Rising Sands is an adventure by Christopher Waltz for a 6th to 8th level party. The players are caught between two opposing powers, used as pawns by one to stop the other.

Disclaimer: We were provided with a free digital copy of this product.

Story

This dungeon crawl takes place in a desert area – not in any particular setting, but it should be pretty easy to insert it in either the Forgotten Realms (the supplement suggests Calimshan or Mulhorand) or in any campaign setting where there’s a large desert.

As for the story – there’s quite a bit of background, but the important part is that a long time ago, a warlord name Khafar discovered a ritual to prolong his life. Well, not exactly prolong – turned to undeath, the ritual returns him to the living world every 101 years to try his hand at conquering and destroying again and again. As you might expect, along the centuries he has amassed quite a number of powerful enemies; the most bitter and persistent one being a blue dragon named Alaethryria.

Somehow (there are a few plot hooks) she has decided to recruit the players and use them to stop his ritual once again; Khafar is a powerful wizard, and getting him while he’s still half-asleep is considerably easier than waiting for the ritual to complete. As for why Alaethyria can’t do it herself – Khafar has learned from their previous clashes, and has warded his tomb against dragons. Now, take note that as a blue dragon, Alaethyria is evil; she’s not stopping Khafar because of any noble or selfless reasons, he’s just her rival for territory. In fact, she doesn’t exactly recruit the players either, more like press-ganging them and dropping them in to solve the issue. Sure, she’ll give out some petty treasure (petty for her) to encourage her new minions, but they don’t really get to negotiate much.

Anyway, enough about the lore and background – the actual adventure is pretty straightforward; assault Khafar’s tomb and put him down once again. During their trek inside it, the players will of course have enough combat to deal with, as well as traps, puzzles and some roleplaying, in the form of ancient ghosts, culminating in the boss fight against Khafar himself.

Overall, lots of variety to keep people engaged – there are also some suggestions for scaling the battles depending on how many players you have and what level they are.

Art & Layout

The layout is clean and easy to follow, with lots of boxed text, descriptions, extra information, et cetera. Every room has lots of details, including tactics for the enemies, which makes this very easy to run. As for art, besides the front cover (which I really like, really fits the theme) there’s some small pieces scattered throughout. Not much, but it breaks the text well enough. Of course, there’s also a map of the dungeon included.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Rising Sands is a straightforward dungeon crawl with an involved background lore and all the classic pieces someone might want. It’s very easy to run and shouldn’t take more than a couple of sessions.

This post contains affiliate links. By using them, you support the blog without any extra charge being applied to you.