First things first: This is not a six hour adventure. The shortest I've gotten it down to while not significantly cutting content is eight hours.

That being said, there is some tremendous content here. The beginning part starting with some subterfuge (with two completely distinct paths!), some of the most challenging tier 3 combats, and solid characters throughout.

This is one of my favorite modules, though beware that it can run long: it took us three 4-hour sessions to get through the entire module, though our DM let us have a lot of fun with it, including letting our necromancer challenge another necromancer to a game of undead zombie volleyball to win information from them. The combats can also be quite challenging, which our group loved.

It's rare to get a DDAL Adventure that is challenging and doens't need to be adjusted UP for the party to feel like they are having to work at succeeding.

While extremely challenging this adventure forces you to think and do things differently. You are not going to run roughshod and be done in 2 hours.

I would love to see more like this in terms of the challenge level and depth.

I just played through this and then bought it just so I could double check the mechanics in this module. This module should be ran as a Tier 4 Module as a tier 3 it is way overpowered and ignores game mechanics on a whim. The first part uses Plot Magic to force characters to play it one way and if you don't play it the Writer's way you get punished by more plot magic. Its an auto lose. Effectively making this into the writer telling you a story you can't really effect because of all the ignoring of basic game mechanics. If your story has to ignore game mechanics to work, that's just lazy writing. Then there is a fight with several Tier 4 monsters in an encounter in the same fight, plus a bunch of other NPCs all at the same time. We tired to not go the murderhobo route but then the module has a written in auto fight room. No amount of stealth matters. You must only play this module as the writer is forcing you to. Again it's telling a story by removing player empowerment. There is an interesting fight where you have to deal random fire damage, but the part of that fight which is utter crap is the auto damage grinder. There is no way to get around the auto damage for groups without teleport effects. No save, no ability check to get around it or turn it off. Its just you have to suck it up. Again more lazy writing. The module made me think the writer was hurt by someone and this was his response to that pain. While I liked the write up of the Boss fight mostly the fact it starts with auto surprise for the bad guys is total crap. As it ignores all game mechanics to allow that too happen. Not to mention the NPCs all have cool buffs on them. If you remove the auto surprise the last fight is cool. After playing this once, I will never do so again, it's that bad.

• Overall a well fleshed-out module. Some might say it is too fleshed out, as it is NINETY-FIVE pages long (with the appendices).
• The encounters are refreshingly appropriate and challenging.
• The setting is evocative (it's in Thay).
• It would be nice if modules like these, which clearly reference older edition adventures, novels, etc. would mention where to read for more information. I should note that at no point does this or the previous DRW modules has anyone really explained what the throne and the Sceptre are, even though the information should be readily revealed by several NPCs. (The info can be found in The Wyrmskull Throne)

Specific Comments: Spoilers:

• The Puzzle in Part 3 appears to have a "typo". It seems some similar looking symbols are actually meant to be the same symbol. I imagine the author is using a font and did not realize the capital and lowercase version of the font have slightly different symbols. This could be explained in-universe by having the NPC explain this quirk of linguistics, or having a knowledge check for the same.

• Reminder that the national language of Thay is Thayan, not common. The module acknowledges this in certain places, so I assume the module is meant to be played with language barriers in play, however, the chapter 1 social encounters are made significantly harder if the characters are not able to speak Thayan.