Review & OSR Commentary AX5 Eyrie of the Dread Eye By Courtney Campbell For Adventurer, Conqueror, King Rpg & ACKS II rpg

" From the imagination of Courtney Campbell, creator of the popular OSR blog  Hack & Slash, comes a terrifying new adventure for characters level 6 to 8.

The Eye Is Opening.

Thousands of years ago, living gods named Khepri wielded powers beyond understanding. Their  bizarre magics rived a rent in reality itself. This portal  the Oculus  led to the deepest realms of Chthonic Darkness, but it was not yet fully open. Malign forces, opposed to all life, infested the Oculus, and waited. The Khepri kept vigil over the Oculus till time moved her hand. When the Khepri vanished in the Day Without Night, their Elven epigones took up the watch. In time, the Elves were conquered by the diabolic Thrassian race, and they in turn were subjugated by the Zaharans. Through the millennia, the caretakers of the Oculus studied, waited, and watched."

 AX5 Eyrie of the Dread Eye By Courtney Canpbell is one of those adventures that made me reconsider ACK's in the past. Now I recognize that AX5 is a homage to Il Dwellers of the Forbidden City. The encounters here, traps, tricks and what not within Eyrie of the Dread Eye is deep in the dye adventure that tests PC's to their limits. The reason that it does this is by making this adventure a homage to all things Lovecraftian and old school TSR. 
AX5 takes all of the dungeon and adventure elements then distills the essence down into the rpg adventure itself. And what about ACKsII? Does the adventure material & rpg systems  within AX5 differ significantly from this newest incarnation of ACKs? Not really. 
ACKs II has sigificant changes within it's wording after the entire OGL debacle. Something that other OSR companies such as Troll Lord Games for example also dealt with. 

AX5 is a location and encounter driven adventure that adds to the ACK's campaign setting. The action centers around the oculus and it's minions. This is a god within an adventure location that could potentially TPK a party of player's PC's. ACKs II plugs into that epic feel that we get from the best of the ACK's adventures. The history of the Ahuran setting proves this out. Take for example the Zaharan empire. 
The Zaharan empire was a font of corruption that spread a huge swath of Chaos across the face of the campaign setting. They also spread out the humanoid races a bringers of Chaos across the face of it.  AX5 does the job of plugging into this history and bringing it into the present of the adventurers. 
ACKs II blows the foreknowledge of this history into the present to the PC in very vivid ways. Chaos becoming a rising force within  the campaign setting is a very strong possibility especially since AX5 makes it clear that this is a reality. The PC's can stem this tide somewhat but Chaos will pop up in other places especially through the humanoid armies. Orcs and other humanoids are the tools of the Lovecraftian lords of Chaos within ACKs I & II. 

Events within AX5 bares this out & then bring home the ancient danger of the ancient gods! ACKs II brings the epicness & heroic nature of the rpg system. I don't say this lightly at all.