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## About This Content
## D&D Classics: REF5 Lords of Darkness

The Undead. Denied the eternal rest of Death, cursed to wander the many planes
and worlds forever, their very existence a mockery of life they constantly
crave yet cannot have. Created by the foulest of magics, they have only one
thought, on burning goal: revenge against the living. Or do they?

Lords of Darkness is an anthology of short adventures set in various locations
in the Forgotten Realms, though you don’t need the Forgotten Realms campaign
supplement to use them.

Some of gaming’s best designers have contributed adventures to this
collection, which feature undead of all types and descriptions in all sorts of
situations-from skeletons to vampires and worse, from graveyards to haunted
houses, and even a few places you may never have expected to find the undead.

These adventures can be used one at a time, inserted into an existing campaign
as a change of pace, or they can be a basis for an entirely new campaign.
Either way, Lords of Darkness will be sure to give Advanced Dungerons &
Dragons game players plenty of chills and excitement.
## Product History

REF5: Lords of Darkness(1988) is the fifth of the AD&D REFerence books. It was
published in December 1988.

Origins (I): More REFs. Much like the “AC” accessories for Basic D&D, the
“REF” references for AD&D were a motley collection. Early releases focused on
the game’s ubiquitous GM screens and player character sheets, but with REF3:
The Book of Lairs(1986) and REF4: The Book of Lairs II(1987), the line moved
over to short adventures.

REF5: Lords of Darkness(1988) is practically a third Book of Lairs. It uses a
very similar format, focusing each of its short adventures on a specific
monster in a specific terrain — except the adventures are somewhat longer
that Lairs, and the monsters are all undead.

Lords of Darknesswas nearly the last “REF” book. REF1: Dungeon Master’s
Screen(1989) and REF2: Player Character Record Sheets(1989) were revised the
next year, but then there was a three-year gap before TSR decided to use the
module code one more time, for the line’s only AD&D 2e product: REF6: Rogues’
Gallery(1992).

Origins (II): More Realms. Conversely, Lords of Darknesswas a fairly early
Forgotten Realms supplement. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set(1987) was about
a year and a half old, and there had been a half-dozen “FR” sourcebooks, but
actual adventures for the Realms were still pretty scarce. Discounting the
ongoing “H”, “I”, and “OA” series, the only totally original Realms adventures
were N5: “Under Illefarn” (1987), I14: Swords of the Iron Legion(1988), and
FRC1: Ruins of Adventure(1988).

Whether the piecemeal lairs of Lords of Darknessmet the need for Realms
adventures is a wholly different question …

Origins (III): The History of the Undead. A year and a half before the
publication of Ravenloft: Realm of Terror(1990), Lords of Darknesswas D&D’s
first general focus on the undead.

The monsters had been there as antagonists for clerics from the start.
OD&D(1974) features skeletons, zombies, ghouls, wights, wraiths, mummies,
spectres, and vampires. Of the missing monsters, ghosts appeared in Strategic
Review #3(Autumn 1975), shadows and liches in Supplement I: Greyhawk(1975),
and the tricky ghasts in the Monster Manual(1977).

By the time that the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide(1979) was published, the
undead had been organized into a careful table for cleric turning: skeleton,
zombie, ghoul, shadow, wight, ghast, wraith, mummy, spectre, vampire, ghost,
and lich. That’s pretty much a table of contents for this book (minus the
wraith).

Expanding D&D. Lords of Darknesscontains D&D’s first horror check: if a
character fails to roll Wisdom + level when faced with something sufficiently
horrific he takes a -4 penalty and might even face insanity. It was a clear
nod to the mental attributes of games such as Call of Cthulhu(1981). Though a
one-off rule for AD&D 1e, it would foreshadow the fear and horror checks of
Ravenloft: Realm of Terror(1990) and the various mental conditions of D&D 3e
(2000).

A variety of new spellsfor necromancers also appear — an obvious addition
given Ed Greenwood’s general like of new spells, as most recently seen in FR4:
“The Magister” (1988).

Exploring the Realms. The adventures in Lords of Darknessrun the gamut from
being pretty generic to having nice connections to Ed Greenwood’s primordial
Forgotten Realms, but most simply namedrop Realms’ gods and civilizations.
Ravens Bluff was a particularly popular namedrop, appearing in both the
“ghost” and “vampires” adventures, probably thanks to its regular appearance
in Polyhedronmagazine (1981-2004) at the time.

A few adventures include stronger connections:

The “zombie” adventure, by Mike Stackpole, touches upon not only the
Zhentarim, but also Aumvor the Undying, a lich first mentioned by Greenwood in
“Pages from the Mages IV” in Dragon #97(May 1985); at the time, Greenwood’s
Dragonarticles were a major source for other designers seeking out tidbits of
Realmslore.
The “mummy” scenario, by Jennell Jaquays, is set in the area of FR5: “The
Savage Frontier” (1988), which she’d recently authored. It’s also one of the
few appearances of a creator racein a Realms adventure as well as the debut of
the infamous Nether Scrolls.
The “lich” adventure, by Ed Greenwood himself, is set in Shadowdale, which
would soon become one of the setting’s prime locales for adventure. (Where
else would a powerful lich hang out?) The adventure also makes some of the few
known references to the lost kingdom of Hlontar.

Monsters of Note. Lords of Darknesscontains short ecologies of ten major
undead monsters from AD&D 1e: skeletons, zombies, ghouls(and ghasts), wights,
shadows, mummies, vampires, ghosts, spectres, and liches.

The shadowshere are interesting, because they’re fairly unique in fantasy
RPGs, but don’t receive much attention elsewhere. They originated as the
shadows from Abraham Merritt’s Creep Shadow(1934) novel and were part of Gary
Gygax’s fascination with a “plane of insubstantial stuff”. They weren’t even
undead when they appeared in “Greyhawk”, as Don Turnbull noted when he wrote
about them in White Dwarf #8(August/September 1978), saying that he “used to
enjoy seeing clerics vainly trying to turn what wouldn’t turn”. Gygax had
planned a weird new origin for them when he wrote the “D” adventures (1978).
They were to be the minions of Lolth, created by “her draining humans of
positive life energy as a spider sucks the fluids from its prey”. But, Gygax
never got to finish the GDQ series, so that origin faded away and by the time
AD&D 2e (1989) appeared, they were just cursed humans and demihumans who were
largely transferred to the negative material plane.

Future History. Wizards of the Coast published another Forgotten Realms Lords
of Darkness(2001) many years later, but it’s about organizations, not undead.

About the Creators. Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms, gets
front cover credit and did write one of the adventures and most of the
additional material found in the book. However the rest of the adventures are
written by a variety of other authors: Deborah Christian, Michael Stackpole,
Jennell Jaquays, Steve Perrin, Vince Garcia, and Jean Rabe.

Converted by: Stephen Kissee

Released on July 10, 2019. Designed for Fantasy Grounds version 3.3.7 and
higher.

Requires: An active subscription or a one time purchase of a Fantasy Grounds
Full or Ultimate license and the included 2E ruleset.

Fantasy Grounds – D&D Classics: REF5 Lords of Darkness (1E)