There is a lyrical nature to Graeme Morris’s writing in Eye of the Serpent, the fifth of the UK series of adventures. He describes the view from the top of a mountain, down to the valley below, where a river winds like a serpent, an island some way along its length appearing as an eye to the dwarves who once lived there. It makes a strange contrast to the action in this adventure, which throws combat challenge after combat challenge against the players, as they attempt to make their way down the mountain and escape into the valley.

It is, all in all, a most peculiar adventure.

The adventure advertises itself as an scenario for either a solitary ranger, monk, or druid, or alternatively for a party of 4-6 level one adventurers. In the case the adventure is used for one-on-one play – that is, one DM and one player – then their character is not, in fact, alone, but is accompanied by a group of three level 1 NPCs. This undoubtedly makes the challenges easier to negotiate.

The landscape it describes is notable, not least because it’s the first time one of the UK adventures is not explicitly set in the World of Greyhawk. This small area of the world – whichever world it is – once had a small dwarven settlement that was taken over by duergar, and a tribe of human horsemen, who arrived after the dwarves were gone and have now misinterpreted the writings the dwarves left behind. The description of the shrine of the dwarves, which was built on that small island I mentioned before, has been mistaken for a shining jewel that is lost somewhere on the mountain. During the adventure, the players have the opportunity to realise the truth, though I don’t know how many will.

The set-up for the adventure involves a pair of rocs, who kidnap the adventurers and take them to their nest at the top of Hardway Mountain. However, as the adventure begins, the rocs have left their nest to go hunting again and the party escape. Now they just need to descend the mountain and escape. But, as they’re first-level adventurers, this is likely to be a challenge!

One of the innovations in the adventure is to have each of the three classes have a different path down the mountain; some paths only become available if the right class is picked. For group play, the DM can select the open paths themselves. The optimum path for the ranger leads through 18 of 34 encounters, although there are a few options that might increase that total.

As to the nature of these encounters, well, in the early stages there seem to be a lot of “a monster attacks with surprise”. Even once we’re past those dangers, the bulk of the encounters are combat. Finding actual monsters to talk to is a rarity. As befits its low-level nature, the monsters are generally weak, but the sheer number of encounters is likely to necessitate the characters resting multiple times to regain healing magic. (The one NPC that always accompanies a solo character is a cleric. While its spells aren’t chosen for you, I expect three copies of cure light wounds would be standard).

I also expect that the adventure was written with the expectation that characters did not die upon reaching 0 hit points. With no obvious way of introducing replacement characters, it’d be a bit of a drawback if the DM decided to use this adventure to introduce a player’s shiny new druid, only to kill him off a few encounters in!

Mind you, the very idea of using this adventure to introduce a lone character sounds very unusual indeed. No other examples from the time that attempt something similar. I would expect most ran it with a full group of regular characters; a few would have enjoyed the challenge of one-on-one play, but likely did not continue that character thereafter.

Many encounters use monsters from the Fiend Folio, a collection of monsters designed (mostly) by UK players. Variety is the name of the game, with few monsters reused except in a small number of linked encounters. While, as noted, most of these encounters are pure combat encounters, there are exceptions. Probably my favourite involves a group of bullywugs who let loose a giant lizard to deal with the adventurers, only for the lizard to turn on them instead!

Despite all these nice touches, it is extremely puzzling that this is an adventure designed for introducing a ranger, druid or monk to a campaign, for there is little that necessitates those characters. Indeed, a monk is basically just a thief at this point, and the special abilities of the druid are entirely in their spell list – they have no other class abilities at first level. The ranger can, at least, track, but there’s only one encounter that uses this ability. I suppose there’s a thought that the ranger and druid are wilderness classes, but why is the monk included as well?

Eye of the Serpent is not an adventure I warm to, although it has many nice touches. Its preferred use is extremely specific, and there are a few too many basic combat encounters for my liking – especially given the level of the characters. I don’t think there’s enough times the players are encouraged to use their minds rather their characters’ swords. It has memorable images, and gets away from the regular tropes of first-level adventures with its setting and plot, but ultimately, I think the effort is poorly directed. Worth looking at, but not worth emulating.