The Valley of Flowers
by Jedediah Berry, Andrew McAlpine
from Phantom Mill Games
“And into this new and feverish light
A Brief History of Wildendrem, pg. 7
come those who would claim the treasures for themselves—wanderers, adventurers, and rogues, the inevitable nuisance of every age, worth nothing more than the stories they leave in their wake.“
Torchlight Score: 4/5 – Bright
This 150-page setting and module for OSE and Cairn is celebrated for its idiosyncratic Arthurian-inspired tone, a deadly yet whimsical mashup where everything feels “pushed a little more.” The layout makes excellent use of color and typography, while the writing is terse, beautiful, and focused on delivering a strong player experience.
Critics stop short of calling it flawless. The opening 15 pages are overly dense, the city of Cimbrine leans too heavily on generation tables instead of curated NPCs and locations, and the art and map styles clash, reflecting budgetary limits. The regional map lacks a sense of wanderable wilderness, and procedures for refreshing rumors and encounters could be stronger.
While no individual element earns a perfect score, the work as a whole is widely regarded as a remarkable success.
Delve Deeper: 4 Sources
Functions as a campaign guide, regional supplement, and collection of dungeons. Wildendrem itself is an Arthurian-inspired land in sorcerous delirium, where the Hornèd King Aerthur has vanished and the sun has grown strange and monstrous. Its tone pushes ideas further than expected, yielding oddities such as bureaucratic giant bees, cardinals and archmystagogues with swollen heads, and roads haunted by brigands and phantoms.
The book offers immense content: 37 mapped locations, six regions with about nine points each, the sprawling city of Cimbrine, five dungeons, and ten other fully described sites. Organized in a pointcrawl format, roughly two-thirds of the text covers regional locations, while the final third details Cimbrine itself.
Factional conflict drives the setting’s drama. The Silvered Nobles and their Knights of the Golden Promise rule with power, opposed by the Riverkeeper League, who honor the river spirits and resist noble tyranny. The Conclave of the Ordered Firmament enforces religious hierarchy in the name of order, while the incorruptible Order of Inviolate Passage dominates shipping. Together, these groups create a volatile political and mystical landscape for adventurers to navigate.