Some books are boring, some books you can’t put down, and other books try to kill you.

Mazfroth’s Mighty Digressions is a 2nd level adventure written by Alison Huang, edited by Hannah Rose, and developed by Hannah Rose and Christopher Perkins. As written, the adventure starts when the characters are attacked by a gingwatzim. The book they are reading, Mazfroth’s Mighty Digressions, transforms from a book into the small aberration. This is not the first time that this has happened at Candlekeep as other books that have been recently acquired have done the same thing. Soon the party will learn about the others that have been attacked and they all lead back to a bookseller in Baldur’s Gate.

The characters will travel to find the real version of Mazfroth’s Mighty Digressions and learn who is behind the attacks. The journey from Candlekeep is disturbed by a wererat name Mushika, who (if he escapes) can be a nice reoccurring villain.

Once in Baldur’s Gate, the Amberdune Books stall can be found with a little investigation. The characters can decide how they approach the sellers. There is a schedule that informs the DM as to who is working the stall when the party approaches it.

The gingwatzim was created by a jackalwere named Korvala. She and her pack of jackalweres are selling the gingwatzims disguised as rare books in order to make money. They are trying to make enough money to resurrect their dead leader, a lamia named Nidalia. It is up to the players how to resolve the situation. They can kill the jackalweres, turn them over to the authorities in Baldur’s Gate, or help them resurrect Nidalia. The adventure is the set up to the moment when the characters make this decision.

I am hot and cold on the adventures in Candlekeep Mysteries. This is one of the cold ones. It has some good bones that could lead to some fun adventures, but this one is not very interesting. I think this adventure could have been bolstered by another rewrite and a couple more playthroughs to add to the mystery at its heart. In the end, I wanted the players to be sympathetic to the jackalweres, but there is not much to generate that sympathy. The cavalier way the jackalweres are disguising gingwatzims into rare books is a dangerous (and downright deadly) enterprise. This is not an adventure that you can play as written and have much fun. This one requires some work.

How it Played

The mystery solves a little too easily once the characters found the bookseller. The final answer as to what to do with the jackalweres tends toward the worst possible outcome for the jackalweres.

I would think that the jackalweres would be changing the name and location of their stall given how they are making their money. If the books just disappeared, then that might set up something more interesting. The players will see the missing book sitting in the stall which could lead them to the conclusion that the pack is stealing the books back. Stealing is much better than inadvertently murdering people with gingwatzims.

Instead of having all the survivors of gingwatzim be at Candlekeep, I moved one of the people to a monastery outside of Baldur’s Gate. The trip unlocked the chance to have Mushika attack the party since they had taken a ship from Candlekeep to Baldur’s Gate. Mushika is the little highwayman that couldn’t. He is a wererat that is a reoccurring villain in the adventure and is basically there to put a little combat into a rather bland mystery. I had an unusually large party (nine players), so I had the attack include all of Mushika’s minions. Even with all the extra muscle, Mushika and his minions were slaughtered quite easily.