Flames of the Falcon (1990) wraps up the trilogy. Same creative team — big shout-out for Ken Frank’s hooked horror combat tableau.
OK, so, the Falcon escapes, obviously. The city is in chaos. She makes things worse by sending waves of undead attacks to further destabilize the situation. The players must hunt her down and finish her off. That takes them to Grey Manor (this module’s cardboard model) and, eventually, the caves beneath them. There is a lot of dungeon in this event-crawl! Populated by unusual monsters, too. The aforementioned hooked horrors, meanlocks and quite a lot of Derro. I really appreciate how the final cult complex calls out many features that were encountered in the first module’s cult stronghold and later salvaged and dragged here.
Couple things I want to highlight. First is that the Falcon is a pretty great villain. She’s powerful, ruthless, not stupid and can easily win out if the players are foolish. She’s also a she, which is worth mentioning, far more so than Zuggtmoy; she appears primarily as a Maleficent-esque sorceress with a double-horned hood, which is pretty great. She is maybe the first time in D&D that a boss has two forms — that sorceress, and her true form as a spirit naga, which could be a genuine surprise for the players at the climax.
The ending is a little bit baloney, honestly. One of the NPCs is a shape-shifting dragon who was instrumental in capturing Falcon the first time around and in the final battle, he changes form to the way he looked 60 years prior. This has two effects: it leaves the Falcon so stunned she just stands there sputtering for two whole rounds and, once she recovers, she focuses all her fire on that NPC, who can probably take it. It’s a little bit of the NPC vs NPC battle thing I so loathe, but the sputtering thing is so funny and goes to her unearned feelings of infallibility that I am inclined to give it a pass.
By the end of these adventures, the City of Greyhawk should feel like a living place full of plots and potential. I kind of love that they decided to blow it all up almost immediately, but I also understand why folks were upset.
