This pdf is 29 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 24 pages of content, so let's check out this adventure!
This being an adventure review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players should jump to the conclusion.
Still here? All right! This 5-room dungeon transcends the format of the premise by several factors but let me elaborate: This adventure is set in the Coliseum Morpheuon and it rocks for it - why? Because there is a place that surpasses even the Coliseum in weirdness and potential: The Rabbit Hole. Being on the realm of dreams, otherwordly beings and dread presences, aberrations and stranger things still dream as well, combining their alien minds with the sub-conscious dribble and madness seeping through the realm of dreams. In this place, people discard their dreams, throw them there to wither away - after all, dreams can destroy one as easily as a lack of them, especially on the plane of dreams!
More intriguing, once, a sorceror discarded a dream there - a dream of madness that might have destroyed said man - who happens to be the Khan of Nightmares. Born out of his betrayal of his pit-fiend ally, the sinkhole remains a dangerous demi-planar cesspit of death and now Tarrec, a peddler of dreams, hires the PCs to brave the rabbit hole. The peddler wants the PCs to go to a tavern called "The Face" where the PCs have to put a mirror on a tentacled wall horizontal (e.g. by gravity-change), put liquid on it and enter the rabbit hole. The tavern is presented with enough information to make for a disturbing introduction to the adventure and I hope to see it expanded some time in the future (Jonathan Roberts - looking for a challenge?). Jonathan Roberts is a good cue - the stellar cartographer provides a stunning full-color map of the 5 stations (I refuse to call them rooms) of this adventure. Another awesome feature of this adventure is that PCs may actually dream-burn like hell, dream-burning and morphic subjective gravity are enhanced and here, anyone may use dream-creation. I LOVE these innovations, as the expand upon the stellar mechanics of dreamburning and make the possibilities available to the PCs wider.
The adventure per se hasn't even started and it starts with a bang - the PCs fall through the floor - falling is not enough of a threat, though - The Kulkale , a CR 19 Tough Gargantuan Chaos Beastling Apocalypse Swarm is not to be trifles with and makes for a truly deadly, disturbing foe. Of course, no allusion to Alice in Wonderland would be complete without a tea-party. This one includes shard-laden crumpets and acidic tea - worst of all, the PCs should play along. Have I mentioned that the hatter here is an insane sadist whom the PCs have to appease to avoid the fate of the other tea-party guests? The third section is a moebius-loop-like labyrinth including a pack lycanthrope-nessian hellhound adamantine-clad creatures with 15 class levels. Ouch! After that, a Eldritch Shoggoth serves as the final combat encounter before the conclusion, which depends not only on the DM and his version of the coliseum, but has potential galore to be used in even more ways than provided.
Conclusion:
Editing and Formatting of V.2.0 are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to the beautiful 2-column full-color standard used in Coliseum Morpheuon and the pdf features a nice mix of classic Alice-illustrations and CM-artwork. The full-color map by Jonathan Roberts is awesome and the pdf comes with bookmarks. This is an awesome adventure that redefines 5-room dungeons. The expanded dream-rules are great. The locations, each of them, oozes style and symbolism. The Alice-allusions are dark, creepy and sufficiently distinct from e.g. Crystal Frazier's stellar "The Harrowing" or the classic Dungeonland. I have but one problem with this adventure: It is only 5 rooms long. I would have loved a full-blown cthulhoid, nightmarish, high-level Alice-scenario - preferably around 128 to 200 pages. This distinct longing for more, the captivating pull the adventure exerted over me while reading it, the imagery - this 5-room dungeon belongs to the coolest little scenarios I've read in quite a while and thus deserves my highest verdict - 5 stars and the Endzeitgeist seal of approval - Ben McFarland, Clinton Boomer and Matt Banach have created a stellar scenario with trademark complex statblocks that alone are probably worth the asking-price. Check it out!
Endzeitgeist out.
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