Iron Heroes: Dark Harbor by Adam Windsor, is an Iron Heroes adventure for levels 1 to 5. It starts with a description of the city of Malador (centerpiece of the adventure) and its environs. Then it jumps into the action, taking the party through a hectic and exciting adventure that can permanently change the nature of Malador.

Points of Note: 1) It is one of the best written and most complete modules I've ever read (and by extension, run). There are stats for just about everyone in the adventure, a plentitude of rumors that change based upon where in the story your group is, lots of opportunities for combat and negotiation and plenty of guidance for when your players go off track. The story itself is entertaining, subtle and very logical.

2) It supports Iron Heroes beautifully. Condition and option zones are listed for every area in which combat is likely, and range from slippery bird pooh to slingable mud to collapsible houses. The environments are almost always intriguing and inspiring for clever stunt uses. Every NPC uses either the Iron Heroes PC or NPC classes for stats, meaning there is no conversion required.

3) The encounters are challenging and threatening but aren't a danger if the PCs are smart. I lost half the party in a drowned tower because the Resilient Toughness religious fanatic didn't wait for others to heal up before kicking down the next door and starting the next fight. This resulted in all sorts of unpleasantness and eventually death for the fanatic and the harrier. When the party came back (with new members) they easily handled a similar encounter to the one that had been lethal. Similarly, in one of the dungeons, they snuck from encounter to encounter and where able to take the monsters by surprise. As such only two of the twelve beasts they encountered actually got to fight before they were cut down; however, those two dealt a good amount of damage and showed that it would have been a very dangerous encounter if it weren't for the party's preparation.

4) The encounters are varied. Birds, beetles, frogmen, thugs, gladiators, ghouls, pirates, hydras and a wide variety of other challenges result in not only having interesting battlefields but also having interesting foes.

5) It's been very easy to work in replacement characters as necessary. Malador is a cosmopolitan sea port, allowing many different types of people to show up there. This has been most useful.

6) It's portable. Malador and it's relationship with Borat are actually fairly generic and can be taken to whatever setting you desire with little fuss. On the other hand, one can build an entire setting around the information in the module, which is what I have done.

7) The art work is evocative and attractive, in as much as it can be given some of the subject matter. The layout is simple and easily navigated. The interior is black and white, with color covers.

8) My only real complaint is that the layout can make it a bit difficult to locate specific information about locations and NPCs in the first chapter of the book. This didn't cause me and my group a lot of trouble, but it could have.

Dark Harbor is excellent if you're looking for a low level module to start an IH game. It's one of the best modules I've seen, for any system, and I and my players have been very happy with how it has played out. Plenty of chances for everyone to shine and lots of neat stuff to do besides kill things and loot their bodies (though there's lots of that too) make this a good module for getting people interested in Iron Heroes.

LIKED: Everything. Advice, story, NPCs, environments, etc. The level of detail and completeness made this a simple joy to run and lots of fun for my table.

DISLIKED: A few layout issues with information about the city. The adventure ends; it reaches an end point and stops, logically.

QUALITY: Excellent.

VALUE: High