Add-on to Out of the Abyss

I just read the add-on to Out of the Abyss that was about Orcus. It essentially acts as if it were a "missing" chapter of the campaign, featuring a mind-flayer lair, and an undead Elder Brain controlled by Orcus himself. You sneak in, kill mind-flayers and their thralls, role-play with a few characters, kill the Elder Brain and then face Orcus. You don't actually have to fight Orcus; because when you kill the undead Elder Brain, the rest of the mind-flayers are freed of his influence and immediately teleport in to fight him themselves, and you're told that even if you sit it out they'll eventually win. Of course, if you don't fight Orcus, the the mind-flayers will almost certainly turn on you next, and even if you do, you can't really trust the things, of course. 

It's not a bad little supplement. It's only 14 pages, two pages of which are front and back cover respectively, so like I said, you essentially treat it as if it's a missing late chapter in the original campaign. It is, however, significantly sillier, even though it claims that it's dark and it even has a super gay content warning, just in case the product somehow ends up in the hands of some total pussies, or liberals. Or Millennials, I suppose. For instance, one room has a Squidward clarinet. Another has a blue suit and tie with a child's drawing in crayon of a family, labeled mom, dad and a kid, and the dad is a mind-flayer wearing the suit. It's certainly not worth reviewing as a separate product, but I thought I'd make a little mini-post noting that I read it, and found it OK, I guess.

I also finished the James Silke (and Frank Frazetta, although that's more of an honorary credit than a real one) book Prisoner of the Horned Helmet. I had been kind of struggling with the last third of it for a while, and I just sat down and read it today; about 80-90 some odd pages or so. As I recall, the second book is considerably better (although the cover art for the first is the best in the series), and I've never read the third or fourth. In fact, the reason that I'm finally reading them is that I finally got my hands on the fourth one, which had been unavailable at any kind of reasonable price (if at all) on the used book market for years. I may not turn around and read that one literally next, though. I've got some other stuff on my list to finish, including some that I feel duty bound to finish, and some that I want to read, and honestly, I'm not quite as jazzed about James Silke as I was when I started it. I remember liking this book better than I actually did this time around.

I also finished reading "Lord of the Iron Fortress" and after I read one more 3e adventure, "Bastion of Broken Souls" I'll finish the first original pseudo-adventure path series. There are still plenty more official 3e or 3.5 modules to read, including big campaign-length ones like "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil" or "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft" and more. I'm actually planning on putting off my Curse of Strahd read-through until I'm at the point where I can also read Expedition to Castle Ravenloft at the same time, so I can kind of compare and contrast. 

I feel like with some of these trawls, I need to free myself up just a bit, and not be so strict. Plus, I need to bounce around a bit more between different trawls. So I'm next going to read one of the Age of Cthulhu scenarios (number 2, which takes place in London) and then the next SPCM Saga before before actually reading a totally different third party campaign like Empire of Ghouls or something; plus, I want to read Silver Marches and Five Nations to keep my FR and Eberron trawls moving. These are all bigger books than some of the somewhat slim modules that I've been reading, so it'll take me more time to get through them, obviously. After I knock these out, we're back to Paizo and the next adventure path as well as the final bunch of 3.5 compatible stand-alone modules. In physical books, I've been on the Pathfinder Campaign Setting for a little while, which I need to finish off so I can Gods and Magic which is next (in pdf) and then move on to the next two physical game books, which are also in the Pathfinder Chronicles/Setting line; Into the Darklands and after a couple more titles, Dark Markets: A Guide to Katapesh. Obviously the former of those I'm behind on, because it's associated with the Second Darkness Adventure Path which I've already finished, and the latter is associated with Legacy of Fire which I want to start soon. It's maybe a bit much to juggle four Paizo series trawls, and try to keep them chronologically more or less aligned. But hey, I could be doing five instead of four and trying to keep the core rules trawl moving on the same timing, so it could be worse, lol.

So, anyway. Juggling lots of stuff that I'm reading. Looking to finish two rather large physical books soon; my Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting and my much delayed Celtic Myths & Tales. I still also have a Norse version of that series, but I'm not going to read that right away. In fact, I think it's past time that I picked up some of the books my daughter bought me that I haven't read, so after Celtic is finished, I'm going to read my nice copy of Dracula... which technically comes with other novels included, but I'm going to skip those. Then I'm going to read the copy she gave me of Vol. 1 of Saints. And then I'm going to read whatever is next on my paperback novels list. Which might or might not be the next Death Dealer novel, but The Mad King, Tarnsman of Gor and Thieves World are all contenders, as is the first book in the Timothy Zahn post Star Wars novels that kind of kickstarted the Star Wars Expanded Universe of novels. I've had copies of that whole series for a couple of years too and meant to read them. Sigh. So many books. So little time. And so many other things to spend it on too, for that matter. I feel like Burgess Meredith's character in that one old episode of The Twilight Zone; y'know, the antisocial librarian who finally has all the time in the world to read after the nuclear bomb goes off and kills everyone else, but then be breaks his glasses and can't read? I've always identified somewhat with that poor guy, even if the ironic drama was super contrived. 

Anyway, conclusions on what I finished reading recently?

Prisoner of the Horned Helmet: not as good as I remember. I wouldn't go out of my way to track down a copy if I didn't already have one.

"Lord of the Iron Fortress" - I don't actually like any of the 3e adventures very much except maybe "Speaker in Dreams." 

Out of the Abyss: OK, but not really what I would have hoped for it to be.

"Out of the Abyss: The Fall of Cyrog": If you do Out of the Abyss, sure, get it. Otherwise, pass.