What is Adventure Atlas: The Mortuary?
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Adventure Atlas: the Mortuary is a $10 digital-only adventure toolbox produced to go alongside Sigil and the Outlands and the other Planescape products available on D&D Beyond.
The supplement is split into four main parts: the Heralds of Dust, Maps of the Mortuary, Campaigns in the Mortuary, and Mortuary Creatures.
It isn’t a single streamlined adventure but instead a series of adventure opportunities tied to an interesting location and faction. The majority of the content here is maps with unique elements you can use as a toolbox to build your own encounters and adventures around.
Heralds of Dust
The first section focuses on the Heralds of Dust, the faction in charge of the Mortuary. It expands on the basic ideas presented in Sigil and the Outlands for the faction, adding new elements like expanded faction roles, services, charms, and other concepts to flesh them out better.
I honestly love this kind of content; I wish it was printed within the lean main product this went alongside.
The Mortuary Maps
Described as “akin to roaming a unique magical wilderness like the Underdark or one of the infinite layers of the Abyss”, the Mortuary is a magical labyrinth full of respectful undead who are charged with managing the endless waves of corpses that flow into the magical city of Sigil.
This section details some of its features, including some interesting aspects like its Death Masks, what exploring it is like, and more. It contains tables for random rooms, and random encounters depending on the broad tier of play, meaning it can be fit to work alongside characters ranging from 1st to 16th level.
Beyond these general descriptions and tables, this section also provides you with four specific maps to explore: Corpse Receiving and Shipping (for 3rd-4th level characters), the Spirit Sump (for 5th to 7th level characters), the Nevervault (for 8th-10th level characters), and Factol Skall’s Orrery (for 11th level or higher characters).
None of these are entire adventures, with fully fleshed-out encounters, plots, NPCs, etc, but more so adventure concepts tied to some area-specific features that create one or two encounters around a plot hook.
SPOILER WARNING
If you anticipate you’re going to be playing in any elements of this Adventure Atlas, the sections outlining each of the “encounters” will contain spoilers. You’ve been warned!
Corpse Receiving and Shipping (3rd-4th Level Characters)
You’re provided with a map and the general premise that the party is looking for a specific corpse that can be found here. The area is split into four main areas, with other areas left open to fill with stuff as you desire, but otherwise are empty. The main areas are the Arrival Chutes, Coffin Fitting, Corpse Storage, and the Sorting Chutes.
The area includes a new monster, the animated coffin. It isn’t clear how the party will get into trouble, but it’s assumed that searching the area will disrupt the workers and lead to conflict. Those workers are basic cultists with no other exciting elements, despite being part of the Heralds of Dust faction.
This “bare bones” approach leaves a lot of room for you to put your own spin on things. The environment is fleshed out enough to give you an easy point to start from but leaves plenty of opportunity to spice things up and develop your own adventures using this map. The remaining maps share a similar purpose.
Spirit Sump
This encounter centers around a hub of collected spirits, the Spirit Sump. The party is somehow tasked with figuring out a solution to the problem presented. This solution is in the form of draining the reservoir, which requires manually activating three machine pumps while facing a ghostly assault from ghosts and specters.
Nevervault
The Nevervault by far is the most engaging encounter offered, with the players tasked with intervening with a new monster, a necrichor, from overtaking a Heralds of Dust exorcist tasked with guarding the vault.
There are eight crypts within the Nevervault which are protected by magic circles. You can opt to have some be faulty to release varied monsters from the Monster Manual or from the appendix of this product to challenge the group on the way in.
It additionally has Steles, which act as magical objects you can break to get friendly specters to temporarily aid you.
Factol Skall’s Orrery
The final map sets the player’s against a dead and vengeful god using a new stat block presented here. The group is aided by the Herald of Dust’s “factol”, Skall.
This is a simple encounter with a neat gimmick: randomly, the center releases a death beam in random direction down one of the walkways. It isn’t revolutionary, but does add a unique element to the fight.
Mortuary Campaigns
The second to last section in the supplement is a short section detailing a hub for a campaign set here, the Path of Graves, and a d4 table with adventure hooks for campaigns dedicated to the Mortuary.
This section is light. It connects the four maps listed above, making it a potential location to run all of these encounters from in a vacuum, but it otherwise lacks any concepts or structure to actually expand this setting into a fully-fledged, multi-level campaign.
Mostly, this section is four plot hooks and a map connecting the prior maps, and not an actual tool for aiding in constructing a campaign with multiple sequential adventures. It probably shouldn’t be labeled like this, but it isn’t hurting anything to be here.
Mortuary Creatures
The final section details five creatures: the animated coffin (CR 3), Factol Skall (CR 17), the Heralds of Dust Exorcist (CR 6), the necrichor (CR 7), and the planar incarnate (CR 22).
Of the new monsters, the animated coffin is the most readily usable and comes with a cute table of things that might be within it when encountered. It mainly acts as a Giant Frog or other swallowing creature that kills by consuming its victims.
Factol Skall has a massive swath of unique abilities, including two powerful reactions, a Fog of Death, and a lich-like rejuvenation feature. He would make a great big-bad.
The Necrichor definitely offers unique encounters as well in the mid-tiers, namely because its Blood Puppeteering ability is unique and devastating.
Planar Incarnates are lackluster; they’re giant sacs of hit points with two attacks a turn, a teleport reaction, and a pile of damage effects. They’ll play like dragons in a lot of ways but with three reactions, the Searing Gaze 3d10 damage reaction, and a Teleport reaction.
Who Is This For?
This is a fantastic little supplement for DMs looking for some quick ideas to throw together undead-centric adventures. Even outside of Planescape, I can see these rooms slotting into massive undead lairs. It definitely fits best alongside Planescape adventuring, though.
Three new engaging monsters are great alongside the expanded faction you can play around with. The sample encounter tables are handy, and while the “campaign” section hardly delivers anything useful to creating a campaign here, there are a decent amount of ideas you can start from littered throughout the product.
I wouldn’t say this is a comprehensive tool for playing adventures in the Mortuary, but it can get you started, or act as a great tool for playing around with some undead in the form of one-shots. I’d pay $10 for that!
Who This Isn’t For
Players. As usual, this is a DM-exclusive product with zero new features players can explore. If this just had a subclass or two, an undead species, a handful of spells or a unique undead-themed feat, I’d say it could even be worth picking up for players. It really doesn’t need much- one or two player options total would go a long way.
There are tons of cool ideas in here that you could base a character on even if you weren’t playing in this setting, yet because there are zero actionable items you can put on your sheet, this is going to be something only DMs should ever consider getting.
Additionally, if you are new to DMing, this isn’t going to create any adventures for you. You’re expected to already have experience building adventures and encounters as a DM, making this a product that’s really aimed at moderately experienced DMs. I’d think of it as a diverse set of Lego blocks without instructions; you’re intended to build your own stuff out of the pieces.
Online Exclusive Problems
The biggest issue with the product to me is its web exclusivity. I can’t print any of this out easily. There isn’t a way for me to have this offline in a convenient way, or have anything at all in the case D&D Beyond goes down or my account is deactivated.
I want a PDF of this. I want to be able to take a physical copy of this with me. The maps are a lot less useful in paper play if I can’t even easily print them out, or even quickly get them up on a display. I have to get all of the files extracted from the supplement myself- there are no downloadable folders of PNGs or anything.
As an online-only product, the maps aren’t easily portable to digital tabletops, either. This doesn’t come with Roll20 content or tokens. Having an online exclusive product that doesn’t support online play is a problem. Hopefully the developing tabletop address this issue, but for now, it remains my largest pain point with these D&D Beyond exclusive options.
A Micro-Product Worth Considering
With a lot of D&D content going for $50 or more, seeing something small, useful, and fairly inexpensive that provides content you can actionably use as a DM is great. Where products like the Monstrous Compendium Volume IV fail from a lack of useful tools, this is the opposite: a robust suite of small tools a DM can pick up and use in a variety of ways. I’m a fan; just give me it in PDF form at least, Wizards.
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