Campaign 26: The Shrike (Quarterly Report II)

18 Aug, 2026

"Hell-oooh"¹

The Sinners Campaign II

Our Campaign 26 is still going. But the Sinners campaign might soon come to a natural end. We are nearing the end of the module's content and OD&D (Ocean D&D) is calling us. I still want to write up some thoughts and documentation. Some thoughts might be differant and some might be répétitions.

Hell is not so bad... of you are rich!

A lot happened since the last report I wrote up after session 13. We just finished session 24, and hell looks different. The game has practically ceased being an open table as the party has stabilized with 3-5 regular players. Prometheus (Prometheus), Corliss (SullyTames), and Bertram (BUE) make up the core trio. Seraphine (CalmRush) is on vacation and might make a return. Siv (ScrollMage) unfortunately can no longer make it on Wednesdays.

Sully has written a great retrospective on his 6 months in hell. I recommend you read it.

Here are some of the most important in-game events without context:

1. The party stumbled upon unthinkable amounts of treasure in the lost Starforge and discovered the remains of Gamigin, the deceased consort of Forneus.
2. Forneus, Archon of Iron, fell in battle against Sakar, the Maggot of Mammon, former Lord of the Drabmarket and now the new Archon of Iron. The party aided him in this great war to rejuvenate the Court of Iron.
3. The party has committed to expanding the empire of their new liege, Sakar. They work towards his goal of bringing true commerce to the Shrike. They established trade relations with the furnace mother Mama Lux, Ukku-Laia the Spider-Witch, and conquered the sinner settlement Hollowtown, renaming it Hollowmarket.
4. The party started climbing the spire looking for more power and to reach the top of the Shrike. They finally arrived at the Palace of the Heart, eager to meet the Court of Gold and the Court of Silver.
5. No one thinks of escaping hell anymore. Recently they have been dreaming of becoming Archons themselves.

Feelings on the Module

I have enjoyed this campaign a lot. It's had its ups and downs as all games do. The core players' enthusiastic commitment as well as the book's strong thematic identity definitely helped. There is a lot that can be said and written about Leo Hunt's book.

As I said last time, I am really not happy with the quality of editing and proofreading. There are leftover placeholders and formatting errors that could have been caught on an additional careful read. Now that I have been using the book for 6 months, it's begun to show some wear, and I fear it might start to lose some pages. It did see a lot of use, and I have taken it with me on several train rides. So that may be partly on me.
Something I realized using the book is that I do not care for the smokey grey background texture. It looks cool at first glance but lessens the reading experience.

I also tend to agree with the verdict of the Dead Letters podcast that the overall organization of the chapters and information should have been different. I reread the last part of the module again yesterday and turned the last page of the keys to just see monster stat blocks, treasure, and items. All the information on possible endings and the archons should definitely have been there. It is a bit funny that my party's vision of never leaving but conquering isn't anticipated by the module despite being a very obvious path for powerful D&D characters to take.

Despite all these gripes, I think it's a very good module and deserves praise for being ambitious and honest. It's ambitious because it goes for a big trad-style adventure book and because Hunt expects his readers to be literate. He writes for his vision (like it or not) and not for the communication of facts alone.
I'd call it honest because it is transparent about its inspirations. Some might call its Appendix N boring and rightly so. It is to us freaks. But I enjoy a book that cites its sources and has focused vision.

One last thing I'd like to highlight here is the lack of maps I complained about in the first post. Leo Hunt told me on his discord that there are several locations he would have expanded on as dungeons had he been allowed to (I assume word count and page count had been set by the publisher). The lack of maps for these locations turned into some of my favorite prep sessions. I decided to expand the Spider-Witch caves and integrated it with a ruin of an old Court of Air that had been surpassed by the current one. None of this was in the book. But seeing how the players changed the political landscape invited me to think about how other courts might have had regime changes too. The players spending 45 minutes talking to a mad albatross-shaped devil who called himself Captain Aubrey (named after Russell Crowe's character in Master & Commander) and kept on rambling about his victory against the Acheron was one of my highlights, pointless as it was. The subsequent discovery of the writhing mass of flesh that was the remains of the former Archon of Air the party solved by feeding the primordial demon the equivalent of a cyanide capsule. An item I had completely forgotten about.

A Note on Gold, XP and Advancement

As I explained in my previous post, I changed the way XP worked in my game and got rid of the Idols of Mammon, where they would have had to sacrifice coins to gain XP. I decided that they would gain the XP (soul shards) instantly but could only level up once they returned to a safe haven.

Using the advancement meant for games like Knave (1000 XP x current level) and a module that expects b/x character progression caused some unexpected quirks. Several times the party has found a hoard that pushed them 4-5 levels instantly. This produced some of the most fun and tense sessions because while death wouldn't have been the end, it would have meant that all soul shards were lost Dark Souls style.

On the other hand, this campaign has reinforced my belief that gold for XP only works if there is something to do with the loot. The Shrike originally solves this by making the players melt it at the shrines to Mammon, but that doesn't feel like a good solution.

It's pretty clear that this module was written for OSE (a heavily house-ruled b/x retroclone) because of market decisions. I think this is a pity because it would have worked great with a game without levels like ItO or its forest fantasy adaptation, Cairn. Hell has a ton of potential for foreground growth or “diegetic” advancement with infernal pacts and mutations caused by the blood of the nameless god, alliances with the archons, and the powerful relics that are devil masks.

How will it end?

There is one last major area/dungeon left. This isn't really a spoiler for my players, as it doesn't mean the campaign has to end after exploring the Palace of the Heart. However, the party will have a big picture view of the Shrike and might start thinking about its ultimate goal.

My players have joked that this turned into a shōnen game with all the power-ups and level jumps. So that may mean that the final battle will be against a god? There is one impaled on the Shrike. But they were contacted by a fraction of the nameless god, who asked the party to free him. So maybe liberation is the plan? There is also Valafar, the Archon of Whispers, who talked to them about his own grand designs. And Sakar, the Archon of Iron, dreams of expanding his industry overseas, wherever that may be.²

"Oh no I fell into hell. Now I have to have fun :(((" ³