Background: Three players and an NPC Locathah cleric have been hired by a man named Erik representing the village of Torlynn to brave a ruined keep and break a curse of ice and snow.

Underway: So the players used tactics, cooperation and a mostly reasonable distribution of loot... truly impressive! The module was ran as close to the book as possible, with only the bone scepter by the sub boss changed to a Rod of Retribution (destroyed by Lemont) and the Ratling minions (Ratlings?) were retconned to Tasloi since a large and wide variety of goblinoids live in the region. With all 4 players barely surviving the module, their party now expands to 6 as our one night replacement Scarlet Roze the Tiefling Warror joins the party as well as an Aarakocra Ranger named Suroh to travel to the capital of Mayaernic to collect the bounty for the rescued as well as collecting a reward from the Elven Carpenters Guild for saving the guild members from a frosty doom within the warlock's keep. In addition, an old warriror bestowed upon the party a small box that expands into a shitty house when commanded, but it seems to attract nothing but trouble as they journey southeast.

Postmortem: I stuck to the module for the vast majority of the encounters with the exception of adding Crusader, the holy avenger from module H2 The Mines of Bloodstone. I know this module gives out some incredible items for the level range of players, but this was just some strength and flavor I wanted to add to the paladin since he is surrounded by crew of deplorables. Despite some of us playing together for years I wouldn't put it past any of this party to got rogue and kill the good guy - in fact I am hoping one of the party tries being alpha over this pally in particular because the humiliation would be severe. The players were already at the high end of this module's level limit, so while I did not bolster the numbers of enemies per encounter, I did keep all of the special abilities afforded to them directly from this module (such as 16ft high duergar in addition to bumping up the HP and AC. My rolls were extremely awful at every key point of every fight, trap and diversion, with the exception of the party ranged fighter who took a deadly poison dart to the head, but seeing two casters get slaughtered by giant scorpions did make up for it. When it came to the final battl, I did not want to have a confusing shitshow of summoned "demi-shadpw monsters" (2nd edition illusionist spells) so I had Nigel summon two powerhouse shoggoth to instead of having a summoning frenzy. In addition, I got rid of the gibberlings and mycanoids and doubled the duergar while keeping the trolls which was a relief to my VTT. I think the party would have wiped if not for the freed mezzoloth (via an iron flask)that got to Madreus before he could misty step. I would have to say that my favorite battle was the wraith trap in the outer gates. The party running and gunning along the edge of the pit home to four wraithsmade the situation desperate and party were hanging on the dice rolls which made it fun. If you are a fan of lovecraftian creatures and still want to have some roleplay on the lighter side, but with no side quests then this module can be played without any major changes except converting creatures to 5e. Your players will be happy with the loot (though a few magic items will have to be altered, especially if the defeat Madreus... no way the players were going to get their greedy paws on lenses of utter domination.

Cartilage: The party used the control crystals gained throughout the module to create a stable gate to Sharpspire in Chauntless. This of course, would not be the actual destination since all gates are redirected to Buthhazel.

Keywords: Aberrations, Humanoids, Undead.