Annihilation Hold is an adventure for characters levels 10–16 by Alan Patrick and Jeff C. Stevens. The setting of the adventure is the ruins of an orcish citadel. Within, the heroes can discover many undead orcs and a particularly dangerous artefact. Yes, it’s a dungeon crawl, where the primary motivation is a treasure. A magical treasure!

However, calling it a dungeon crawl doesn’t quite do it justice. You see, it’s possible to talk to the orcs. And upon doing so, the players can learn the true nature of the artefact.

I love the idea of a cursed genie lamp. I love that there’s an order of undead orcs protecting it and that they can recruit the characters. However, once your players have that realisation, there’s no more dungeon crawl. Should you just withhold that information from the players? Perhaps not!

Exploring the Dungeon

Annihilation Hold is a high-level adventure, and the people who wrote it have a lot of experience. It includes five new monster stat-blocks; these monsters range from challenge 5 to 8. These may seem low, but the adventure is more attrition-based than others. That is to say, there are many smaller battles, and each takes a little of the characters’ resources. There’s not much attention given to handling the abilities of high-level characters.

The adventure focuses on combat and exploration. There are a fair number of things to see and discover, mostly related to the history of the dungeon. And a few amusing traps. Well, I find them funny, but I’m a DM.

While the adventure handles the basic dungeon exploration well, I’m fascinated by what happens if you talk to the orcs. Because then the scenario changes to one where you must hold off an invasion of fiends! Did your players find the initial exploration too easy? Some devils are attacking now!

You could just start the adventure like this, with the players taking the roles of the undead defenders.

Randomness and Planning

While I love the idea of the devil attack, I’m a little less thrilled about the execution. There’s no real schedule of invaders. You use random tables to generate the foes, initially placing them in rooms where the characters are, and later putting them elsewhere.

The advantage of this technique is that it diminishes the load on the DM. It also allows the limited scenario where the players control the undead defenders rather than their regular characters to function well.

However, it’s just devils with no leader. The attack feels more like something the chaotic demons would attempt than a devil army. I’d like a schedule that indicated where they enter the complex and an order of where they attack. When running the adventure, I’d give some thought to designing such an attack in advance.

The dungeon is perfectly playable and enjoyable as it is; however, given the possibility of swapping the goals of the party, I’d have liked more care on the alternative scenario.

It’s all nicely laid out and well-written. The map is excellent.

I wish the adventure had a different name: “Hold”, for me, means a fortress, not an item – and the “annihilation hold” is the jar restraining the evil djinni. However, the item provides the possibility of starting an entire campaign arc based on it, so I think that’s an excellent feature of the scenario.

Overall, Annihilation Hold is a good adventure that promises entertainment when used as a standard dungeon-crawl, but falters somewhat when you include the devil attack. I’m sure the devil attack can still be enjoyable, but I’d have preferred a different approach. Despite that, I still recommend this adventure!