Under the code I7, meaning it’s the seventh adventure in the intermediate series of AD&D adventure modules, Baltron’s Beacon isn’t one of the most famous modules in this series, however there are still some cool things in the module.

The plot is what at first seems like a regular fetch-quest, you are hired by a magic user to retrieve an ingredient, the Black Flame, and to get that you need to travel perilous terrain to an abandoned keep… but is the keep really abandoned? Of course not. Evil things are afoot and you have to smite them.

There’s a kind of famous monster introduced in this module, which is always fun, the Vampiric Mist makes its first appearance in AD&D here, and it will be a staple of the game for years to come. Also in this module there’s a cool thing that seemed to had fallen out of fashion in 1985, the presence of illustrations to assist players with puzzle solving and situate them in the dungeon, something which had started all the way back with Tomb of Horrors, but which was rare by ’85.