Had the pleasure of running this short adventure for my group a few nights ago as part as our playthrough of the Vengeance of the Shunned campaign.

This adventure picks up nicely from where A Mishap of ill Potent leaves the storyline. I find the adventure to be above the usual short adventures you find on this site or DM Guild, and especially the part with the Academy has some great scenes that are both interesting, drives the narrative, and gives a plausible impression of an academy in chaos and lock down. I would have liked to steal this idea for one of my own campaigns.

I have a few additional comments and suggestions to some of the sections in the adventure but none of these small issues lessened the experience of running or playing the story. My comments are posted in the Discussion tab.

Note: this adventure uses "alchemical substances" that provide the same explosive effect as gunpowder. This might contradict other GMs' view on the technology level in Scarred Lands. It is, however, not widespread in this adventure, but in the hands of a single insignificant (in the larger picture) npc.

The adventure opens with a very interesting and refreshing take on the "bandits on the road" encounter that serves to actually drive forward the narrative.

After that, The Bridged City is truly a magical city like is often promised in Dungeons and Dragons adventures but is seldom delivered. The variety of gameplay between A Mishap of Ill Portent and this adventure already is quite vast. Want to role play using a dwarvish bomb to blow a hole into a force field and break into a sealed wizard and magical engineering academy? This is the perfect adventure for you.

The series initial big bad is revealed and she seems fairly fierce. I don't want to give any spoilers, but the fact that the authors choose to utilize the setting specific tattoo magic is great.

I will say that this adventure COULD be played without playing A Mishap of Ill Portent, but a lot of the content in this adventure references back to that adventure in such a way that it is all but requisite.