From publisher blurb:
Your old enemy comes to you, your first and most patient enemy, and cuts you down at last. Not with mercy or with the salute of one old warrior meeting another on the field, but cruelly, indifferently, sparing you no pain.
When you were young, you were a hero, but now you’re old and you don’t die a hero’s death. You die at an old person’s hard labor. You die with a blade in your hand, but it’s an axe and you were at the wood pile, or it’s a hoe and you were scratching the earth, or it’s a sickle for the harvest. You die poor, with a bent back, aching arms, weary, your belly empty.
You wash up on the shores of the land of death, coughed up with the scattered wrack of the death-tides. There is no hero’s welcome for you. There is no honored elder’s welcome. Your ancestors are not waiting for you, nor the ancient heroes, nor your old comrades, nor the loves of your youth. The priests promised you rest, but no one finds you now to offer you the sup of oblivion.
After a time of waiting, the silent dark sea sweeping up and down the gray gravel under the moonless sky, you rise. So be it. There is no hero’s welcome? Then you will accept no hero’s welcome. No sup of oblivion? Then, for now, you will remember. You take up the memory of your old sword, your old shield.
Here in the land of death, let you make your last adventure.
The Game
You're an old warrior, champion, and monster slayer. Now you've come to die, but on death's shore, neither family nor ancient heroes greet you.Take up the memory of your sword, the memory of your shield, and make your last adventure here, in the land of death!
To play The Last Adventure, you need two volunteer GMs (or more than two, it's fine) to play against you. You have your booklet of rules, which you're responsible for knowing and bringing into play for yourself, and your volunteers have their own document: "In the Land of Death," their guide to the landscapes, people, and monsters you'll encounter there. Don't read it! It's for them, not for you.
Your goal in the game is to take your time with your last adventure, and to decide, gradually but intentionally, whether to see it through to its finish, or to lose yourself in death instead.
Each session that you play is an encounter in your last adventure: a new place you arrive, new people you meet, new dangers you face, in the land of death. You can play as often or rarely as you like, and you can call upon the same volunteers, or different ones, every time you play. Just pass In the Land of Death over to them so that they can mark your progress through it.