THE PLAGUE STRIKES

The Abyssal Plague gets underway in Don Bassingthwaite’s novel, The Temple of Yellow Skulls. Familiar characters introduced in Bill Slavicsek’s Mark of Nerath return in Yellow Skulls: the eladrin wizard Albanon, the human fighter Shara, the halfling rogue Uldane. Also back on the scene are the mysterious possessing demon Nu Alin and the green dragon Vestapalk, dual harbingers of the plague.

The Temple of Yellow Skulls picks up more or less where Mark of Nerath left off, but it puts the adventurers’ focus firmly on the threat of the Voidharrow. As the novel begins, three adventurers—Shara, Albanon, and Uldane—are in Fallcrest trying to decide what to do next. They’re quickly thrown into adventure, of course, and along the way they visit one of the most evocatively named places on the map of the Nentir Vale, which gives the book its name. They also meet an aging cleric named Kri Redshal, who claims to be the last surviving member of an order founded by the adventurers in the novella, the Order of Vigilance.

In Oath of Vigilance, by James Wyatt, these adventurers are joined by two old friends from Mark of Nerath: the dragonborn paladin Roghar and the tiefling warlock Tempest. Kri Redshal takes Albanon under his wing, Shara struggles to overcome her failure to avenge the death of her lover and finds comfort with a dashing drow warlock, and Tempest finally confronts the demon that possessed her.

The story of the Abyssal Plague in the Nentir Vale comes to a conclusion in The Eye of the Chained God, coming in April 2012. Don Bassingthwaite returns to wrap up the trilogy, and the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS world will never be the same!