Following the raids (and revelations) of The Tithes That Bind, the party is tasked to seek out the Great Oak for answers, only to find that something is pulling his strings...

The creatures controlling the Great Oak don't really mesh well with the rest of the trilogy. With the undead theme of the Black Wyvern's minions, an illithid and an aboleth stick out like a sore thumb.

The initial fights with the undead soldiers and the mercenaries seem meant to showcase what minions are available, but only serve to drag out the module if the party is poor on AOE damage. The combat with the illithid as written feels like it's out to get the players, with it being allowed to mind blast through walls as they try to chase it through the mansion. The aboleth fight is also easy to miss (thus losing the players that objective, although this would not be applicable post-S8), if the players decide to attack the Great Oak when they meet him.

This module needs a fair bit of work to make it playable. Definitely the low point of the trilogy.

I recently ran CCC-GHC-BK1-03 at a tabletop convention and it was by far my favourite of the Border Kingdom's modules for reasons I'll get into below. I would also acknowledge that this module does not appear to sit well within the overall story at first, but a closer examination of the bonus objective reveals that it does a fair bit of explaining.

Could the bonus objective have been tied to the main objective so as not missed? Perhaps.

This modules basic structures is:

• Exploration as you follow directions towards a location you've been told about.
• Exploration of that location and a roleplay encounter with a character central to the Border Kingdom's struggles.
• A follow up encounter with multiple potential outcomes against a very powerful creature.
• A bonus encounter with an even more powerful creature that has the potential to kill your whole table.

The reason I loved this module is that I knew I was running all the content. So everything I was able to lead everything that was happening, and the first real dangerous encounter, into the bonus objective creature. It really empowered me as a Dungeon Master and allowed the creature to be truely wily and persuasive when contronted. So much so that it convinced several party members it wasn't worth dying over and turned the other party members against each other with what were legitimately true offers of power - if sketchy in the long run.

The module has the potential to be very difficult if the DM doesn't carefully consider how they will use the two primary advesarial creatures. A lot of opportunities to let the players know what they're in for would be recommended.

My players had a blast at this module. And the enemy had such an affect on some of their characters as to have lasting impacts on them (one bought a ring of mind shielding to never have to deal with a creature like this again.)

I had a lot of fun playing this adventure at Gamehole Con. It should be noted that our DM warned us ahead of time that there was a very high probability of character death. No one in our party died. One person did come close. I found this adventure to be a nice mix of creepy and silly.

As I'm now preparing to run the adventure I see one problem with it. There is no guidance as how to adjust combat based on APL. The DM's tips section states that there should be sidebars providing this guidance but they don't appear anywhere in the PDF. I imagine that this was accidentally missed during the editing process. Veteran DMs can probably make the needed adjustment on their own. Myself? I'd like to see an updated version that includes the sidebars.

I'll be candid and direct. This module didn't feel like it fit into the storyline at all. Everything else was a classic heros-for-hire adventure exploring the towns and surrounding areas of the Border Kingdoms with a little intrigue sprinkled in. Everything else felt like you could achieve success through different tactics and outcomes. The Darkest Knight is dark horror in a Haunted Mansion. It felt like the concept was written, then relocated to the Border Kingdoms with only a few minor modifications maybe weave it into the main storyline. No, not woven into, just kinda featuring a couple cameos to connect it. Regardless, at the end of the module we didn't feel like the storyline of the Black Wyvern or the Dark Knight had advanced at all, which was confusing based on the title of the module.

My chief complaint, though, is that the adversaries chosen by the author have abilities that specifically target intelligence saves and doing lots of psychic damage, placed into scenarios that felt like they were there expressly to TPK a party or at least felt like it was designed with a DM vs. players adversarial dynamic. 40 minutes into the module, 3 of 5 players at my table were ready to get up and walk away and all five of us were vocal that we weren't having fun. One was so upset that he was prepared to go speak directly to the author. (Kudos to the DM for talking us back into it, recalibrating his strategy to ease up on the difficulty, and working with us to find a way to make the challenge fun.)

Maybe this was more in the way the DM ran it for us, because others that played this module said it was quite easy, but for us, this module was INCREDIBLY difficult for a group of Tier 2 characters and I really wasn't a fan at all.

The first objective required to get the full advancement requires you to "defeat" the Lawful evil creature, but the scenario can be murky such that the heroes have no reason to destroy the aberration. (If everyone in the mansion is dead, then the creepy thing in the moat isn't a threat to anyone, is he?) It felt like a "there is only one way to win, but you won't. This crap was made to kill you." module.

Just make sure you review the module thoroughly and that your players are ready for a challenge. If they're expecting a romp in the woods fighting average difficulty undead or monsters and then are whalloped by the boss monsters in this scenario, you could find them extremely frustrated and ready to quit.

Caveat emptor. Your mileage may vary.