5E Mini-Dungeon: Sanctuary of Exsanguination (5e)

This pdf clocks in at 2 pages and is a mini-dungeon. This means we get 2 pages content, including a solid map and all item/monster-stats hyperlinked and thus, absent from the pdf, with only deviations from the statblocks being noted for the GM. Unlike most 5E Mini-Dungeons, this one does not come with VTT-maps or player-friendly iterations, which is a bit of a bummer.

Since this product line’s goal is providing short diversions, side-quest dungeons etc., I will not expect mind-shattering revelations, massive plots or particularly smart or detailed depictions, instead tackling the line for what it is. Got that? Great!

This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion.

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Still here?

All right! When the witch-priestess Segolia established a temple in a frontier town, she proceeded to demand sacrifices of orcs and similar raiding humanoids – which was no problem for as long as the place remained a frontier’s town…but progress being what it is, the raiders have been bested and the witch continues to demand sacrifice. Now people have gone missing – so the PCs are tasked to investigate Segolia’s temple.

While the guards provide ingress to the PCs, they do so at the request of their witch-priestess and she is pretty much not making any pretentions – the temple sports a deadly stone guardian and undead as well as two portals the PCs need to pass to reach Segolia – on the way there, further adversaries remove any doubts of Segolia’s evil nature. The adversaries utilize the terrain to their own benefits and Segolia, ultimately, turns out to be a vampire spawn.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I noticed no significant glitches. Layout adheres to a beautiful 2-column full-color standard and the pdf comes sans bookmarks, but needs none at this length. Cartography is full color and surprisingly good for such an inexpensive pdf, but there is no key-less version of the map to print out and hand to your players. The pdf does sport one nice piece of original full-color art – kudos!

Michael Smith’s sanctuary is a solid, rather magic-heavy little mini-dungeon and sports some cool potential for encounters as well as a solid final boss. At the same time, the rooms themselves felt a bit less versatile or interesting to me. The module does lose a bit of its old appeal in Kyle Crider’s conversion, as the original penaggalan boss has been converted into a vanilla vampire. On the plus-side, skill-uses are pretty versatile this time around. In the end, we have a solid module, well worth 3.5 stars, though I can’t bring myself to round up here.

You can get this mini-dungeon here on OBS!

Endzeitgeist out.

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