Dawn of the Overmind 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons Dragons MONSTROUS ARCANA

Description: ***Please allow extended print and shipping time for these licensed reprints during the holiday season.***👉This reprint is an unread perfect bound copy that is made to order. Any foldout maps (if any) that were included in the original print are separated and bound all together as 8.5 x 11 inch pages.👉🏼These reprints are made to order. Please allow 1-2 weeks for your order to ship. A tracking number will be provided when your order ships. 👉🏽These reprints are fully licensed by Wizards of the Coast and printed on demand from original edition scans or digital files (if available). Please allow 1-2 weeks for your order to ship. A tracking number will be provided when your order ships. 👉🏾All orders are packaged safely in boxes for shipping. 👉🏿All books ship for FREE and thus have FREE combined shipping! 📧Please get in touch if you want a particular title! TSR, WOTC, R. Talsorian and more are available! A new age dawns.an age of terror! They are close. I can feel them even stronger, now. It won't be long before the Masters come again. I have waited for them, waited for their return. Once they extinguish the Light, the true Dawn can begin. The illithids once ruled a mighty empire that stretched across many worlds. These foul creatures enslaved or destroyed whole races in their quest for ultimate power - until a rebellion spread like fire on dry plains. The mind flayer empire toppled, and the multiverse was freed from eternal servitude. Now, a hundred suns burn toward extinction, their light stolen by the flayers to reinvent their past. If the PCs do not stop the new dawn, the Dawn of the Overmind, the illithids will rule once again! Following the clues left by their benefactor, the adventurers journey over a vast world of ancient ruins. Buried deeply within these ruins lies an artifact of ancient illithid manufacture. This item is all that stands between the illithids and their nefarious goal: complete and utter domination. Dawn of the Overmind is the third adventure in a trilogy (originating with A Darkness Gathering and continuing in Masters of Eternal Night ). It can be played alone or linked with the other two parts of the trilogy to form an epic-length adventure. The illithid trilogy supports The Illithiad, a MONSTROUS ARCANA supplement that contains invaluable information on every facet of illithid life, psychology, technology, and ability. Product History "Dawn of the Overmind" (1998), by Bruce R. Cordell, is the third adventure in the illithid Monstrous Arcana adventure trilogy. It was published in October 1998. About the Cover. That sure looks like a Lumleyian Chthonian next to the mind flayer. Is it D&D or is it the Cthulhu Mythos? Origins (I): The End of the Arcana. Each trilogy of Monstrous Arcana adventures ended with a double-sized 64-page adventure module. "Dawn of the Overmind" (1998) thus ends the mind flayer adventure cycle that began with "A Darkness Gathering" (1998) and continued with "Masters of Eternal Night" (1998). However, "Dawn of the Overmind" also marks the end of the entire Monstrous Arcana series, following an even dozen books, highlighting the beholders of I, Tyrant (1996), The Sea Devils (1997), and now the mind flayers of The Illithiad (1998). It was one of D&D's more evocative "generic" adventure series during the AD&D 2e era (1989-2000), in large part because even absent a strong D&D setting it still was able to focus on D&D's strong monster mythology. Origins (II): The Return of Spelljammer. More surprisingly, "Dawn of the Overmind" is a stealth Spelljammer adventure, published a full six years after the cancellation of the Spelljammer line (1989-1993). It doesn't bear any of the Spelljammer trade dress, likely because it was part of the Monstrous Arcana line, but nonetheless this is a Wildspace adventure from beginning to end. This was really the last hoorah for Spelljammer at TSR, other than "Spelljammer: Shadow of the Spider Moon", a massive article in in Dungeon #92 / Polhedron #151 (May / June 2002) This return to Spelljammer might well have been part of the same initiative that saw support for Al-Qadim with "Reunion" (1998) and that also brought about the so-called "Greyhawk '98" revival (1998-2000). Wizards was happy to revisit D&D's old campaign worlds and see if there was strong enough interest for continued publication. (Sadly, there wasn't.) Genre Tropes: Sword & Planet. Spelljammer had always been science fantasy, but it was a rather specific sort of science high-fantasy where science-fiction tropes were powered by magic. However, the early parts of Dawn of the Overmind feel like a very different sort of science fantasy: a sword & planet story. As the players struggle across a desolate surface world, they might encounter primitive humans (the forerunners), beastmen, a hungry spider, and even an illithid lich. John Carter would be proud. Genre Tropes: Lovecraftian Horror. Though the latter parts of "Dawn of the Overmind" still maintain some sword & planet tropes, Lovecraftian horror also sneaks in. Players will encounter an elder brain and masses of squirming illithocytes before finally meeting the neothelid, a mucous-covered, dragon-sized worm. This was in keeping with the more horrific mind flayers of Ravenloft, especially RQ2: "Thoughts of Darkness" (1992). Adventure Tropes: Crawling. Like its predecessors, Dawn of the Overmind involves lots of player agency. The wilderness encounters that lead things off are largely freeform, with different sorts of encounters keyed for different areas — but once more, no hexes. It's followed by a cavern crawl and an ancient artifact crawl. Exploring Wildspace. This adventure is set entirely in the universe of Spelljammer. There are some Wildspace encounters at the start, but most of the adventure focuses on a new crystal sphere, Truespace, which is said to be immense, and the planet of Penumbra, which is the home of the illithids. Spelljammer was often very scattered, with little attempt to create a cohesive universe. More adventures like "Dawn of the Overmind", which highlights the home sphere of one of Spelljammer's major races, could have been used to create a more coherent setting. Sadly, it was years too late. Exploring the Great Wheel> Dawn of the Overmind is a very rare adventure that mixes together the newer mythology of Spelljammer with the older mythology of the Great Wheel, proving that they all fit in the same multiverse. Dawn of the Overmind thus moves from Truespace into the Ethereal Plane and reveals an ancient artifact there, the eponymous Overmind. (These interlinked mythologies are another thing that could have added a lot to the Spelljammer setting.) Monsters of Note. Despite the horror tropes found in the latter parts of Dawn of the Overmind, the illithids still remaining the science-fiction monstrosities that were seen in the earlier parts of the adventure trilogy. They genetically mutate races and they built mighty artifacts in space and in the ether. Though their god appears, he's a dead god, long abandoned by his people. There's also some nice background on the mind flayers: how they once were the rulers of an empire that spanned the entire multiverse! The githyanki and the githzerai also get an origin story. They'd already been seen in the previous adventure as "forerunner" thralls: the servants of the illithids. Here, players can discover the "Tumerogenesis Tanks", where the illithids biogentically changed their thralls, making them aggressive and giving them psionic powers. Apparently, grimlocks, another Fiend Folio (1981) refugee, are also forerunner descendants. This relation between the illithids, the githyanki, and the githzerai dates back to their original appearance of the latter two. The Fiend Folio (1981) states "The githyanki-githzerai warfare is curious since they are both offshoots of the original race released from mind flayer bondage under the leadership of Gith". Now, eighteen years later, their story was finally told. Creator Charles Stross credits the origins of the idea to Larry Niven and The World of Ptavvs (1966), saying that it "features a psionic master/slave race relationship far in the past that nearly killed all the sapients in the galaxy when it turned hot". NPCs of Note. Maanzecorian, an illithid god, appears in his fallen temple. The god is said to be dead, but players can fight his "much-weakened avatar". Maanzecorian debuted in DMGR4: Monster Mythology (1992) and his death was revealed in Dead Gods (1997) as part of the Tenebrous metaplot. The book also has a few other NPCs of note, including ancient hero Arak and friendly illithid Strom, but they don't have the same importance to D&D mythology. About the Creators. By 1998, Cordell had been writing D&D books for a few years. However, that was the year that his production really exploded. He authored a total of nine major releases in 1998, including all four mind flayer books and Return to the Tomb of Horrors (1998).

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