Fenrir’s Fury

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96052[1]By Thilo Graf

This adventure from KromeDragon Games is 26 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page back cover, 1 page SRD, leaving 22 pages of content, so let’s check it out!

Fenrir’s Fury is a sidetrek in the North, i.e. a viking-themed adventure and I really love those. Unfortunately studying Scandinavian literature and culture has made me rather picky about what I consider acceptable and “getting” the mindset, so let’s check out whether Fenrir’s Fury prevails…

Essentially, the basic plotline is simple and can be easily inserted into any Northlands-style environment and features one interesting dichotomy, that of the culturally victimized being. The vengeful villain of this piece, a druid called Fenrir (which is a bit unfortunate as far as names go…) had to find his village destroyed, everyone slaughtered. Now he is up for revenge and wants to destroy a village that might be responsible for the viking raid that destroyed his world. Unfortunately, the PCs are currently in said village…

After participating in drinking contests and a drunken brawl, games of tall tales (presented as skill challenges – nice!) etc., the fey allies of the druid storm the mead hall and try to kill everyone. While the attack on the sanctity of the mead hall is a trope, in literature such transgressions usually would come off as rather despicable, as they violated an unwritten law to which, at least in my mind, the fey would have adhered. Oh well, on the plus side, this adventure features one battlemat-style map in full colour (including grids) and a DM-version that has the terrain features spelled out – neat. The town of Volksfelt (linguistically not particularly Scandinavian, but oh well) is also under assault by Ice trolls and even a large ice elemental (also with their own maps) and once the PCs have vanquished these foes, they’ll be sent off to avenge the fallen. After another (AWESOME!) skill challenge that has the PCs encounter numerous potentially deadly natural hazards, the PCs will have to battle yetis on a frozen river (again, with a map!) and finally confront the druid and his companion (who prove to be rather deadly and come with their own map!). The druid actually has stats already calculated into his stats, but also provides the unmodified ones and stats for the druid’s dire wolf form. That’s neat service! Should the PCs save the village thus, they will have helped the people, yes, but the victory is bitter-sweet – after all, they will go out on raids again. It’s this cycle of violence, honour and revenge, that makes the adventure work on a cultural level.

The pdf concludes with an appendix of the village’s stats and a short glossary.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are actually top-notch, I noticed no glitches! Kudos for such a small company as KromeDragon Games! Layout is also professional and features a reddish rune-border on the top and adheres to the 2-column standard. We don’t get a b/w-version or bookmarks, which are minor downers. This adventure actually surprised me with its quality – especially as far as go-play aspects are concerned. With all those neat full-colour maps and the stats and DM-help-maps, you actually don’t have to read this adventure in advance and run it just as you go. Add to that the cool skill challenges and the very low price and you should like this particular venture to the North. As a full-blown adventure, I wouldn’t recommend Fenrir’s Fury, as it’s designed as a side-trek and is not truly complex or too intriguing. If you’re a linguistic nerd like yours truly, you’ll notice some discrepancies/problems in the nomenclature of names/locations, but apart from people like me, this won’t be a deciding factor. I was rather torn about my final verdict, between 3 and 4 stars, but due to the work cut out for you and the low price, I’ll settle for a final verdict of 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

Endzeitgeist out.

Fenrir’s Fury is available from:

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