Thread by @hexcrawl

Westward, ho!

The PCs are shipwrecked in the wilds of Ergoth.

The core concept of DL7 Dragons of Light is that all the elves in the world have fled here on ships, only to suffer the acute embarrassment of having all of their ships spontaneously vanish in a puff of fiat.

After negotiating their way through the elven situation, the PCs will therefore need to march north through the only mountain pass in search of a ship to continue their journey, conveniently stumbling upon the Tomb of Huma as they go.

Our Let's Read of Dragonlance started over here if you'd like to begin from the beginning!

The "elven situation" is largely about waves of refugees, which feels more than topical at the moment.

Silvanesti, on the eastern edge of the map here, is the original empire of the elves.

After the Kinslayer Wars (which were fought with the old Empire of Ergoth), the elven empire broke apart, and the western lands of Qualinesti declared independence.

More recently, the elves of both Qualinesti and Silvanesti have fled before the dragon army invasions.

Both have chosen to come to the "wilds" of southern Ergoth, forming the refugee kingdoms of Silvamori and Qualimori.

Their close proximity has reignited old tensions.

Here in Ergoth they also discovered the Kagonesti -- dark skinned, "more muscular" native "wild elves" who are immediately enslaved by the white-skinned imperials.

Later depictions of the Kagonesti would course correct to show them as pale-skinned.

But in DL7 they are 100% dark-skinned "primitives".

We know this because of the blackface.

Whoops. Forgot alt text. Apologies:

"The attacking elves are the Youngbloods,
Qualinesti raiders from across the bay (...) disguised as Kagonesti. The disguise is good only from a distance: up close the berryjuice darkening their skin and hair is obvious."

Anyway.........

A third element in this adventure is the silver dragon Dargent, who is secretly trying to help the PCs find the secrets of the dragonlances buried in Huma's impressive tomb.

(Why secretly? Well, the DM isn't allowed to know because that would ruin the surprise.)

The story as told in the Chronicles novels have now moved ahead of the publication schedule of the modules.

The adventures, therefore, are now concerned about spoilers.

Grubb's solution is to provide a random table of possible "secret identities" for Dargent, subverting the expectations of novel readers.

(Although note the incorrect title for the novel here: TALES of Winter Night instead of Dragons of Winter Night. Not sure if that's a typo or an indication of a working title.)

This "randomize the secret role" technique will now become a mainstay of the DL series.

You can compare & contrast with the earlier handling of the traitor in Volume I, where the DM is simply instructed to not allow players to take action based on info gleaned from the novels.

Someone we haven't talked about much in this Let's Read is Fizban, a sort of demented Gandalf figure.

He pops up every so often to spout exposition, provide deus ex machinas, and provide oh-so-random bits of humor.

In the novels, Fizban is secretly the god Paladine.

You remember? The God of Railroads?

The DM has, once again, not been allowed to know this. (Spoilers!) But the "randomize the secret role" mechanic will actually be used in a later module to obfuscate Paladine's identity, too.

The stone dragon on the cover is, in fact, a pretty nifty -- and very unique -- dungeon.

We once again note how the #Dragonlance Saga is packed to the gills with some of the best dungeons in D&D's history.

Here's Larry Elmore's original sketch of the dragon.

Apparently the image was originally commissioned for the Dragonlance Calendar (with the editors selecting a different sketch that Elmore used for the final painting), a reminder of the project's massively multimedia nature.

The Let's Read continues with DL8 Dragons of War over here!