C5: The Bane of Llywelyn (1985) is the second and final part of the Prophecy of Brie storyline (see yesterday’s post for the first part). We have an Elmore cover (though it is credited to Parkinson for some reason – weird) depicting a warrior woman with a boomerang riding a pterodactyl, which kind of clashes with the Celtic theming to this point. But it is awesome, so I don’t care.

In the previous module, the players collected all the magical gewgaws they need to restore an ancient king to life. The first scenario here, The Riddle of Dolmen Moor, concerns locating Llywelyn’s tomb, which they find is sealed with magic by the mage…Ishcabeble. In The Incants of Ishcabeble, the party retrieves that late mage’s spellbook. The third scenario. Llywelyn’s Tombs sees the players navigating the, you guessed it, undead-infested outer tomb of the king.

The final part…gets complicated, with gods, time travel, clones and a parallel dimension.You see, Llywellyn actually only had half a soul…because reasons…and bringing him back brings back his co-ruler Grellyn as well. This attracts the attention of the Celtic gods, one of which has manipulated this whole thing and causes Llywellyn to kill Grellyn, which kills himself as well, which sends both half souls into the cloned body waiting in the parallel world where the daughter of the evil king who split the souls in the first place has been hidden. Oh, and the clone has a hat of disguise that makes him look like a woman. That’d be her on the cover riding the pterodactyl. The ideal resolution is to get the clone to believe that she is actual Llywelyn, bring him back along with the evil king’s daughter, have them get married and found a new dynasty. It is a hard left turn at the very end, but I kind of dig it. But it is a LOT.