I really wnted this to be a good experience for my players. Perhaps it was in the execution on my part. but it was a disappointment.

The players are not heroes or main characters in the story. It is the princess's story. Making the players feel that their actions were meaningful was challenging. The first part seemed to be the best for them. Uniquely devising a training regiment that they could all participate in with their unique approach was creative. The last two parts, however, saw the PCs taking a backseat with the expectation that the princess solves the problems, the roles of PC and NPC shifted. I had the players take control of the princess, so it wasn't just a couple of hours of them wating me talk to myself and making some skill checks to help the princess. The players had no real agency in the last two parts. The capstone part 3 was highly anticlimactic even after throwing in a thematically appropriate encounter for the players to participate in.

Some other constuctive advice, working in how the Astral Elves and the humans both have lineages that relates to the imperial thrown would have been good. This was confusing to the players. As a DM, it would have appreciated the statatistics of the various spelljammer ships included in the module text and clearity on if it was to use stat blocks from the SJ hardcover, and lastly, Thri-kreen only physically speak speak Thri-Kreen or telepaty. Without someone in the party with that language (or comprehend languages or tounges) that section is problematic.

On the positive side, I liked how you worked the various skills the pricess learns into the following parts. It demonstrated consiquences for the training section.

I ran this module at a regional premier convention a few weeks ago. While it is fun for the right group and fresh in the sense of being highly socially oriented, there are several parts that railroad the PCs and can come down to a single poor roll resulting in death of a PC, railroading, and the potential for inappropriateness at the table.

For example, "They must succeed on a DC 18 Dexterity (Stealth) group check to escape without implicating Mahadi. On a failed check, they manage to evade capture, but are identified—which implicates Mahadi, since he brought them to the ball." As written, this one group stealth check can determine if a character is dead or alive perminately, given Mahadi's response to being implicated in the heist. There is no flexibility written into the module to allow for creative game play or other ways to avoid implication.

Another example, bonus objective A. While this is not as extreme, since the expected way to resolve the situation is to enter into another infernal contract (the second one in the module, since Mahadi requires one, too). The story award given for a combat resolution is essentially a death sentence for any season 8 or 9 PC. NIghtmare Haunting will kill them and the resolution costs most of the max gold available to be earned through level 9, plus three soul coins.

Lastly, the part in the main story that requires PCs to come up with "an activity of their choosing. If a character partakes, Qirozz exerts herself during the activity which causes her to take a nap..." While not explicit, they are at a party in hell. Each person I disucssed this with immediately came up with the same "adult" activity to do with her to make her tired and take a nap - at a part, in hell. I would think that given the heat AL took last season that caused the Philter of Love to get banned from AL play, the module might have some suggested activities. I personally used hand-to-hand, non-lethal sparing match - in which it would have been nice to see a stat block for Qirozz.

Solid, challenging adventure. It gives players alot of room to pick their path in how to overcome this, however, I have rarely seen a table do another other than cooperate with Heartkiller. I like the imagry and overall storyline, of which this is the capstone.

The moster - Beast of Talos, is by far one of the funnest to run. It is exceptionally challenging and gives even experienced players something to counter metagaming.

One ofmy favorite mods to play and run. It is a great example of how a T1 mod can be used very well to introduce players to the various pilars - role play, exploration, and combat. Creativity is rewarded. It introduces the Parnast story nicely and really makes players want to invest more time in Parnast.

The module has many things going for it. It has a lot of player agency options in how to execute the quest overall. The challenges are solid and the story integration with other adventures is positive.

The downside, which isn't really a unique downside, is how easily some magic items can break the mod. Ever since White Plume, Wind Walk is available to many groups. This basically turns this from an 8-hour mod into a 4-hour mod.

This was likely the least challenging module I have run at T3 and likely one of the most frustrating. It seemed to me that the intent of the encounters along the way is simply to take up time. Not in-character time, but seat time. The encounteres were no challenging to even a low-level T3 table, they soon realized they needn't waist resources, which then made it go even longer - cantrip, simple attacks, no smiting, etc.

The only redeaming part is the secret mission, which is a challeng in itself.

There are several things I really enjoyed about running this module. First, for a T3 mod, the challenges were appropriate - the puzzles were not too difficult to overcome, but the consiquenses were perfect. I did run this at a local convention and the best part was the time limit. The look on the players faces when I started my timer for 2 hours. Suddenly, the challenge of the adventure was quite well known. No doddling, stop the ritual in time.

The boss fight can be toiugh and there are a lot of moving parts - or rolling parts in some cases. The spell selections are limited for opponents, which then relies on creative use of space.

From the player's perspective, they said it was one of the best T3 mods they have played and certainly very good for this season.