Legacy’s Wake is an adventure path for D&D 5th Edition, by Mithrilpunk Press.

It is an almost 300 pages long book that features a setting along with a fairly big adventure, taking the characters from level 1 all the way to level 17 and beyond.

The Setting

The setting is quite unique from the get go. The area the story takes place is the Besieged Cliffs, a plateau that meets the sea. On top of the plateau there are gargantuan insect-like monsters roaming about, in the sea you can find leviathans posing a constant danger to ships, and in the numerous caves below the cliffs all sorts of horrors can be found.

However, danger does not come only in the form of monsters. The weather is unpredictable and the most dangerous phenomena are the armada storms. These are huge destructive storms that appear in an instant, last for days, and leave pretty much nothing standing behind them.

In this hostile place there is a city that acts as a haven, called Skyfall. It is build inside a sea cave and spreads from its bottom all the way up to the top of the cliffs. This means that it’s a city you can explore in all three dimensions.

Since Skyfall is a trading hub(trade uses land, sea, and air), money has a lot of power, and where money gathers, guilds follow. There are a few guilds in the city, some of them ordinary but some others quite unique. The history of how they came to be is very interesting and also plays a role in the adventure.

Another interesting thing about Skyfall is that you can easily find races living there that in other cities would be deemed unwelcome at best. The reason behind that is that racial differences aren’t as important as profit.

Also, even though I said that Skyfall is a haven, I meant that it usually keeps the monsters and storms away. However, it can’t protect you from itself. Life in Skyfall isn’t easy and its residents definitely don’t make things easier.

The Story

The characters are low ranking members of the Thieves’ Guild that get caught up in the machinations of very powerful and very ambitious people. The constant power struggle and backstabbing leads to various situations in which the characters find themselves in the center of, and then have to escape. Of course, things are a bit more complicated than that, especially when various other powers join in this rumble. And behind all that, there’s one person who’s trying to become a god.

There are quite a few NPCs in the adventure. Their characters are well made and, if used correctly, will surely add to the atmosphere of the adventure. There are descriptions of them that provide enough information about them and, if the need arises, there’s additional information spread in the adventure whenever is needed.

Running the Adventure

The story is structured in a unique way, which is based on the structure of television series. It is divided into four seasons and each of them consists of five to six episodes. Each of the episodes is like a small adventure, comprised of about six encounters.

However, the similarities with television series don’t stop here. The authors make good use of flashbacks and cutscenes. This way they provide ways for the DM to dispense information by showing instead of telling. While in the flashbacks the players get to play their characters, during cutscenes they take control of NPCs. I’d like to note here that this nonlinearity could damage the flow of the story, but in this case it’s handled well and adds a lot to the adventure.

This structure gives a bit of a railroady feeling to the adventure. While you can change the order of some of the episodes, the sequence of events is pretty much set.

However, this offers more to the adventure than it takes away. The way the adventure is designed makes it easier to prepare and run the it. It cuts down the necessary work by the DM by a considerable amount. Also, it gives the opportunity to less experienced DMs to run a rather big adventure.

Art

There’s a lot of beautiful art included in this product. You can find depictions of NPCs, landscapes, and monsters and all of them are very well drawn. Moreover, there are some well drawn maps. I believe there are enough maps to cover all the areas that need one.

Additional content

There are more than 100 pages are divided into six appendices.

Appendix A: Side quests

This appendix contains three side quests that can be used at specific points of the main adventure. They are kinda big, since each one grants at least one level up to the characters. While they are optional, it’s highly recommended to use them because they help with the level scaling of the adventure path.

Appendix B: Bestiary

The bestiary is more than 60 pages long and contains more than 200 monsters. Of course, some are tied to the story but most of them are new monsters that be used in the setting or anywhere you want.

Appendix C: Magic Items

There is a wide variety of magic items provided in this book. There are about 50 of them and they range from weapons and armor to things you wouldn’t expect to be magical, like a cooking pot.

Appendix D: Rules for air and naval ship combat

You will also find a quite detailed set of optional rules to be used for air and naval ship combat. I won’t go into details on them here but they do look interesting and I suggest using them when running the adventure.

Appendix E: Handouts

This appendix is mostly populated by stat blocks that will be used by the players during cutscenes. There are also some notes to hand to the players.

Appendix F: Maps

In addition to the maps found in the main adventure and the side quests, there are a few more in this appendix that can complement the adventure here and there.

About the printed version

The adventure is also available in a hardcover version. The
quality is really good. It doesn’t have glossy paper, but the paper used is of high quality and the pages seem to be a bit thicker than usual. The cover is made of the same material the Hobby Store Exclusive version of Volo’s Guide to Monsters is made of. All who had the chance to get it know what I’m talking
about and also know how amazing it is.

Some extra notes

There were a few errors here and there, but that’s expected for a book of this size. Most of them didn’t create any trouble running the adventure, but there were a couple errors in stat blocks. The digital version has already been fixed and there’s already an errata document for the owners of the printed version.

Another note, which is more like a personal preference, is that I would like a more detailed table of contents. There’s a lot of content in the book and more details on the table would help finding what you want faster.

Along with the errata document, there are more resources found in the Mithrilpunk Press website. There is a bestiary, a guide to Skyfall, and a printer friendly version of the handouts found in the adventure.

Finally, there’s also a free adventure you can use to have a taste of the setting and the storytelling mechanics. The adventure is called Bloody Harvest.

Final Verdict

I would definitely give Legacy’s Wake a positive review. Both the adventure and the setting it takes place in are very interesting. The low difficulty of running it is also important. If you want an adventure set in a place where everything is huge and dangerous, I suggest giving it a look.