Ave Nox - A megadungeon campaign retrospective
Well, on March 22nd 2026, my 4 players killed Solaris Rex, the Sun King, and finished the megadungeon module Ave Nox
Starting in January of 2025 it ran for 40 sessions (plus a session 0)
I ran it in Worlds Without Number (Will have more to say on that later), 4 players through the whole thing.
General Thoughts
Regardless of anything else, I'm happy. I've run one shots before, had campaigns fall apart after a few sessions, this is the first one to go proper long. It's an accomplishment, and I feel good about it
Worlds Without Number turned out to really not be my, or my players, system. Not really for any one big reason but a bunch of small annoyances, healing (and the powers of the healer mage) was a larger part though
I personally really should have done a better job of tracking time and resources, while there were other interesting things to take up the players attention, it never really felt like they were far from civilization, scrounging for what they could
Now, for the module itself
The art in it was fantastic the whole way through, I was constantly throwing up pics pulled from it to my group to really emphasize a section and they always love them (though they did laugh at the naked bird man :V)
The fact that there were stated out other groups was good, wish I had made better use of them. Hirelings are still a fairly foreign concept to me
The fact that ghosts can be friendly or angry is interesting, but I feel like they could have popped up more in the text, make this place ghost city. it also felt that unless your players were total murder hobos there's basically no chance of angering the ghosts. My group certainly wasn't going to shlep whole bodies up and out to sell them for a few coins, plenty of treasure already around.
I didn't get much use out of the hand mirror (though one player was obsessed with it, but that's more cause I'm not good at portraying manipulative masterminds
The map of dungeon entrances was nice, but I think it would have been better with some above ground locations marked to, small sidequest spots
Level 1 is pretty good, several spots you have to come back later, like the original entrance and the gate to the noble quarters
Right from the start with grand and defaced murals you get the idea of what kind of character Solaris Rex is, but only who he is. Later, in the nobles quarter we suddenly have a bunch of other figures. I think they could have also used foreshadowing through the rest of the dungeon
Early on it points out that all the levels are connected by a central pillar, which is a generally good idea, but it does mean there is little stopping players going anywhere at the start besides themselves. In older rpgs if you run into something much stronger than you to early, it's TPK, unless the GM just feels like making them act strangely merciful
if you follow the art then this is a great place to introduce the main enemies of the city, the cultists. They get a bit samey, but stumbling on these ill created things in the dark is a great scene
Don't want to comment on everything on every level but I think the true entrance is a great touch. Ever play a Fallout game? the ones where you leave a vault generally have skeletons out front. In 1 there was the body of a previous schmuck that was sent out before you, in 3, several bodies of people begging to be let in. Ave Nox has much, much more
While it does feel small, level 2 is an admirable attempt to add realism to the dungeon. Not make it realistic, but provide a fig leaf of explanation for how this closed system could endure for centuries
I didn't make much use of King Linnorm (again I was bad at keeping track of time) but my players sure did like Knifeman, and I mean, who wouldn't?
Level 3 didn't actually come up much in my game, the players avoided it at first because it was far more inhabited (though one did catch a play) and they only returned later after a cult assault on the dungeon (my own invention) left most dead. my group wasn't really the social stealth type, but perhaps some missed opportunities.
Level 4. Much snickering was had at the poop wizard, but the Winter Shrine provided some much appreciated pathos to the game, I even expanded it into a whole sepulchre area with a test of might.
The Solar Palace was a bit tricky, while it does well show the opulence that these decadent monsters live in, it feels to unconnected from the rest of the dungeon. It also feels kinda small (where do the nobles that aren't the big named ones live?)
As I said before, the monstrous Serdati and Goloch are certainly worthy fights, but they could use more set up
Solaris is a good end to the module I think. My players suspected for a long time that he was long dead and gone, so when they found the crack
Father Flame could use some more setup itself, strange geologic portents and such, otherwise he's kinda just a giant space flea from nowhere
But it's still a lovely module filled with art. If you're more experienced and proactive than me you can certainly easily address all of these issues
So yeah, at the end of the day, i'm glad I bought and ran Ave Nox. Finishing a whole module, never done that before.
I left Shear with a new small mountain right outside it, where fire and ice eternally battle
good times
