When I read Shadows of the Last War I unforgivably neglected to mention that the leader of the Emerald Claw detachment had a very peculiar character quirk - he was a changeling who was obsessed with vampires, to the point of using his innate shapechanging ability to pose as a vampire.
That's absolutely wild. In real life, it just makes you a goth, but in the world of Eberron, where vampires are definitely real and people definitely know about them, it's a hard core commitment to the goth lifestyle. There are hunters out there. They're going to come after you for looking like a vampire (especially if you use a combination of Obscuring Mist and Invisibility to fool people into thinking you have a vampire's Gaseous Form ability, like the villain did in the adventure). And when they come after you, you're not going to have a vampire's unholy might to protect you.
I'm not sure how I feel about all this - it's somewhere between the good kind of goofy and the bad kind of goofy - but it certainly left an impression. So much so that when I saw that the title of the follow-up adventure was Whispers of the Vampire's Blade (David Noonan), I was left agog. Did Garrow finally achieve his life-long dream of becoming a vampire? Or was the title sarcastic and mean, like Whispers of the "Vampire's" Blade. My mind reeled with the possibilities. I kind of want to read a series of adventures where this guy keeps coming back, each time with a more elaborate means of faking vampirism. Let's go head-to-head with the world's most dangerous poseur. I'm ready.
Except, unfortunately, the adventure's titular vampire was not Garrow. It was someone else entirely. Garrow shows up. He's kind of a secondary villain that interferes with you trying to chase the vampire. But he could be removed from adventure with relatively little effort. And yet, somehow, he got a major credibility boost from his appearance here.
There's just something about having your vampire hunting interrupted by a wannabe vampire that sinks its hooks deep into my brain. After the first adventure, I kind of dismissed Garrow as an overly precious joke villain, but now I want to know everything about his life. I can't stop fantasizing about casually bullying him (to be clear, he definitely deserves it) - "Sorry, Garrow, I don't have time for your bullshit. There's a vampire on the loose!" And while I don't normally countenance GM cheating, as both player and a gamemaster I have to insist that the GM do whatever it takes to ensure that Garrow never dies and never achieves his dream. You can't squander something so beautiful on something as nebulous as "player agency." Your players would never forgive you.
Now, as for the 90% of the adventure that did not focus on the recurring joke villain . . . I don't have a lot to say about it. It was pretty short. Compared to Shadows of the Last War, it did zero in a bit more on Eberron's unique genre bending (and so is probably a better introductory adventure overall). You're not just hunting a vampire, you're tracking down a rogue spy who stole a powerful weapon from a secure government vault and is threatening to bring it to a hostile power. You've got to go to a high-class masquerade ball, survive an airship battle, and then corner your target on a train. All classic pulp.
And then, in the end, you mix in a bit of D&D because the vampire jumps off the train and takes shelter in a nearby monster-infested ziggurat. You know, of the sort that you frequently find near major railways.
Do I hate the way this adventure turned out? No. Do I like the way this adventure turned out? . . . eh, yeah, I guess. Do I wish it had significantly more detail about this world's fantasy industrial infrastructure? You better believe it.
Ukss Contribution: It's got to be Garrow. He's just so fascinatingly weird.
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