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The second Avatar trilogy module came out about a month after FRE1 Shadowdale, and naturally picks up right from the end of that. The party is imprisoned in Shadowdale and accused of murdering Elminster (don’t worry, he’s back as an excessively annoying deus ex machina by the end of the module).

It of course starts with a needed repeat the general information and plot of the first module, including the magical chaos tables, as magic users are still as much a danger to themselves as anyone else. Also, as before it’s a heavy-handed railroad, though there’s a bit more lore this time. The big change that the entire cast from the novels are now important to the module. FRE1 only used Midnight, with the others as backup for small parties. Now they’re all used to move the plot forward. Without the players getting to interfere. Notably, each chapter has “offstage events” to tell the DM what’s going on away from the tracks he’s in charge of; this is nice as it lets DM have these events in mind when these other threads catch up to the players later.

Back to our plot, things start very poorly, with all of Shadowdale baying for the PC’s blood, leading to a kangaroo trial of the PC’s being guilty for being on the scene and a lack of other available suspects. It would be better if the text pointed up that emotions are running high, and everyone is being carried away on a wave of hysteria, including Mourngrym, who should frankly know better. Something about how any explanations the characters try to give get shouted down and “refuted” by emotion. (Also, just how is a party in the 5-8 level region supposed to have killed 26th level Elminster and cleanly disposed of the body….) But no.

So the second real event of the module is two of the novel NPCs helping spring the characters before they can be executed in the morning, and they (hopefully) flee the area on boat going down the Ashaba River; and this trip then consumes too much of the module. Railroading is in full force here, all attempts at alternate plans the PCs may have are smashed away. Now, fleeing by boat is about as logical an idea as there is going to be, since the speed of travel won’t be bad, and the river won’t get tired. I’d think with a bit more work (and page count, admittedly) you could schedule out just how the Shadowdale militia tries to cover the various places the PCs could head for, how long it’d take for the militia to get there ect, and set up a game of cat-and-mouse for this part. Past the immediate ‘get out’ motivation, it is assumed the party (prodded by Midnight, if nothing else) will be hunting the Tablets of Fate, one of which is thought to be in the city of Tantras.

Wait, where?

Tantras is a town on the east shore of the Dragon Reach, just shown on the detailed maps of the original grey box. But there is no write up of the place in the Cyclopedia of the Realms at all. Compared to the instantly-recognizable locales of Shadowdale and Waterdeep for the other parts, why here? Well, a partial answer is that this part was originally meant to go to the city of Ravensgate, just down the coast, but that had just been handed over to the RPGA for development, and wrecking it would be a no-no. That said, while Ravensgate is larger… it also has no entry in the Cyclopedia so it still doesn’t fit with the other two locales. Admittedly, no other cities (as opposed to regions/countries) had any ‘name recognition’ at this point.

To get there, the general idea is the party should go down the river to the port of Scardale, and then cross the Dragon Reach. And despite all the railroading, don’t worry about if they go there, because some high-power assassins show up on pegasi, and there is a forced capture of the party. The assassins then take the party to… Scardale. So the party is imprisoned again, and aided in a jailbreak again, and sneak around an occupied town looking for a way out. (Looking for a way in—to get at a ship—would have also been a good direction. Just sayin’.)

At the end of Shadowdale Bane was “killed”, and now he’s taken over Fzoul Chembryl of the Zhentarim, and is back to plan A: recover the Tablet of Fate he hid in the Temple of Torm in Tantras. To do this, he (as the God of Assassins) kills every assassin in the Realms to power himself up into a kaiju and go stomping off to Tantras. (This is part of the point of the series, as there were to be no assassins in 2e, and instead of just waiting for PHBR2 The Complete Thief’s Handbook next January—with an assassin kit—TSR killed them; in the Forgotten Realms at least. No mention of what to do in the case of one of the PCs being an assassin is made….)

Torm’s avatar is in Tantras, and has his followers power him up for big kaiju fight in the bay (according to the wiki, this kills Torm’s followers, but I didn’t note this being mentioned in the module). Leaving the party to sneak into his temple and find the Tablet of Fate, and then go ring an ancient bell to put up a barrier around the town just as the two kaiju destroy each other in a massive explosion (was TSR getting summer blockbuster envy?).

There’s about two thirds of a page of suggestions on what to do next. The end of it suggests a number of threats to Tantras and how the party could work to keep Tantras an island of stability during the Time of Troubles. Frankly, that sounds more interesting; there’s a lot of work a team of intermediate-level adventurers could do without being bludgeoned onto the tracks every step of the way.

Lore-wise, there’s more here than in Shadowdale. A few locations along the Ashaba river are described, including the Pool of Yeven (marked on the original maps, but given no entry in Cyclopedia of the Realms) which gets some background that I would take notes on for possible use in a regular campaign. We get a map of the Temple of Torm in Tantras, which isn’t a great design, but it will work for the module, and gives an idea of more normal times in it. Two new spells (one unique to Elminster, but it is neat), three new magic items, and one new monster. The poster sheet has a full 3D map of the Tower of Ashaba, and maps of Scardale, Ashabanford, and Tantras (the former two got a column the Cyclopedia, but no maps). They should probably have indicated the limit of the barrier that protects Tantras from being blown away.

Finally, a major problem with this series is alluded to in my previous review, but I only realized while writing this that what was happening is that TSR was in “NO SPOILERS!” mode with DMs here. If elements of the overall plot were not introduced in the equivalent novel, they weren’t revealed in the modules either. This means that a DM running these as they came out had to run them blind (I think the novels were generally simultaneous releases); no knowledge of the overall plot, who’s important, and the actual scheme of the bad guys is given. In Shadowdale, we get told the effects of the Time of Troubles, that the Tablets of Fate were stolen (which list what the jobs of all the gods are; still no idea if you could sneak in some “corrections”, or if it mystically does it automatically, or why there isn’t a backup). Bane is the bad guy, but we don’t find out until Tantras that yes, he did steal them, instead of just taking advantage of the chaos. And we still don’t know the plan. Did he expect Ao to toss everyone to the mortal realms? Is he trying to “edit” the tablets? What’s his goal beyond being an evil bad guy?