for the plot of the adventure itself. Undead, in an interesting twist, have been recast to have a kind of cycle, which is an interesting notion I’d enjoy to see developed further. The rules component of these stats is solid in both iterations – from a design perspective, the PFRPG iteration doesn’t always have the most exiting abilities (in OSR-games, these work a bit better), and there are a few minor hiccups in e.g. damage-types not correctly noted. An acid spray that doesn’t specify it deals acid damage, for example. These minor imperfections notwithstanding, the rules components are genuinely better than I expected them to be for an inaugural, freshman offering – no matter how ambitious it may be. This also extends to the magic items provided in this tome.

The book also sports two creatures that are more integral to the plot per se – but in order to discuss those, and the primary narratives underlying this place, I will need to go directly into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

… .. . All right, only referees around? Great!

So, this module is primarily concerned with the abandoned monastery that has been occupied by the L’uort tribe of goblins. The massive monastery grounds comes fully depicted and does differentiate between daytimes in some instances – goblins may be partying or sleeping off their handover, for example. Similarly, the whole region feels pretty organic: One of those aforementioned rhacos birds, a male with a massive plume on its head, is hunting in one region. The goblins try to appease it, and the chief wants the plume – any GM half worth their salt can make this a potentially interesting encounter, and this sense of plausible connection, of detail, suffuses the whole adventure, making the world feel lived in. This is not a place where the enemies are just waiting around for PCs to slaughter them – they have responses, and stealth may be smart and advisable. A full-blown assault will quickly show the PCs how tough these goblins, strangely, are. A Murkbeast may be hiding in a fountain; etc. Now, it should be noted that the L’uort are NOT nice guys. They are evil SOBs, and e.g. the desecrated altars and mutilated dead will drive that home.

Beyond the monastery, the mega-adventure does feature a horror-themed sublevel with the, as of yet, unplundered catacombs, where both treasures, but also dangerous undead loom. While the L’uort may not be dominant there, they do have a lair, and within their holdings, as the PCs make their way through the remnants of the monastery, they will realize that this goblin tribe has strange elixirs, which hint at the truth: You see, the L’uort are part of the leitmotif of consumption – they have a potent elixir that enhances them, but which is also highly addictive. It has been brewed from the venom of attoral. An attoral is the strange quasi-reptilian thing that you can see on the cover, and these do have a queen of sorts. The attorals are nothing new to Whisper Vale, but they seem to have changed – their venom now can cause a variety of different effects that may be beneficial or detrimental – including e.g. maximum hit point reduction/increase for a while. It is said strange poison that the L’uort are using to brew their potent elixirs. Once more, we have a theme of exploitation in the service to generating the drug – but there is more to this.

Beyond the trapped attorals, the module does have two underdark levels of sorts – the Subterrene, and beyond that, the Precipice. It is in these depths that strange magical critters skitter around, and that the truth behind the attoral’s strange change can be found: A cavern, where a gigantic, medusa-face-ish, fiendish thing looms – a living gate, from which strange baubles have been ejected. Baubles that turn out to be a vanguard of sorts for outsiders called Nexids. Slaying these and the arriving, very powerful nexid soldier, will end this strange incursion. In these and the attoral venom

Effects, the relative inexperience with PFRPG does show in that iteration, for these guys are much less impressive in PFRPG than they are in the OSR-iteration of this book. While the statblocks are generally on par for PFRPG, there are a few glitches in the statblocks as well.

On a thematic side, this corruption and strangeness underlying the addiction angle for the L’uort makes for a fantastic conclusion of the increasingly fantastic and weird implementations of the mega-adventure’s string leitmotif. It should also be noted that the adventure does a rather impressive job at strewing in small tidbits, treasure, etc. and reward player-curiosity. On the GM’s side of things, the adventure does provide some guidelines for the GM to run the more complex encounters – a handy encounter-mechanics appendix makes running the slightly more challenging encounters easy on the GM. Kudos for that!

There also is one true strength, that, at the same time, is a bit of a weakness: The aftermath of the strange gate, the epilogue, has the vale’s inhabitants stumped – and thus, the PCs will find Thopas, the nasty, vile gnome – his conclusion, is a stark one: “You got it all wrong. This is not an invasion. This is an exodus.” These words sent a shiver down my spine – and unfortunately, never find a form of conclusion or resolution, as “Death & Taxes” (Yep, review forthcoming) did not elaborate on that angle. This is a brilliant “OH SH....!”-level of revelation – I mean, what can make evil outsiders like the Nexid flee? OUCH! That’s epic foreshadowing…it makes the whole mega-adventure feel like a brilliant set-up of the things to come, and by that strength, does diminish it somewhat. The exodus/invasion angle never happened to arrive. It’s a small thing, but it, to me, colored the whole adventure in a distinct tone, hyped me up, and then never delivered on a sequel. It’s easy enough to ignore, sure. It doesn’t make the module weaker. But I still couldn’t help but feel that it would have been a furious, awesome kickoff point for a sequel.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting on a rules language level tend to be good in both iterations. While there are deviations from formatting standards in both, these tend to be consistent. On a formal level, the book also manages to be good – surprisingly good, particularly for a freshman offering of this size. Interior artwork ranges from solid b/w-artworks to a couple of truly phenomenal full-color mood pieces for some levels – the illustrations of the catacombs and final region in particular rock. The cartography is generally excellent in full color, and in b/w, though I wished the latter actually came with unlabeled versions as well. The pdf comes with a ton of bookmarks, and the hardcover is full color and sports a solid paper quality.

Zach Glazar and John Hammerle deliver an impressive mega-adventure here. While the book slightly suffers from having its constituent books collected in one tome, Whisper & Venom still remains an impressive achievement as far as I’m concerned. The writing of the vast majority of the book is excellent, and the challenges presented tend to be fair, enjoyable and well-crafted. Jeffrey Tadlock and Damon Palyka did a solid job with the Pathfinder conversion as well. All in all, Whisper and Venom is an intelligent region-sourcebook/mega-adventure with a very strong leitmotif that has been executed with a charming sense of subdued humor. At times funny, at times horrifying, this ultimately is a charming and flavorful book, and one well worth checking out. The one issue I have with this adventure would be that it, even before the epilogue, felt like Act I of a larger saga; it feels less self-contained than similar adventures, and a GM will want to/need to elaborate on some loose ends this sports. A series of interconnected sidequests between the different villages would have been nice as well – the illustrious cast of characters has them basically written into their write-ups, so a few bullet point-ish ones on a page would have added some value to the vale of Whisper. (Though e.g. the stand-alone “Birds of a Feather”-adventure does cover that partially; review forthcoming.)

All in all, I consider this to be a neat mega-adventure, which, particularly if you enjoy writing that manages to depict plausible critters and believable NPCs, if you enjoy plenty of small details, will be well worth the asking price. My final verdict, hence, will clock in at 4.5 stars, rounded down for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This massive hardcover compendium of Whisper & Venom clocks in at 99 pages if you take away the editorial SRD, etc. for the OSR-version; for this version, I have consulted the hardcover, which a generous patreon supporter has sent my way as a present; while the person in question told me not to worry about a review, I figured it’s time to cover this.

I also have the PFRPG-version of this book, but I have that version only as a pdf. It clocks in at 142 pages, 3 pages of SRD, 1 page front cover, 1 page back cover, 1 page ToC, 5 pages editorial/dedications, leaving us with 131 pages of that iteration.

To sum it up: I have the hardcopy of the OSR-version, and the pdf-version for PFRPG; I assume that the hardcover version of the PFRPG-iteration is akin to the OSR hardcover, that the OSR-pdf is akin to the PFRPG pdf, but I don’t have the means to check that.

It should be noted that the pdfs’ additional pages that account for the increased page-count are something awesome – they contain all the monster/NPC/environment artworks as full-page handouts, greatly enriching that aspect of the module. Additionally, there are 4 pages of reference tables to render the experience easier to run for the GM. This makes getting the pdf as well a good idea.

As far as the OSR-version is concerned, it adheres to the Swords & Wizardry ruleset, and conversion to other systems is easy enough. The module part of this massive compendium is intended for levels 3 – 5 (or 4 – 6), though it should be noted that this is an old-school adventure. Careless PCs can and will die if they don’t act carefully and think they can slaughter everything. As a genre, one can call this a blend of an old-school sandbox and a more straight plotted adventure, and it blends these two rather well.

Originally, Whisper and Venom was a massive boxed set with various booklets, all of which have been compiled in a single hardcover tome here. In the print version of the OSR-iteration of the book, the book at times refers to guides and page-numbers that have been integrated into this tome, which is a bit unfortunate. On the plus-side, the digital version does have a TON of internal hyperlinking, allowing you to seamlessly navigate the massive pdf.

The first 36 pages (for PFRPG)/ 19 for the OSR-version, details the regional setting guide – basically a gazetteer of the Whisper Vale (which btw. comes with a gorgeous isometric full-color overview map, which, though, doesn’t feature a scale) and a detailed and similarly impressive full-color map of the environments of Whisper itself – though this one is top-down. While the pdf version is layered, it is, alas, not possible to turn off the labels and keys from the other maps included. Said other maps are btw. rendered in b/w, but also are rather impressive in quality. They have a grid where needed, but note no scale – but then again, the book does a good job of making the environments plausible.

The first thing you’ll note here would be level of density and detail presented here: The Whisper Vale sports a couple of very evocatively written natural wonders – the gelidstream, the strange tundra, the massive wall in the north, a natural, steep incline. Beyond that, the settlements provided include Whisper, a bucolic place famous for its alcoholic beverages, and, less commonly known and less universally celebrated – a temperance union of anti-alcohol wives. Beyond the thorp of Whisper, we can find Cleft, a dwarven settlement where the younger generation ceased working, thanks to an ingenious machine that simulates the sounds of working, pawning off the legacy of their forebears while no one’s the wiser. Finally, the goblin settlement of Swindle is known for its rotgut – immensely popular, its super strong alcohol has been made thanks to the still, though it has recently seen competition from the L’uort goblins that have since taken an old monastery as homebase. Then again, that is probably not that bad – Swindle is not a nice place; the goblins have an indentured class of enslaved and horribly mistreated pixies working for them.

Said pixies are kept enslaved due to the magical, addictive watersource they were supposed to guard having been traded to the goblins by Thopas – the malignant and thoroughly wicked gnome represents the mightiest spellcaster in the vale, and he is, indeed, a most deadly foe that the PCs should think twice about before they challenge him. The flavor here is surprisingly distinct: The prose is suffused with an unobtrusive, wry humor, and the fluff-only NPC-write-ups for the important personalities made me think of Charles Dickens of all – in the best of ways. The section also sports quite an array of unique and pretty fun hooks and angles – miscellanea and angles, if you will…for example about a clockmaker whose clocks always seemed to be running 69.3 second later every 30 days, and about the root of the conflict between two locals. These write-ups, and indeed, the whole section, breathe a type of universal compassion for the diverse cast of characters that inhabit the Vale.

So yeah, this gazetteer does provide a pretty great start for the supplement, and has an interesting leitmotif, namely how alcohol and similar substances can act as social glue – or as something destructive. This could have easily turned into a finger-pointing exercise, but the depiction of this complex topic via the various settlements and themes is surprisingly well-rounded. In an age where opinionated writing tends to easily fall on one side of very aggressive dichotomous disputes, it has been a boon to see how differentiated and compassionate the adventure depicts its chosen subject matter.

The mega-adventure section, then, would deal with 5 different adventure locations – these are fully mapped and illustrated, connected, and embedded into the context of aforementioned settlement and character-dynamics. They can be run in a linear manner (and indeed, some doe require to be in sequence), but you don’t exactly have to do that – you could relatively easily take apart this adventure into a couple of constituent mini-adventures. The respective keyed locations do get excellent read-aloud prose. Prose btw. is generally amazing, but has a few instances where it slightly dips in quality and sentence-structure complexity – this wouldn’t be as readily apparent in another supplement, but considering how great the prose here is overall, these few instances do stand out.

The book contains 4 random encounter tables of creatures, and a pretty massive bestiary. This bestiary section include apex predator flightless birds, the Rhacos, as well as quite a few other beings: Stats for the two types of goblin to be found in the Whisper Vale, are included, alongside stats for animals, etc.

Murkbeasts are strange crustacean/lamprey-like ambush predators, and crabs that conceal themselves beneath rubbish collected; there are monster beetles, and two types of creatures more crucial for the plot of the adventure itself. Undead, in an interesting twist, have been recast to have a kind of cycle, which is an interesting notion I’d enjoy to see developed further. The rules component of these stats is solid in both iterations – from a design perspective, the PFRPG iteration doesn’t always have the most exiting abilities (in OSR-games, these work a bit better), and there are a few minor hiccups in e.g. damage-types not correctly noted. An acid spray that doesn’t specify it deals acid damage, for example. These minor imperfections notwithstanding, the rules components are genuinely better than I expected them to be for an inaugural, freshman offering – no matter how ambitious it may be. This also extends to the magic items provided in this tome.

The book also sports two creatures that are more integral to the plot per se – but in order to discuss those, and the primary narratives underlying this place, I will need to go directly into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

… .. . All right, only referees around? Great!

So, this module is primarily concerned with the abandoned monastery that has been occupied by the L’uort tribe of goblins. The massive monastery grounds comes fully depicted and does differentiate between daytimes in some instances – goblins may be partying or sleeping off their handover, for example. Similarly, the whole region feels pretty organic: One of those aforementioned rhacos birds, a male with a massive plume on its head, is hunting in one region. The goblins try to appease it, and the chief wants the plume – any GM half worth their salt can make this a potentially interesting encounter, and this sense of plausible connection, of detail, suffuses the whole adventure, making the world feel lived in. This is not a place where the enemies are just waiting around for PCs to slaughter them – they have responses, and stealth may be smart and advisable. A full-blown assault will quickly show the PCs how tough these goblins, strangely, are. A Murkbeast may be hiding in a fountain; etc. Now, it should be noted that the L’uort are NOT nice guys. They are evil SOBs, and e.g. the desecrated altars and mutilated dead will drive that home.

Beyond the monastery, the mega-adventure does feature a horror-themed sublevel with the, as of yet, unplundered catacombs, where both treasures, but also dangerous undead loom. While the L’uort may not be dominant there, they do have a lair, and within their holdings, as the PCs make their way through the remnants of the monastery, they will realize that this goblin tribe has strange elixirs, which hint at the truth: You see, the L’uort are part of the leitmotif of consumption – they have a potent elixir that enhances them, but which is also highly addictive. It has been brewed from the venom of attoral. An attoral is the strange quasi-reptilian thing that you can see on the cover, and these do have a queen of sorts. The attorals are nothing new to Whisper Vale, but they seem to have changed – their venom now can cause a variety of different effects that may be beneficial or detrimental – including e.g. maximum hit point reduction/increase for a while. It is said strange poison that the L’uort are using to brew their potent elixirs. Once more, we have a theme of exploitation in the service to generating the drug – but there is more to this.

Beyond the trapped attorals, the module does have two underdark levels of sorts – the Subterrene, and beyond that, the Precipice. It is in these depths that strange magical critters skitter around, and that the truth behind the attoral’s strange change can be found: A cavern, where a gigantic, medusa-face-ish, fiendish thing looms – a living gate, from which strange baubles have been ejected. Baubles that turn out to be a vanguard of sorts for outsiders called Nexids. Slaying these and the arriving, very powerful nexid soldier, will end this strange incursion. In these and the attoral venom

Effects, the relative inexperience with PFRPG does show in that iteration, for these guys are much less impressive in PFRPG than they are in the OSR-iteration of this book. While the statblocks are generally on par for PFRPG, there are a few glitches in the statblocks as well.

On a thematic side, this corruption and strangeness underlying the addiction angle for the L’uort makes for a fantastic conclusion of the increasingly fantastic and weird implementations of the mega-adventure’s string leitmotif. It should also be noted that the adventure does a rather impressive job at strewing in small tidbits, treasure, etc. and reward player-curiosity. On the GM’s side of things, the adventure does provide some guidelines for the GM to run the more complex encounters – a handy encounter-mechanics appendix makes running the slightly more challenging encounters easy on the GM. Kudos for that!

There also is one true strength, that, at the same time, is a bit of a weakness: The aftermath of the strange gate, the epilogue, has the vale’s inhabitants stumped – and thus, the PCs will find Thopas, the nasty, vile gnome – his conclusion, is a stark one: “You got it all wrong. This is not an invasion. This is an exodus.” These words sent a shiver down my spine – and unfortunately, never find a form of conclusion or resolution, as “Death & Taxes” (Yep, review forthcoming) did not elaborate on that angle. This is a brilliant “OH SH!”-level of revelation – I mean, what can make evil outsiders like the Nexid flee? OUCH! That’s epic foreshadowing…it makes the whole mega-adventure feel like a brilliant set-up of the things to come, and by that strength, does diminish it somewhat. The exodus/invasion angle never happened to arrive. It’s a small thing, but it, to me, colored the whole adventure in a distinct tone, hyped me up, and then never delivered on a sequel. It’s easy enough to ignore, sure. It doesn’t make the module weaker. But I still couldn’t help but feel that it would have been a furious, awesome kickoff point for a sequel.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting on a rules language level tend to be good in both iterations. While there are deviations from formatting standards in both, these tend to be consistent. On a formal level, the book also manages to be good – surprisingly good, particularly for a freshman offering of this size. Interior artwork ranges from solid b/w-artworks to a couple of truly phenomenal full-color mood pieces for some levels – the illustrations of the catacombs and final region in particular rock. The cartography is generally excellent in full color, and in b/w, though I wished the latter actually came with unlabeled versions as well. The pdf comes with a ton of bookmarks, and the hardcover is full color and sports a solid paper quality.

Zach Glazar and John Hammerle deliver an impressive mega-adventure here. While the book slightly suffers from having its constituent books collected in one tome, Whisper & Venom still remains an impressive achievement as far as I’m concerned. The writing of the vast majority of the book is excellent, and the challenges presented tend to be fair, enjoyable and well-crafted. Jeffrey Tadlock and Damon Palyka did a solid job with the Pathfinder conversion as well. All in all, Whisper and Venom is an intelligent region-sourcebook/mega-adventure with a very strong leitmotif that has been executed with a charming sense of subdued humor. At times funny, at times horrifying, this ultimately is a charming and flavorful book, and one well worth checking out. The one issue I have with this adventure would be that it, even before the epilogue, felt like Act I of a larger saga; it feels less self-contained than similar adventures, and a GM will want to/need to elaborate on some loose ends this sports. A series of interconnected sidequests between the different villages would have been nice as well – the illustrious cast of characters has them basically written into their write-ups, so a few bullet point-ish ones on a page would have added some value to the vale of Whisper. (Though e.g. the stand-alone “Birds of a Feather”-adventure does cover that partially; review forthcoming.)

All in all, I consider this to be a neat mega-adventure, which, particularly if you enjoy writing that manages to depict plausible critters and believable NPCs, if you enjoy plenty of small details, will be well worth the asking price. My final verdict, hence, will clock in at 4.5 stars, rounded down for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.

Once again I'm late to the party with Lesser Gnome's Creature Catalog From Lesser Gnome,

this is a twenty -two page monster filled pdf harvested from their adventure, the majority have their own original illustrations by Lloyd Metcalf. Includes creature's sections from adventures including: Whisper & Venom, Bird of a Feather, & The First Sentinel. Given the fact that these are Lesser Gnome's spin on some familiar monsters, they each have some rather unique properties. The layout is solid and well put together, the monsters interesting and easily put into any old school adventure but this is a case where the adventure should be built around the monster. The monsters are done in a style that echoes and emulates the old Monster Manual style without aping it. Most if not all of the stats here are done for Labyrinth Lord and easily adaptable to your favorite rpg system including Lamentations of the Flame Princess. These monsters should be used sparingly because of the twists and kinks put into them. Examples of these sorts of creatures include this lovely little nasty; "The Byrgh, or rubbish crab, is a crustacean that lives amidst the filth of caves. Byrghs are usually found near cave/ cavern entrances. Unless in mortal peril they never venture above ground. Byrghs are generally found in groups of 5-7 individuals sharing a single nest. The nests are made from whatever cast off items or refuse the Byrghs scavenge" Basically these are the type of horrors that players are going to remember and used correctly not the type of thing their going to want to encounter again. Favorites of mine include the Murkbeast, The Nexid demon kind, and Gaunt Swept Scavenger among the many others in this book. There's a bit of an other worldly quality to these horrors and they'd fit right into a sword and sorcery or a Lovecraftian horror fest. Is this pdf a big advertisement for Lesser Gnome products? Most assuredly and they do deliver a quality piece of an adventure or monster. Basically this is a pdf that show cases some solidly done and well thought out horrors many of which can be applied to a wide variety of settings and adventure venues. Given the fact that these horrors have been created for the Labyrinth Lord retroclone game systems they're easily adaptable across the board and this includes Mutant Future's D&D back game Mutants & Mazes. Which is something that doesn't often seem to get mentioned or forgotten by other bloggers. Why this is I have no idea because it makes many of the retroclone and monsters easily adaptable across the board. This is a fact that I've often employed at the table numerous times. This makes Lesser Gnome's Creature Catalog a bit more flexible & do I think you should download it? Yes its worth your time and effort. A four out of five free download in my humble opinion. Eric Fabiaschi Swords and Stitchery Blog Want to know more? Subscribe to Swords & Stitchery over at http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/

Ok, so it's not the original Monster Manual. But it's not $12.00 (like it was for us kids in the late 70s...really expensive at the time) and its from one of the up-and-coming OSR publishers! Creature Catalog is a decent read for FREE....and it's caused me to check out some of the cool miniatures Lesser Gnome offers on their website. Attoral, anyone?

Is it a product to pimp their miniatures? Possibly. But I've also got a few figs in my collection that will work in the meantime, and some of the monsters are just a slight change of pace from the standard fantasy fare. And if I haven't said it before, its FREE.

Worth the download and CERTAINLY worth the price.

A very nice twist on some old monsters. Also some of the unique creatures are just a lot of fun, I think you can expect big things from Lesser Gnome, personally the adventure's that uses the monsters within is awesome. Sentinal, Whisper & venom all worth getting. check them out as well.

Its free, do right there you are doing ok. 20 pages of monsters from Lesser Gnome products. For the most part the monsters are interesting, and the classic ones (like Giant spiders and goblins) have a unique or interesting twist. My favorites were the Attorral, a type of scorpion monster, and the Nexid doldiers, some sort of demonic being from another plane. I will definitely use a couple of these in my own Campaign. Did i mention it's free? You really cannot go wrong here.

Nav buttons in layout - nice. some useful critters in here I think would be fun to plop into my campaign. Can't argue with the price!!

This is a free product so take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

So, apparently this is collection of monsters featured in other Lesser Gnome products. I downloaded it having never bought or read a Lesser Gnome adventure. My hope was that maybe they had some interesting or unique creatures inside, but alas most of the book is full of random generic creatures covered in just about every monster manual ever. This leads me to think that Lesser Gnome does not traffic in new or interesting twists on D&D, but rather is just another publisher of fantasy PDF spam.

TLDR; Get this title if you have several Lesser Gnome product and want all the monster stats in one easy place. Do not get it if you are looking for unique or interesting monsters.