A Review of Cursed Scroll #4: River of Night

After the cold seas of Midnight Sun, Cursed Scroll #4: River of Night takes Shadowdark into the jungles along the Black River. Archaeologists dig into forgotten ruins, basilisk cultists prepare their raids, and scattered villages preserve pieces of a civilization they hope to recover. Kelsey Dionne introduces two new classes, the ranger and basilisk warrior, alongside nature magic, wilderness travel, and nine mapped adventure sites. Baron de Ropp contributes additional design for the hex map and writes two of those adventures. Across its 68 pages, the issue develops a region where a search for buried treasure can lead into something much stranger than the party expected. There are dinosaurs out there too, which is always a good reason to be careful about where you pitch your tent. If you are new to the system, my Shadowdark review covers the rules these supplements build upon.

The ranger was always going to be the first thing I looked at, because that is my class. Since I started playing D&D in 1982, I would estimate that about 75 percent of my characters have been rangers, another 20 percent paladins, and the remaining five percent whatever else caught my interest. The last two wizards I played were in a Shadowdark one-shot playtest and Castle Amber; I believe the latter was named Earnheart. That should tell you where my interests usually lie. When I read a new ranger, I want to know whether it gives me a capable wilderness adventurer and whether those abilities will actually matter once we leave town. This version answers that through Wayfinder, which grants advantage on checks involving navigation, tracking, bushcraft, stealth, and wild animals. It covers the work I expect a ranger to do.

Herbalism gives the class more to contribute once the expedition gets into trouble. An Intelligence check lets the ranger prepare remedies that heal, prevent surprise, counter poison or disease, or improve attacks and damage against a chosen creature type. Stronger remedies require harder checks, and a failed attempt prevents another try at that remedy until a successful rest. Unused preparations expire after three rounds, so the ranger cannot spend the morning stocking a backpack with healing supplies. Intelligence earns a place alongside the physical abilities needed for fighting, and the resulting character has useful work to do both during travel and when an encounter begins. I could take this ranger into a mountain campaign or the woods outside a starter town as readily as into the Black River jungle.

The basilisk warrior is more closely tied to the setting, and its abilities make that connection easy to understand. These warriors fight without armor, coat themselves in mud and stone, and practice a combat style modeled on the basilisk. Stone Skin improves their armor class as they advance and gives them advantage when hiding in natural environments, while Basilisk Blood helps them resist harmful afflictions. Their Petrifying Gaze can briefly turn a creature of their level or lower to stone if it fails its Constitution check. Even the talent table contributes to the concept, including the possibility of finding an egg that hatches into a loyal basilisk companion. A player choosing this class has traditions to draw upon and potential connections to explore, including cultists whose plans may put them at odds with the party.

Nature magic receives a different treatment. Neutral wizards can choose from an additional druid spell list, allowing that kind of character through an existing class. The spells include familiar possibilities such as communicating with animals, summoning storms, and becoming a treant, but some of the smaller effects interest me most. Befriend lets a tiny creature attempt a task for the caster, while Oxidize ages an object and could help the party deal with an obstacle. Mycelium connects the wizard to a fungal network and provides a brief, truthful answer to a question. Those spells encourage players to consider their surroundings and find opportunities to use them, which suits an expedition into unfamiliar country. There is still considerable force at the higher tiers, including an earthquake that can swallow creatures into the ground, but the list has enough practical magic to remain interesting between fights.

The equipment additions offer a few similarly direct choices. Obsidian weapons have attractive damage but break on a natural 1, a risk that makes carrying a spare more appealing when the nearest supplier is several days away. A spear-thrower increases a spear’s range to far, and the returning boomerang provides another ranged option. These are small additions, yet they fit the concerns of the larger expedition: what can the party carry, what might fail, and how difficult will it be to replace? In Red Sands, the desert made supplies and mounts important. Here, travel along the river brings a different set of practical decisions, starting with the boat that gets everyone into the jungle and, hopefully, brings them back.

A raft takes half a day to build, carries six people and their gear, and travels quickly downstream, but it cannot travel upstream. Its cumulative daily chance of breaking also makes a long journey uncertain. A canoe carries fewer people and can move in both directions, though building one requires an expert. The rumors point toward a village whose best canoe maker has disappeared, linking an immediate need to a reason for adventuring. I appreciate that kind of connection because the characters have something to gain by helping before anybody promises them a chest of gold. Choosing a vessel affects the route, the supplies, and the return journey, giving the party several reasons to seek local knowledge. The river becomes something they have to understand if they want to use it well.

Travel on land uses six-mile hexes, with jungle and mountains slowing progress and weather capable of making the journey harder. Characters can forage while traveling or push themselves to cover more ground, but pushing increases the encounter chance and prevents foraging that day. That is enough to make haste a decision with consequences, particularly when supplies are already low. The GM checks for encounters during both day and night, and separate tables change what the party might meet after sunset. A tyrannosaurus can appear during the day, while darkness brings a different assortment of predators and supernatural dangers. Finding somewhere to camp therefore remains part of the expedition, with the group weighing its food, progress, and exposure to whatever is moving nearby.

The people along the river give those journeys purposes beyond reaching the next ruin. The Itzalca are descendants of a fallen human civilization, preserving fragments of their ancestors’ knowledge while living in villages that do not readily cooperate. Archaeological camps pursue discoveries that may be considerably more dangerous than the researchers understand. At one dig, a scholar plans to open recently unearthed coffins to impress a colleague, providing the GM with a problem that can develop whether the party interferes or passes by. Elsewhere, an intelligent gorilla named Tecuhan requires an offering of goat’s milk before he will converse with visitors. He wants news of his missing wife and offers a healing staff for help. Both entries give players a reason to ask questions and decide whether to become involved.

Other meetings broaden the possibilities further. The Jaguar King challenges warriors and rewards exceptional performance, allowing an encounter with a powerful spirit to become a test of prowess without requiring a fight to the death. Pirates, snake people, and basilisk cultists pursue their own interests across the map, while some rumors draw attention to threats the inhabitants have only partly understood. These competing interests are useful because the party can learn about the region from several perspectives. An archaeological discovery may be valuable to a scholar, dangerous to a nearby village, or sacred to someone else entirely. I would use those relationships to develop the expedition as the players choose whom to help and what to investigate. There is enough activity here to sustain those choices alongside the jungle’s predators.

The nine mapped adventures are the largest structural departure from the earlier Scrolls. Rather than devoting the back of the issue to one substantial dungeon, River of Night distributes smaller sites across its hexcrawl, with suggested character levels ranging from 2 to 10. Baron de Ropp’s Army Ants explores a cave network where giant ants have disturbed an ancient tomb, while his Flooded Ruins combines a drowned temple, lost explorers, and an enormous snapping turtle. The Star Map Temple features great astronomical wheels and a treant who has found another use for some missing parts. These locations present different obstacles and opportunities, giving the GM several destinations to introduce through rumors and discoveries. I would make sure the party had enough information to recognize when a destination might be beyond its abilities.

The black structures reveal how strange the setting can become, bringing alien horrors and unfamiliar machinery into the jungle adventure. I would leave most of their details for players to discover, because encountering evidence of something beyond the civilization they came to study could change their understanding of the whole expedition. The monsters support that progression from natural danger into the uncanny. Tiny death slugs burrow toward a victim’s heart, while void bats absorb faint light, shrinking a torch’s useful range as they heal themselves. A creature that interferes with light is especially troublesome in Shadowdark, where the party already depends on keeping it available. The combination gives the GM threats that demand different responses, from navigating around a large predator to dealing with something that makes the room darker simply by being there.

Clear tables, bold terms, and concise descriptions let the GM consult a location without reading long passages during play, and the maps accompany the keys needed to run them. I would still need to choose how the characters arrive, which rumors reach them first, and how to introduce the dangers ahead. That is preparation I would enjoy doing, because the book supplies several promising directions for the players to pursue. The ranger alone is something I would use beyond this setting, but the Black River gives the whole issue its appeal: a journey with practical difficulties, inhabitants worth meeting, and discoveries that can expand the adventure as the party explores. I would be happy to give my players a boat and a reason to head downstream, then see where they choose to land.