Planescape review: Epona's Daughter
For the last three years, I've run a Planescape1 campaign through almost all of its modules. Now, after successfully finishing it, I want to look back and review these adventures, highlighting the pros and cons of each one.
Each module will be rated in three categories, up to 3 points in each:
- Presentation: how easy it is to understand and run the adventure.
- Openness: how open the adventure's scope is, regarding the freedom of choice.
- Quality: Overall quality of the adventure, including the originality and richness of its content, and players' enjoyment.
The full list of currently published reviews is available under the planescape tag.
Epona's Daughter
In which a fine Steed is captured on the Prime, leading her Sisters to seek the Heroes to Aid in her timely Rescue.
- Designer: Colin McComb
- Source: The Well of Worlds2, Chapter VI
- Party: 1-4 characters of 9th-11th levels
- Play-time: 1 session
- Locations:
- Prime / Kellinon
Overview
This short adventure begins when a nic'Epona,3 one of the mystical horse daughters of the equine goddess Epona, approaches the party asking for assistance in finding one of her sisters who disappeared at some backwater Prime world. Should the characters agree to provide assistance (and why wouldn't they want to befriend magical planeshifting horses?), she will transport them one-by-one to the shore of a large lake where the lost nic'Epona was last seen.
The region of about 30 by 20 miles is sparsely keyed with six locales, most of which the party will visit on their journey, though a good half of them contain zero gameable value. Upon the first contact with the local population, the characters are mistaken for the "faerie folk ambassadors", given their exotic look and the fact that the locals are not too keen on the whole multiverse lore. The party must choose either to go through the troll-infested quicksand bog or the haunted forest. Assuming that among these two options any reasonable adventurer will choose the latter, the party will soon meet the local forest gnome tribe and find out that the lost nic'Epona was captured by King MacDougal, with the help of his court wizard kePahl.
The king's keep is described in excruciating detail, in stark contrast to the previous part of the module. From this point, the characters are on their own as to how to better approach their mission. As they already know, the locals believe in Seelie and Unseelie Court fairy tales, so it might be wise to use this to their advantage. If they play their cards right, MacDougal might just release his prisoner, negotiating a formal treaty with the "faerie folk." The less favourable outcome could be that the king suspects the characters to be the agents of the Unseelie and attempts to drug and imprison them in the dungeons. The thievery or combat approaches are also supported by detailed descriptions of each room in the castle.
If the characters fail to achieve a diplomatic success, after freeing the mystical horse, they must outrun the king's forces chasing them back to the lake, where a herd of nic'Epona will save them at the last moment. The reward for the successful completion of this mission is the ability to call to the nic'Epona a limited number of times once the character needs to travel to another plane — a valuable boon for any planewalker.
Presentation
🖋️🖋️ useable
Just like many other Planescape adventures that I've already reviewed, this module spends too much space to describe too little, as if to fill the precious page space with useless flourish. The five wilderness locations are described in about three pages, while 38 keyed locations of MacDougal's keep take just five.
The region map has a scale, but no grid or hexes, which would be useful if there were something to do here except to follow the main plot. The map of the keep is a good one, with a 10-foot scale and all important details marked down. The two main NPCs (King MacDougal and court wizard kePahl) are fully statted out, and other ones are given the standard in-text stat block.
Openness
☀️ linear
This barely could be called an investigation, since just an hour into the adventure the characters would know where the lost nic'Epona is. Not that there are many options present on the map anyway. Once the party gets to the keep, they are free to choose their approach from the usual "diplomacy, thievery, or outright killing," but either way the successful outcome is the same — freeing the imprisoned nic'Epona and escaping from themselves.
Quality
★★ good
An enjoyable, albeit limited adventure that severely lacks in the wilderness department, compared to the nicely keyed castle — the main star of the module and could be easily dropped in wherever you need one in your campaign. Overall, a nice distraction before the epic finale of the Dead Gods.
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