The second Companion Game adventure, CM2 Death’s Ride was released in 1984. Designed for level 15-20 adventurers, Garry Spiegle had a tough assignment. At this point, these were the highest levels of the game for which anyone had designed an adventure. Only Douglas Niles, with his level 15 and greater CM1 Test of the Warlords had written a similarly levelled adventure. And this was a very different beast.

Death’s Ride is, if anything, a more traditional adventure. There is an epic danger facing the realm – a portal to the Sphere of Death – and the party must discover it and a way to close it. Test of the Warlords had concentrated more on the realm-building portion of the Companion Game rules. So, could this adventure show how to do a major quest without leaning to heavily on the realm rules?

As it turns out, yes, it could. You probably don’t want to think too much about the plot. The idea behind it is sound enough, but a few of the contrivances to get to every aspect of the solution are a bit… contrived.

What is particularly interesting is that the adventure isn’t presented as a strictly linear storyline, as a lot of later high-level adventures would do. There is a lot of freedom for the players in how they approach things.

The basics of the story is that two powerful chaotic humans have open a portal to the Sphere of Death, causing a Death Cloud to appear above one of the border baronies of the realm. The characters are sent to discover why contact has been lost and discover that almost everyone in its capital has been killed by an undead invasion. This opening section introduces new undead creatures (Death Leeches) and raises the dread of the party as they wonder what could have caused all this: and what is that ominous cloud overhead?

The party need to learn of the artefact that is behind all of this, the Deathstone, and the artefact that can destroy it, the Hammer of Light. As you might expect for an old adventure (well, one of any era, really), there’s only one way to do so. This puts in a major problem point, though the party could continue without the information, just exploring the barony. However, how it is concealed is very clever. The steward of the barony has been cursed to become a cockatrice. If the party slay her, she returns to human form, at which point they can recognise her. They’re high enough level, so they can raise her, right? Well, when they do, the curse returns and she’s a cockatrice again. They’ll need to both remove curse and raise dead to learn the information. (This shouldn’t be a problem for characters of this level. Don’t run this without a cleric!)

From here, the path diverges as the party gets to choose which strand of the adventure, they want to investigate next. Most likely, they will go after the Deathstone, which a blue dragon guards, or the Hammer of Light. The Hammer has been broken into three parts and hidden in Miasma Swamp, each part guarded by a different threat.

In one of those “what was he thinking?” moments, that the Hammer is in the swamp is revealed by a message scrawled by the chaotic wizard who left it there! Why did he write it? It is possible that the ritual that broke apart the hammer required such a clue to be left. (Destroying artefacts can have weird requirements). But it’s also possible that Wazor was seeking to test the characters; the adventure does note that he tests them as they approach his tower, and he doesn’t stay around for a fight.

Motivations for both the chaotic priest and magic-user are sorely lacking. Their personality is, as far as we can tell from the adventure, “We do bad things.” The dragon is more fleshed out!

Most of the actual progression of the adventure is fueled by “Let’s visit this location on the map and see what the problems are like there!” Honestly, there are worse ways of doing that. This will eventually lead the players to the town of Gollim, where the chaotic priest is besieging the town. This is an opportunity to use the War Machine rules for mass battles, but the adventure does give a more heroic route for characters not interested in armies. Upon lifting the siege, the players can learn of the Temple of the Stars, where the Sphere of Death is. Assuming they’ve destroyed the Deathstone, they can then use high-level magic (close gate or wish) to destroy the Sphere and end the adventure successfully.

So, the progression of the adventure is:

• Reach the capital of the barony and discover it has been attacked (and possibly how to destroy the deathcloud)
• Explore the barony, dealing with the following challenges or opportunities:
  • Learn from the folk of the realm of nearby threats.
  • Retrieve the Hammer of Light
  • Retrieve the Deathstone (and destroy it) from the Blue Dragon.
  • Fight and drive off the chaotic wizard from his tower.
  • Lift the siege of Gollim and defeat the chaotic priest, learning about the Temple of Stars
• Travel to the Temple of Stars and destroy the Sphere of Death

It’s not perfect, but it’s a plan: and it isn’t strictly linear!

As this is a 32-page adventure, there isn’t too much detail on any one area. Some seem overdetailed. Do we really need every room in the capital’s castle described?

Other areas have a lot of things to fight. But as players generally like things to fight, that’s okay.

Apart from the main text of the adventure, there’s a section detailing how intelligent undead creatures can control other undead, as well as three whole pages detailing what the barony was like (income, troops, etc.) before the invasion. Which I guess will prove helpful if one of the characters wants to take over afterwards and nurse it back to health. The Companion Rules, with their realm management, was an unusual time for the D&D game.

Overall, this is a promising adventure that doesn’t always deliver, but has some decent action and a good threat to motivate everyone. It does offer quite a bit of advice, which can help the DM who is otherwise struggling. There may be better adventures out there, but few of this level: and that’s worth something.