Losing Fai is a four-to-six-hour adventure for level 5-10 characters set in Avernus. It is the eleventh of the Season 9 D&D Adventurers League adventures. The characters must investigate the disappearance of Fai Chen, the wandering merchant, and all of his duplicates.

After a trilogy of adventures in which the characters sought to free allies from various places in hell, Losing Fai finally brings the focus back on Dara, Mahadi’s Travelling Emporium and Fai Chen. I missed their presence in the previous trilogy, where they’ve been absent from the “Call to Actions”. In fact, I don’t think the Tier 2 adventures in general have emphasised Dara enough, and I still don’t get a sense of why she’s important.

However, she reappears here and is worried about what’s happened to Fai Chen. In previous adventures, we learnt that the Shou trader had once been a trader enslaved by Mahadi, the rakshasa owner of the Emporium. To free himself, he learnt how to create duplicate copies of himself. Hundreds of them! However, now they’ve all disappeared. And, as Fai Chen’s aid is essential for Dara’s plan, she asks the characters to find him. She describes three places that they may find clues to his disappearance.

This introduction, sadly, causes problems. You see, if the characters visit Burney the Barber first, her information leads them onto the other two locations and provides clues that help guide their role-playing there. If the characters instead visit one of the other two locations first, then there’s a good chance they get nowhere. Perhaps the investigation was retrofitted to allow variation in the order of events?

In the Emporium

The players can interact with memorable characters in the investigation. I had a lot of fun with the alchemist and his mad scheme of “memories in a potion” which led to very entertaining exchanges with the party. If you run the adventure, I advise for Dara to direct the characters to Burney and let them learn from Burney the other locations. There are links that send players back to Burney’s from the alchemist, but I think the adventure runs poorly if they visit the notary first.

The information about the culprit’s location (the characters need to find the shape and colour of a tent) is a bit underwhelming, and it does make me wonder why Dara or Burney are unable to tell you this directly. I didn’t think Mahadi’s Wandering Emporium was that big – everyone should know everyone else!

I like how the adventure reveals the identity of the kidnapper and his rationale for his actions. The players have options as to how they recover it as well, which is excellent. Unfortunately, a secret door hides the final solution. I like secret doors for providing bonus content, but not for hiding key information.

Once the characters know where Fai is, they have to get there. The journey is made more difficult by a collection of road encounters, two of which occur only if the characters tipped off Mahadi to what they were doing. The adventure notes you can omit the other encounter if you don’t have time. These encounters aren’t that detailed, but I found them evocative.

Rescuing Fai

The rescue consists of two combat encounters. The monsters, while not exactly varied, make thematic sense, and the encounters also include a couple of complications so that everything doesn’t devolve just into straight-up swinging of swords and slinging of spells. The final monster is joyfully evocative.

The final confrontation occurs after the characters have rescued Fai. Mahadi wants to know what they’ve been doing. The result of that confrontation can have significant impacts on further adventures in this season.

I didn’t run either of the bonus encounters. One is a fight where the characters protect the Emporium from waves of demons, while the other is a negotiation with a devil opposed to Zariel. The latter encounter offers the potential of great role-playing but does risk running short.

Final Thoughts

As with all DDAL adventures from the last couple of seasons, the format makes it harder to run than I’d like. There is some boxed text, which you may appreciate. The adventure also provides a hand-out that summarises recent events. The splitting of NPC information into “What Do They Want?” and “What Do They Know?” remains something that I struggle with; I often find the resulting text clunky and difficult to parse.

While I typically don’t comment that much on the physical layout of these adventures, this one contains a couple of art inclusions which move the “Adjusting the Scene” boxed text onto the next page and disassociate it with its encounter. When this means a page turn hides the text, this can cause problems.

Overall, I enjoyed Losing Fai. It’s a well-constructed adventure with moments of great imagination. Unusually for a DDAL adventure, it also provides real consequences: the characters might not rescue Fai or they could be kicked out of the Emporium. It has small glitches in structure, but you should be able to overcome them. Recommended!