To be honest Coldwater doesn't sound the idea place to visit. Full of smugglers, shrouded by mist and muddy underfoot... but you may find adventure there.

Coldwater, the author explains, is situated in the Duchy of Ashlar but may be placed anywhere suitable in your own campaign world. The village itself and other locations for this adventure are detailed richly, but everything else is vague enough for you to use it in conjunction with other material within your game. We learn of a demon cult and the demon being worshipped, obscure enough that you can slip him in too (unless you prefer to substitute a better-known evil being of your own).

Background done, the adventure begins when the party arrives in Coldwater. Several hooks are provided to get them there, but whether they went there to find it or not, they will soon hear about or stumble across some slimy steps leading down into an area that's nearly always underwater. Yet in a couple of days time the tide is low...

This gives the party time to get oriented, pick up supplies, make inquiries and actually find the steps. To that end, Coldwater is described at length along with notable personalities and interesting locations to visit. There's a map, rumours to pick up and many delightful details to bring the place to life (and of course you can continue to use the village long after the steps have been explored, or even if the party decides not to go there). Basically, this section repeats the contents of Village Backdrop: Coldwater, also available from Raging Swan Press.

We then move on to those slippery steps that are only accessible if the tide is very low - and then only for an hour or so, hence adventurers need to be quick about their explorations - indeed the GM is warned to keep track of time. The party may choose to go by sea or by land, both options are accommodated with their own encounters. The steps lead up to doors (also usually underwater) that are hard to open, but are watertight. Once inside, there's the place of worship of that demon cult to explore. It's not in use these days, but certain... influences remain.

In case the party takes too long about its explorations, details are provided for dealing with the rising tide from advice on how to describe it to all the mechanics necessary for moving, fighting and even drowning in water.

The Conclusions section lays out various options. There's scope for the party to get out dry-shod, or for you to add more to the fairly simple underground complex, or they may end up soaking wet; and a couple of ideas for how to continue the adventure once they have left. Six pre-generated characters are provided if you want to dive straight in to the adventure. It all makes for an atmospheric, if soggy, adventure, a good chance for a low-level party to stake their claim to fame!

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The Collector’s Edition of Raging Swan Press‘ „Fane of the Undying Sleeper“ clocks in at 42 pages, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page advice on how to read statblocks, leaving us with 34 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

Okay, first things first: It should be noted that this version of the module does come with 6 different pregens for your convenience. Also excellent: The adventure comes with a handy 1-page summary of the rules of water and movement. The pdf does come with a brief write-up on Dagon, the shadow in the sea; there also is the CR +0 deformed creature template with 12 rules-relevant and 12 cosmetic deformities. Moreover, the module is now contextualized within Raging Swan Press’ Duchy of Ashlar – to be more precise, the adventure now comes with the basics of the village of Coldwater (which I’ve covered in my review of that Village). That being said, I really liked how this not just copy-pasted Coldwater into the book: We not only get more hooks for the adventure, we get 8 entries in a gather information table. The pdf also sports handy sheets for facilitating play in the village, pointing towards the respective tables, summing up things to do, etc. – this enhances the Go-Play mission statement of the module.

What’s this? Well, the idea is that you should be able to run this with 0 or almost 0 preparation time. As such, each area featured in the module-proper does come with flavorful, well-crafted read-aloud text and there actually are multiple events for approaching Devil’s Cove by both boat and climbing. In devil’s cove, there are slimy stairs on a wind-swept beach, accessible only during particular low tides and sure to pique the interest of fortune seekers. 8 sample discoveries on the wind-swept shore add detailed dressing to the environment. The location also highlights a central tenet of the module – the tides wait for no man. Beyond this natural time limit, the attention to detail is as pronounced and well-developed as you’d expect it to be: Dripping water, smells, etc. – there is a lot of detail and even more rules-relevant material herein.

This being an adventure-review, the following contains some SPOILERS. Potential players should jump to the conclusion.

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But let me give you a sample here for the details- each room comes with a small description for the DM, followed by entrances and things players may perceive or miss, followed by read-aloud text and then features - from illumination, to terrain features and e.g. doors (including hardness/break-DC etc.) to dressings galore and infos gleaned via a vast variety of skill-checks, the level of detail is staggering and surpasses even most of Raging Swan Press' other offerings.

Throwing pews, looking at various carvings - there is a vast amount of mood-setting going on here that amps up the ante of what to expect from such a book by quite a bit. Indeed, the best thing here beyond that might be the fact that the presentation is so concise you can run this module sans preparation, just reading as you go. I did try that and it worked. The collector’s edition does cover e.g. even auras, provides details for carved runes and their identification, etc. Spell fragments, runes with latent energy that can be activated; tentacle-studded, strange pillars with weird dressings, tidal streams – the module manages to sport a surprising diversity of evocative dressing.

There are evocative guardian statues…and there is a truly powerful skeletal champion deformed half-fiend sahuagin oracle entrapped in a sarcophagus. Here, though, would be the truly cool component of this module: Beyond time and location as driving factors of this dynamic environment, the finale of the module is about the ire of dagon: A statue that may well hasten the rise of the waters – it can be defused and is presented as a skill challenge that is pretty interesting and not only sports an idea for further adventuring, but also involves the whole party. The concise summary of the effects of rising tide etc. make for a helpful further guidance for the GM.

Stats for Dagon cultists can be used to add further details and dynamics to the adventure. It should be noted that each of the combat encounters sports scaling advice for the GM.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I noticed no serious glitches. Layout adheres to a two-column b/w-standard, is elegant, helpful and easy to use. The pdf sports some amazing b/w-artworks, though fans of Raging Swan Press will be familiar with some of them. The pdf comes fully bookmarked with nested bookmarks. The module comes in two different versions, one optimized for screen-use and one optimized to be printed out. The cartography of the short fane is excellent and in b/w, but we do not gain a key-less version of the map for players, which constitutes a comfort detriment that’s relevant to the rating.

Creighton Broadhurst has further refined the already neat original module: The contextualization in the Duchy of Ashlar helps to ground the module and its cool ideas in the context of the region, adding some serious flavor to the proceedings. The module already was extremely GM-friendly in its previous iteration; in this collector’s edition, the module is even easier to run than before – a big plus, as far as I’m concerned. You can pick this up and pretty much run it smoothly with just 5 minutes of prep-time (or none, if you can process information while GMing) – that’s a big plus.

That being said, this is a pretty highlight-driven adventure: Beyond the skill challenge finale and the heavily template boss, the other challenges feel a bit tame for my tastes. That being said, this version is certainly worth checking out – I love the dressing, environment, challenges; the module is pretty brief and imho would have benefited from some additional rooms and places: As written, the threat of tides only comes fully into play in the finale. The time-management aspect would have benefited from, well, a longer, more pronounced complex that makes the player-decisions matter more. If your players are quick, they can clear the module rather swiftly. This does not mean that this is bad, mind you – it just means that the premise, the details and unique ideas herein could have (and imho should have) carried a bigger dungeon. In the end, my final verdict will hence clock in at 4.5 stars – but I can’t round up for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.