This adventure has its origins in the dim and distant past, when lizardfolk were a dominant civilisation especially in jungle areas. The extensive backstory tells how they built a temple in a remote mountainous area to their deity, and how, over time, they became proud and fell away from the gods, angering them... and their empire fell. Spin forwards to the present day, and the settlement of Tooj-Reh is puzzled by strange lights from the nearby jungles. Perhaps the party will be able to find out what's going on?

Various hooks are supplied to get the party into the right area, and once they reach Tooj-Reh - possibly having to dodge a forest fire on the way - they have an opportunity to gather information about what appears to be going on in the area and get asked to investigate (if their curiousity has not already been piqued enough!).

The structure of the adventure is quite free-form, there's one encounter whilst the party is in Tooj-Reh (and if that doesn't get them interested, nothing will), one in the jungle on the way to the long-lost and abandoned (or is it?) temple, plus the exploration of the temple itself. The temple is based on one featured in the Map-a-Week series on the Wizards of the Coast website, which is still available at the time of writing if you follow the link in the PDF - worth doing as the map provided here is labelled and you might want a blank version to show your players.

Of course, travelling through a jungle is an adventure in itself, and there's a sidebar on the jungle environment to help you. The temple too is well-described and there's plenty scope for further adventure once the immediate threat has been dealt with - although the assumption is that the party will fight and destroy rather than attempt to find a peaceful solution.

This adventure has the heady excitement of Indiana Jones-style exploration of ancient sites, battling against primitives and assuming the general superiority of current civilisation over that of the past... with scope for more thoughtful characters to try and figure out past civilisations and their secrets.

Return to The Eye of the Sun page.

Reviewed: 4 June 2016