Excellent art and lore. Love the pilgrimage theme and how the PCs must restrain themselves throughout the journey. 

A very cool adventure that fits perfectly with the themes of the appendix N (for example Clark Ashton Smith Hyperborea I guess ;-) I always love wizard's rivalries and jealousies, and the motive of the pilgrimage is interesting as it is by nature "linear" but at the same time can or must be "outwitted" by the PCs. It creates a nice tension !

The map is elegant and extremely thematic. Also, kudos to the artist for such evocative work! (luckily that character on the cover isn't there... I know my players...)

The 'Unworthy' condition is brilliant. At first, I thought it didn't do much, but the twist in Room 6 is going to be so much fun to run.

The Giant Snake is a fantastic threat, though I noticed it’s missing a stat block to run it effectively. Lastly, if I’m reading this correctly, the secret door slams shut once the artifact is stolen, making an easy escape impossible unless someone lands a brutal DC 18 STR check. I may think of reducing it, seems strange to have a passage they cannot use no matter what.

Great job giving a real creative background to the cult. It reads like a well thought out piece of fantasy fiction where any questions the players may have can be answered to a satisfying degree. 

I was delighted with lots of little remarks and flavourful additions in the text that show the signs of an experienced designer. Reading the text gives me plenty for the players to interact with. 

In closing I also want to remark the beautiful use of art to break up the text. Nothing ever felt long-winded or overly dense.

I like it as a linear puzzle dungeon. I like it for the lore and very thematic encounters on the way to and in the cloister. It’s so straight forward in its rules of engagement and quite punishing for those players not heeding to them, I’ll absolutely put it on my pile of zines to educate my little murderhobos at home.

It duped me in two way, though:

First, it isn’t what I call a heist. It’s a linear puzzle journey/dungeon with a quick grab and run at the end. But perhaps I’m totally wrong and player will come up with elaborate plans. I’d be happy to be surprised in that regard.

Second: There’s a lady in… shall we say old-school-y garments on the cover, who does not even have a guest appearance in the module. I would’ve thought she’d play a lot bigger role, than… none?

You absolutely nailed the theme. As soon as I saw “the research of ethereal vertices” thrown in there as if that was a common thing to say, I knew I was in for a treat.

This is a very cool adventure, has amazing art, and is well-formatted and easy to run. Great work!

Yes! From cover to writing, you nailed the Appendix N vibes.

Great jungle vibes. This looks like it would play smoothly at the table and there's lots of nice evocative bits to help set the table. The art is excellent and well used. I did find the body text hard on the eyes due to the thin line weight and contrast. Overall, very nicely done.

This is dripping with App N vibes.  Cults, in practice, often tend to be kind of ho-hum in their sameness. But not here--you've developed something really special. The pilgrimage encounters perfectly set the stage for the PCs. Oh, and the artwork is gorgeous.

Did you do all the art and all the writing here? Fantastic stuff! So much evocative art here, used well. It's a small thing, but I love the way you've done the branding here. I want to read the other Tales of Scelus!

You've nailed the theme as well, of course. I could 100% believe this was adapted directly from a Vance or Howard short story. Dubious silk-wrapped sorcerer patron? Sign me up.

The theming is great, the writing is evocative and inspiring. The pilgrimage has such cool ideas. Every entry on the encounter table is interesting. 

The one struggle I would have when running it is how open to be about the trials. When entering a room do the PCs know what the trial is? Or do they need to intuit it?  

For example, the hall of true names: assuming you’re not meant to tell the PCs what the trial is, I’m not sure I’d know what to do. I see tablets with names, a fresh tablet and stylus. I guess it’s obvious to write a name. The plaque at the entrance said “don’t speak your true name unless commanded”, though.  Writing isn’t speaking but is it worth the risk? I feel like my players would spend 45 minutes hemming and hawing. 

My gut would say to tell them what the surface level of the trial is. Then the interesting thing is them choosing whether to do it in good faith or try to bypass it. I’m just unclear on if that’s the intention. 

The theming is on-point for the jam and the illustrations and map are fantastic, and like others, I enjoy how the writing really evokes the setting. Walking skins are definitely my favorite elements here! I think the idea of putting the PCs in robes that forces them to carry only 5 item slots is great, and the communion moment seems like it could be fun to run, and the magic item seems really powerful.

Some general feedback:

• At the page size chosen, with such a thin font, I think it becomes really hard to read the text at the intended size. I’m zooming to 125% to be able to read comfortably.
• While I love the idea of the pilgrimage as a setup to the adventure, I want to raise three points about it:

1. I can see players choose to either always carry only 5 slots to not worry about the tests, making encounter 3 irrelevant; or, the one character with good DEX carries all of their inventory and barely worries about the test. If I’m running this in the future, I’d enforce the limit of 5 items and replace encounter 3 with losing one of those 5 items.
2. At 33% chance of encounters in 6 opportunities, we are looking at an average of 3 encounters, each a simple setup and a single roll, and the possibility of repeating the same encounter more than once. If running this adventure, I think I’d skip rolling altogether and just place all of them in front of the players.
3. While I love the quick encounter resolution, I don’t know how I could present some of the challenges in a way that describing it doesn’t give the solution to the challenge. Maybe I could present the Thirst encounter exactly as written, and make it a dilemma to the players, but if I do so, they know they have a choice between 100% becoming unworthy, or just over 50% chance of taking little damage. Maybe the tenets of the faith described in the first room should actually be at the start of the pilgrimage and it should be explicit that there’s no rest in these 3 days (so the damage actually means something during the trials)

• The trials feel a bit one-dimensional and I don’t see them giving much leeway for players to be creative when passing them. Some might depend on players guessing what the room wants from the players. I could see players just asking the molted in 5 what they are meant to do, or just kneeling and praying in wait for judgment (as instructed over the gate, if they noted that down)

Overall, great use of the title, and so many fantastic ideas explored. Maybe it’s a matter of personal preference, but I feel like I’d want to redesign the trials if I were to run this adventure.

An absolute BANGER! I don’t even play Shadowdark, and I wanna run this ASAP.

Great map, the art is phenomenal, stayed on theme, with a phenomenally serpentine color palette. This one oozes flavor, and you managed to slither so much gameable content into such a small space. Awesome job!

Easily my favorite Shadowdark entry of this jam - The Cloister of the Serpent is such an engaging read. From the second page presenting the hook as dialogue to the procedures for the pilgrimage to the cloister, multiple random elements, I mean how did you fit all of this into such a small area? 

Pretty much full marks from me.