Mini Quest: The Talisman of Moloch by David Dudka is a free role playing game supplement published by Survive RPG. This is a short adventure, part of the Mini Quest series, that is intended for use with Dungeons & Dragons based systems, although no individual system is specified.
This is a five page PDF that is available for free from RPGNow.
The adventure is a sequel to Madness of the Mouther and follows on immediately from that one. At the end of the previous adventure, the characters had recovered a magic item, the titular Talisman of Moloch.
The talisman needs placing on the corpse of its owner, the necromancer Moloch, otherwise he will arise from the dead once more and start controlling undead in the surrounding area. The characters are paid to accompany a cleric and two paladins to Moloch’s tomb to do this.
The adventure is essentially in two parts. The first part is the five day journey to the tomb, dealing with encounters on each day, most of which are undead.
The second part is exploring the tomb itself to find Moloch’s coffin. Some of the other coffins have useful magic items in them. The tomb also has many undead occupants, and the characters are trapped inside by a large force of skeletons.
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, even though it is short, they would have been useful. The text maintains a two column format and a number of minor errors were noticed (the main one being using “it’s” instead of “its”; a common mistake in this series). As well as a map of the tomb there are a number of custom black and white illustrations. Presentation is above average for a short adventure.
There are a couple of NPCs who are more fleshed out than usual, one an ally and one a foe, which is good. The others are really just there for background.
The adventure doesn’t specify what level it is for, and this would have been helpful. Too low a level and the party will easily get overwhelmed by the sometimes quite powerful undead. Too high a level and characters could quite possibly eradicate the blocking force of skeletons without too much trouble. GMs will have to decide for themselves an appropriate level.
Mini Quest: The Talisman of Moloch is a decent follow on quest for the previous one, and it can be found for free by clicking here.
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