One of the tricky things to do with high-tier adventures, particularly ones for the D&D Adventurers League, is to make them feel significant enough. Demagogue, the first of the Sovereignty trilogy from Baldman Games, succeeds at this brilliantly.
Bane, the God of Tyranny, has kidnapped the candidates for rulership of Phlan and has begun to indoctrinate them in his way of ruling. As this would be a very bad thing for Phlan, the adventurers must rescue them. These are the sort of stakes I like in a Tier 3 adventure!
The three adventures in this series each deal with a mission to rescue one candidate. In this adventure, the adventurers find the noble candidate Barratt Sokol in a dreamscape where he controls Phlan with an iron fist. They must seek a way into his stronghold to either persuade him that the dream of tyranny is not his or to defeat him in battle (thus showing him he’s not powerful enough to rule).
Unfortunately, Sokol uses mind-mages to enforce obedience in his dream Phlan, so the adventurers need to find a way to shield their minds from the various mind probes they may encounter. (“Oh no! Not the mind probe!”) The adventurers quickly learn of someone who could help them, but this person is hard to find. Unfortunately, discovering the location of this person is the weakest part of the adventure. It’s been designed as a skill challenge (hearkening back to the 4E rules), but it’s entirely too abstract. There are no real clues to find, and the suggested clues don’t make sense. How is it that one person knows the district, another knows the street, yet another knows the building, and the final person knows the door? Who are the people who know this? How do you know to talk to them? It feels very forced and unnatural.
Thankfully, it’s just a small part of the adventure, easily skipped over. Where the adventure works, best is in its interactions with the NPCs. You get to meet Villonah Leadstopper, a gnome whom you might have rescued, long ago, in the very first DDEX adventure. There’s the reclusive mind mage Icelus and the person you need to rescue, Barratt Sokol. However, the highlight is the interaction with Bane, the Black Lord. It’s with these interactions that the scene is set, and the adventures get to feel that what they’re doing is important.
The combats are also pretty good. The mind-mages of Sokol, his aberrant pets in the sewers, and finally Sokol and his guards make for a diverse set of opponents, and the combats felt difficult. Although your mileage may vary; balancing Tier three and four adventures is a difficult business at best!
The “magic item” reward for this adventure – in fact, a boon from one of the gods of good – is a nice non-standard award that many players will enjoy.
Overall, this is an excellent adventure that I greatly enjoyed. Highly recommended!