This adventure is set in an amazing city called Parsantium. Although there's sufficient material within its pages for you to run it, for best effect go and grab a copy of Parsantium: City at the Crossroads - if you like intricate cities you won't regret it.

The first section, Running the Adventure, explains the background to the adventure which involves an ancient evil reaching forth once more and provides a brief introduction to Parsantium and an adventure summary. There's a detailed run-down of the ancient evil in question, and some hooks to help get the party involved in the adventure. There's a major festival soon, and quite understandibly folks would like it to be free of ancient evils.

Then the adventure proper begins, for once not in a tavern... it just leads to one later on. Not straightaway, however, the action begins with someone running amok on the docks. As events unfold, the party discovers that this is but the latest incident in a series of bewildering brawls that have involved people not normally known for being violent. Neatly, if the party isn't moved to investigate on its own, they'll be asked to find out what is going on and put a stop to it. Along the way there's an exciting and cinematic chase across a floating village and plenty of interesting people to talk to before they get to that tavern, and there are also opportunities for research as well as for action.

The tavern itself is well-described and there's a neat way in which some characters might pick up on there being something wrong even before they start delving below through the tavern cellar to the terrors that lurk in the sewars beneath. Never mind any ancient evils, the smells and sights of the sewars are bad enough - enjoy the atmospheric descriptions as the party explores...

The finale is suitably climactic, and there are notes to help you deal with the party's success or failure as appropriate. Overall it makes a stirring adventure which gives the party a chance to make a name for themselves at least in this corner of town. It's full of neat tricks to build up atmosphere and add to the realism of the town as well as to provide a suitably creepy feel that grows along with the body count!

As a long-time fan of the Parsantium setting and a 13th Age GM, this adventure has a lot going for it. First, kudos to the author for including a half page detailing the Parsantium icons that are likely to be involved with this adventure and how they'd fit in. In 13th Age, icons are impartant for both building stories and for the mechanical benefits derived from PC relationships with icons, and this goes a long way to making the adventure easier to run with 13th Age, even though the stats are for 5e.

Without wanting to spoil too much, I'll say that I enjoy the mechanic that ratchets up the tension as a result of NPC death toll rising as the party goes through the adventure. A smart group of PCs will find non-lethal solutions or they'll face a more challenging adventure. You don't often see adventures written that encourage characters not to go "murder hobo" on most of what they encounter. It was nice to have an in-story reason why the group will want to think twice about this approach.

The inclusion of ideals, bonds, and flaws for the NPCs is helpful in easily picking up this adventure and running these NPCs without needing a lot of prep. While D&D 5e isn't my game of choice, I've run and played a fair amount of it, so it's easy enough to take the monsters and find/create 13th Age interpretations. Several of the monsters can be found in the 13th Age core book or bestiary. Others (such as a couple giant animals found in the adventure) can probably be reskinned from existing giant animals in the core book.

If Parsantium is part of your campaign, this adventure will serve as a nice starting point for a new group of characters. I would have liked to see suggestions on how to use this adventure for a range of levels, rather than just 1st level. In 5e, PCs don't stay at 1st level for long -- they're typically level 2 after just a session or two. So this adventure isn't going to be challenging enough for groups that aren't just starting out. I don't hold this against the adventure: it clearly states that it's a level 1 adventure, and the challenge seems about right, but it would have been a nice-to-have.