I bought this for Chapter 10 - Zargon and thus will focus my review there.

For the purpose of this review I will be looking at Chapter 10 of Elder Evils entitled “Zargon”. You might ask yourself why I’m only looking at this section of the book and the reason is that, unlike the other “elder evils”, Zargon is an existing piece of Dungeons and Dragons mythology. He first appeared in B4 – The Lost City and was mentioned in Dungeon Magazine #142.

I really like Mystara and I hoped that this product might give me a nice 3.5 version of the material I loved in B4 - The Lost City. I had been unimpressed with WoTC recent offerings as they seem to be casting off more and more of what is known about the Dungeons and Dragons history and mythology. It seems Elder Evils, like 4e, to appears continues this trend.

In 1982, The Lost City was released. A summary of the background is provided below:

The Cynidicea empire was a rich and fertile kingdom that survived in the heart of a desert wasteland. It was ruled by King Alexander until his death. The people constructed a huge pyramid to honour him. Cynidicea began to fall when workers stumbled into the lair of a strange monster called Zargon. It was humanoid, with twelve tentacle arms, the head of a giant lizard and a black horn in the middle of its head. Zargon killed the worker and began hunting citizens in the streets at night. The government began sending criminals into the pyramid to feed it. In time a cult began to worship Zargon and the city turned away from their gods. In decline, they grew soft and experimented with rare wine and bizarre drugs. The city was destroyed by barbarians. The priests of Zargon lead the people into the pyramid to live underground with their “god”.

In 2006, Dungeon #142 “Masque of Dreams” revisted this myth. A summary of the background is provided below:

The Cynidicea empire was a rich and fertile kingdom that survived in the heart of a desert wasteland. It was ruled by King Alexander until his death. The people constructed a huge pyramid to honour him. Cynidicea began to fall when workers stumbled into the lair of a strange monster called Zargon. When the monster could not be stopped they decided to placate it. They turned away from their gods. They grew soft and experimented with rare wine and bizarre drugs. They retreated from the surface and their city was destroyed by barbarians.

As you can see, there are minor differences but overall the original myth holds true. That was until Chapter 10 of Elder Evils. A summary of the background myth is provided below:

The Cynidicea empire was a rich and fertile kingdom that survived in the heart of a desert wasteland. It fell into complacency and decadence which allowed a bloodthirsty cult to rise. The cult preyed upon its own citizens as well as those of the neighbouring, barbarian tribes. This leads the barbarians to attack the city and try to slay the beast-god. The barbarian leader was blessed by the gods but failed to kill Zargon. The gods came themselves, several were killed and others were driven off. Cynidiceans who survived the invasion fled below the city, fearing that their world would end. Asmodeus intervened, since he was not a god he was immune to Zargon’s worst powers, he imprisoned the elder evil in solid stone and buried Zargon’s followers.

Apparently, Zargon ruled the Nine Hells of Baator and was the father of the ancient baatorians before Asmodeus and his allies seized the Nine Hells for themselves. Zargon’s body was destroyed and his horn cast to the Material Plane where his body would reform.

From the looks of that background, the caretakers of the Dungeons and Dragons mythology managed to get one or two pieces right and created a total mess of a backstory for Zargon. He goes from being a savage beast worshiped by primitive people to a god-killing, former ruler of the Nine Hells that was laid low by an archdevil after killing several gods?

Why is it that Paizo can respectfully address the mythology of the game, while WoTC sends everything through the wood-chipper.

Other changes:

None of the Cynidicea factions are mentioned except the Priests of Zargon. There is no mention of the Cynidicea’s ablinoism, they drug abuse or tendancy to wear animal masks (though Paizo managed this). The ten tier pyramid with huge underground city has been swapped for a five tier ziggurat of which only a single tier is detailed (tier 5 of the Lost City pyramid – except the timeline still references the “Lost City” and what lies beneath it, which was the pyramid structure in the first. It looks like the city now has its own independent underground area but that is not detailed here). This level of the ziggurat has been reworked so there is much less in it than in the original module.

You will not find any of the following on this level:

1) Mosaics that describe the history of the Cynidicea Empire.

2) Secret door leading to the underground city.

3) Drunk owlbears

4) A sunken pool of acid

5) No Cynidiceans gambling or partying (as they have all been killed by NPC villains)

6) No dopplegangers

7) No ghosts hoping to destroy the cult

8) No wererats or werefoxes

Mostly just the map is and the room names are reused. With a total three, count them, three encounters.

Although Zargon is a god-killing machine now, he joins into alliance with Juiblex. Zargon, besides being a god-killer, has many slime-based powers now. Nothing in Zargon’s statblock would give you the impression that he would be capable of killing any god, their priest definitely. but he is certainly not a god slayer as written.

Nod to the Past:

At the end of this revisioning of Zargon the text notes, “The way to destroy this elder evil is to drop the horn in the smoking crater called the Eye of Zargon. This volcanic crater lies far below the earth in the cave housing the lost city of Cynidicea, on the far shores of Lake Moldvay.” The original module was written by Tom Moldvay, who passed in March of 2007.

I guess this chapter works as a reinvention of Zargon and I will admit that the Campaign timeline for including Zargon2.0 is interesting and could work well, even if a little nonsensical by including Juiblex alliances and having the Ziggurat and the Lost City use the same maps (or maybe not, it’s not really clear).

But this is not Zargon from B4, nor does it contain any of the original richness that Tom Moldvay included in the original module. It’s too bad there is no way to sell you PDFs or return them for store credit. WoTC fails to respect the mythology of Dungeons and Dragons, yet again, even though Paizo had no problem doing so a year before.