SPOILERS AHEAD

This short adventure is set in the town of Brighton that is part of the Shattered Skies campaign setting. The adventure begins as the characters are at the Laughing Dragon Inn. A gnome child runs in the Inn and yells that ogres and belchers (a goblin variant) kidnapped his father. He wants help. The characters go to investigate the ambush site and after dealing with the group of belchers searching the wreckage, they can follow a trail leading to the belchers and ogre’s lair. As they enter the lair, they may witness the Ogre giving a performance for the Belchers. They can participate in the performance or attack and try to rescue the kidnapped gnome. Once they complete their exploration and save the gnome, they return to Brighton and are welcomed as heroes by the gnomes.

The story is interesting and pretty straightforward. I like that the characters have the opportunity to do more than just fight the opposition. They may even have an advantage fighting the ogre if they convince him to put his boots on (which is not too hard). However, they encounter the ogre before they get to the cobbler (the kidnapped gnome), so should they unleash all they have against the ogre, he may not last until that encounter. But, they have some serious opposition. It is doubtful they will be able to fight only the ogre upon first encountering him.

The trip to the ogre’s lair is, in my opinion, lacking in details. No map is provided, although the focus of the adventure is not the trip to the cave, it would have been nice to have an idea of where the encounter areas are located. Even with the guidelines provided to help enliven the trip, the encounters seem to be added as an afterthought. I think that one encounter complemented with a table of random encounters should the characters get lost would have been better, but that is a matter of preferences. With a little adjustment, the encounters provided could work well.

The maps accompanying the encounters are all in color and are beautiful. No complaint here. The best art is the cover, but the art inside the book is nice as well.

The crunch is a bit weird from my point of view. It seems like the adventure was written to played as part of the Pathfinder Society scenario because tiers are often used to describe how the encounters can be scaled. Speaking of which, some encounters will need a bit of adjusting. While guidelines are provided to accommodate groups of level 1 to 5, some suggestions would be tough on a group even if they are higher levels. The adjustment proposed for the traps guarding the entrance to the lair are an increase in damage dealt. While this is a viable solution, one bad roll or a lucky GM could kill off a few characters with these traps or have a group seriously deplete their resources over these traps. Maybe having a few belchers attack while the characters are trying to deal with the trap would have been a more scalable solution should things turn bad.

Overall, it is a good adventure although I think that the suggestions to scale the adventure could be a bit more appropriate and the story is pretty straightforward. I like the idea of the ogre who wants new boots because his feet hurt, although I have trouble wrapping my head around how exactly the cobbler managed to trap the boots like he did being a prisoner and probably having been provided with the minimum equipment. The adventure having been released after the gazetteer of the Town of Brighton, it would have been nice to have few references to that product should the GM wish to expand some encounters or areas. Lastly, I am not sure about the God of the Belchers, the Lava Child. Although it is a nice optional encounter, I would think that some kind of power struggle would take place between that being and the Ogre. Admittedly, the Ogre was only looking from a crowd of admirers, but still, I feel like something is missing here, both seem unaware of each other’s presence in these caves.