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And we're back with the exciting conclusion!

Note! This retro review of a 25 year old novelization of a 46 year old D&D adventure will contain unmarked spoilers! Which hero will tragically die? Don't read on if you don't want to be spoiled!

FINAL WARNING!

To recap:

“Escalla checked the set of her thong – perfect as usual.”

Now that that is taken care of, the heroes are ready to take on a literal (lesser) God(dess). But first they stop to ponder some deeper questions of man and god and our place in the universe.

"All right these 'god' guys? Hasn't it struck you that they're just beings a bit higher up the power scale than you and !? They're a scam!"

And

"You don't have any gods?"
"None I'd cross the street to say hello to."

With that settled off we go!

They arrive in the first level of the 666 levels of the Abyss and thanks to some shape changing and portable hole mischief they make it to the door to Lolth's person layer.

"No one touch the door. Polk do not touch the door! Polk!"
Polk touched the door.

So they find themselves on a floating stone platform surrounded by a maelstrom of souls of the damned and encountering doorways literally stuck to the side. There's heroic battles with demons, a trip to the lodestone trap room, everything you would want.

"Hey you! Hello in there! Anyone here order a two-foot-tall goddess in a thong?"

And through courage and skill they find their way through. Until someone sets off a fireball in an enclosed space.

But they survive, and they find a map.



Which is kind of neat since Q1QotDWP (as I like to call it) has one of the coolest and highly original maps of any module, and the players really never get to see it.

But it leaves the question, who left them the map and why? The only clue is... a snake scale.



Hmm...

Side note, my search for pictures Lolth's secretary brought me here:

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/osec

Make of that what you will.

Now as all DM's know players never follow the script, so after a few rooms of clever traps and killer demons they're sick of it and just drink the stash of enlargement potions (much to the annoyance of the fairy who was using them for more personal reasons) and climb to the top level.

There they find the door to the vampire dimension but find the vampire in question hacked into small pieces by six curved swords. And a table full of food waiting for them.

And the only clue is a snake scale.

Hmm...

Fed, rested and ready they now enter... the Steampunk Demon Spider Palace of the Damned!

And we get my favorite scene.

"Behind a desk sat a slim, cool woman with bobbed black hair. Her six arms were busy all over the desk, writing, sorting, doodling and filing all at once."

Lolth's secretary, without ever looking up, tells them to enter their names in the appointment list and since they have an appointment, they're not intruders. And since she never looked up she can honestly tell her mistress she's not seen anyone strange.



Oh and she leaves a map of the Giant Mecha Spider Palace on the desk and leaves.

We cut to Lolth, sitting in her throne room, covering the floors with extra quicksand and waiting for the heroes to arrive (alas her secretary was not quite as clever as she thought).

But the heroes don't show. Instead they go down to the boiler room and start trashing the place.

Lolth is forced to confront them and there's a huge fight among blowing steam pipes where Lolth faces the full and unleashed power of not just Chekhov's Gun, but Chekhov's Arsenal as the party uses every magic item and power mentioned so far to take her down.

Even Polk gets in on the action

then an enraged badger suddenly had her backside in its jaws

Lolth ends up drowning in a portable hole full of holy water and the heroes win!

Note: Lolth can only be permanently killed on her own plane, I would argue that killing her in a pocket dimension like a portable hole does not count. So feel free to use Lolth in future adventures.

But victory, as always comes at a price as a hero meets a tragic end.

Surprisingly it's not Henry whose entire personality so far has consisted of 'having a crossbow' and 'being named Henry'. No it's Enid.

You remember Enid right?

Enid is the sphinx.

So in the epilogue the heroes set out to bring her back.

I kind of expected this would consist of trekking to the nearest High Temple and bargaining with the priest until they got 10% off of a resurrection spell. Death in D&D is slightly less permanent than death in the X-Men after all.

Nope.

Instead we get a heist. An afterlife heist.

"Children of Thoth! I am an amazingly benevolent energy being from far beyond your realms! Long ago, my people evolved far beyond mere physical form."

And the party tries to con the god of wisdom into giving them the soul of their buddy.

In the end they succeed, after tripping a literal deity with a grease spell, and are drifting down the river with their resurrected friend and their new buddy the Type V Demon, off to their next adventure.

Which due to rights issues and Greyhawk being a dead property will never be told.

Come back next time as we wrap this up.

And we're back. The novel was fun, not a great one, but fun.

Sometimes it really reads like someone's gaming session typed and novelized. I would bet good money some of the funnier bits are from actual games.

And you can almost reverse engineer the players from the characters.



The Justicar with his Schwarzenegger physique, unmatched warrior skills, arsenal of unique magic items and grim-dark manner is obviously someone's long-run character who is now almost as cool as the sketch on top of the character sheet. He may not have glowing red eyes himself, but his talking hellhound cloak does.

And guaranteed he takes the character way too seriously. I'm not sure if the player made The Justicar bald because he is, or shaved his head because The Justicar did. Either way I know he has a shaved head.



Henry, he has a crossbow and his name is Henry. At least it's a magic rapid fire crossbow. Obviously a casual player getting the hang of things, and the DM took pity and gave him a decent magic weapon.



While Enid is a power gamer taking advantage of permission to use non-human races by playing a sphinx. But she's not a very good power gamer, because Enid's contributions are reading languages and dying.



While Polk, Polk had been in this campaign way too long and has no F's left to give. He's just there to play the weirdest character he can and make fun of everything. Probably misses a lot of sessions too.

And then we have... Estella.



2' tall, highly sexualised, and with whatever powers or skills the plot may require. Need to fake it past some demons, Estella gets the job because she once slept through a semester of Demonic, rather than say the Sphinx who speaks every language ever created...

So your enjoyment of the book will depend entirely on how funny/sexy/annoying you find her.

The player is nothing like this in real life, but goes nuts after her second Mountain Dew.

QotDWP-The Novel isn't quite a parody but it is fun.

Paul/Pauli Kidd is a long-time gamer and has a really good interview here:

https://greyhawkstories.com/2020/03/25/interview-with-paul-kidd-the-real-justicar/

And has other, non-licensed, books out there.

So basically if you like these Retro Reviews this will be a good read for you. I've started White Plume Mountain, the first book in the series and it's about the same. The middle book however does not seem to exist in digital format and people want $100 for the hardcopy so alas I may never enjoy it...

Anyway onward.

Next up, a lost classic by Michael Moorcock: The Outcast of Kitzoprenia!

Guaratee if it was based on an actual campaign, the Estella player was a dude.