Chaos Spawn (2e/SAGA)
In the heat of an unnaturally warm summer¸ the Knights of Takhisis conquer nearly every inch of Ansalon¸ even the glorious city of Palanthas. Mere days later a messenger arrives in Palanthas bearing a dire missive: Something wiped out the Knights posted at the Tower of the High Clerist and now cuts a swath of destruction across the countryside! Chaos Spawn pits your heroes against one of Chaos's strongest minions: the Daemonlord. They must race against time to save the city of Maelgoth and its citizens from a terrible fate at the hands of this spawn of Chaos. If it razes Maelgoth¸ the Lord of Daemons may grow too powerful for anyone to stop - your heroes are Ansalon's last best hope! Chaos Spawn uses the AD&D game rules and provides information suitable for running the adventure using SAGA rules as well. This adventure and its companion¸ Seeds of Chaos¸ detail the epic battles of the Chaos War¸ described in the novel Dragons of Summer Flame by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Product History Chaos Spawn (1999) is a Chaos War adventure for the Dragonlance: Fifth Age RPG. It was published in December 1999. Abut the Cover. Nothing says Dragonlance like dragons. This Todd Lockwood piece nicely encapsulates the Dragons of Summer Flame (1995) era because it shows an evil blue dragon and a good silver dragon fighting together against their common foe¸ a chaos fire dragon. Origins (I): Back to the Summer of Flame. Chaos Spawn is the second and final Dragonlance adventure set in 383 AC¸ during the Summer of Chaos. It picks up the story from Seeds of Chaos (1998). Like its predecessor it is written for the AD&D rules¸ but also includes conversions for the SAGA rule system. Origins (II): Many Sorts of Chaos. The main enemy of Dragons of Summer Flame was Chaos¸ the opposite number of the High God¸ long trapped in the Graygem. It makes sense that a major battle against his minions in this adventure occurs in the "Caverns of Chaos". However¸ one can't help but wonder if this isn't a clever reference to the "caves of chaos"¸ one of D&D's best-known dungeon crawls¸ found in B2: "The Keep on the Borderland" (1979). Origins (II): The End of Summer. Chaos Spawn is the last of just two Chaos War adventures. It sort of feels like there should have been a third¸ to fill out a trilogy and to move the story to the end of the Chaos War¸ but at the time D&D was rapidly moving toward 3e (2000) and Dragonlance was rapidly moving toward the War of Souls (2000-2002). There would only be one more SAGA supplement¸ Rise of the Titans (2000)¸ and it would be more oriented toward the Fifth Age. Adventure Tropes. Chaos Spawn is on a bit more of a railroad than Seeds of Chaos ¸ as there are five distinct sections and an epilogue that players must move through¸ in order. With that said¸ some of the individual parts of the adventure have real freedom¸ including the two dungeon crawls (actually¸ a cavern crawl and a cloud crawl ) and the relatively open investigation of the city of Maelgoth¸ complete with "timeline of doom" to keep things moving along. Exploring Krynn. Chaos Spawn begins in Palanthas and has some nice detail on the city¸ but mainly leans on Seeds of Chaos and the recent Palanthas (1998) supplement for its background material. After that¸ it tours southward to the High Clerist's Tower and the Plains of Solamnia before ending in the city of Maelgoth. The last is the most important exploration of this adventure¸ because it's a major city that had never before received any attention. Monsters of Note. The daemon warriors of chaos were briefly noted in Dragonlance: Fifth Age (1996) and then received more attention in The Bestiary (1998)¸ but Chaos Spawn was the first book to stat up the daemonlords (for both AD&D and SAGA)¸ for the first time laying out all of the enemy forces from the Summer