Pathfinder Society Scenario # 30 [# 1-02]: "The Devil We Know Part II--Cassomir's Locker"

NO SPOILERS

When people who have never played an RPG speculate about what it's like, they probably think of something like The Devil We Know Part II: Cassomir's Locker, an adventure where the PCs run around some generic tunnels fighting some generic monsters on a mission to recover a generic piece of treasure.  Having played in the scenario and then read it, I find very little to recommend it.  I suppose, at a stretch, it's serviceable as a sort of "combat only" adventure to quickly introduce combat rules to new players, but there are much better introductory scenarios available.  Frankly, this is the sort of thing that most GMs could quickly come up with on the fly given some random encounter tables and a bit of imagination to flesh them out.  It's forgettable and completely skippable.

SPOILERS

A PFS Venture-Captain named Hestia Themis gives the briefing.  A noblewoman named Countess Arieta Patrizia was kidnapped and taken to the sewers below the city.  Although Patrizia managed to escape, she eventually succumbed to the disease and wounds she incurred as part of her ordeal.  Before she died, she described her kidnappers as derro (mad creatures who live underground and kidnap humans for slavery or experiments) and said there were many more captives.  In addition, she saw a strange artifact transforming normal rats into giant-sized versions!  The mission that Themis gives the PCs is to descend into the sewers, seize the artifact, and free any captives found along the way.

The rest of the scenario takes place entirely underground, and is structured into two Acts.

Act I has the PCs exploring the sewers.  There are a few combat encounters here that can be triggered in any order.  There are the typical things one might expect: giant spiders, a couple of traps, diseased water, etc.  The substantive encounters include cultists of Groetus (the God of the End Times), which has a tiny bit of tie-in to the previous scenario in the series.  One of the cultists is even Dalirio Teppish's twin brother--like in a soap opera, I didn't even know Dalirio *had* a brother, much less a twin!  It could be an interesting twist, but it doesn't really amount to anything besides a quick combat.  At some point during their exploration of the sewers, the PCs will find a hatch leading further below.

Act II is a little more interesting, and is loosely based on the fact that Seattle and some other real cities are actually built *above* earlier settlements, the abandoned buildings of which still exist below!  The fictional city of Cassomir has
something like it, and soon the PCs find themselves exploring abandoned buildings whose upper levels are abruptly cut off by the "ceiling" of the cavern.  It's a really evocative concept that could have been a great setting for an adventure, but little is made of it here.  Instead, the PCs will encounter rats (dire rats or rat swarms), mites, and, in the "big conclusion" (for Subtier 3-4 at least) a single derro!  The cheesy "artifact" (whose origin is unexplained) is just sitting in a room to be scooped up.  It's all very bland.

I think I was particularly disappointed in this scenario because the entry for derro in Classic Horrors Revisited was so fantastic at establishing them as these bizarre, creepy, frankly terrifying creatures whose predilection for kidnapping and thirst for experimentation make them the stuff of nightmares.  But in this scenario, the derro is just waiting around in a room with a giant rat, fights, and dies.  There's very little done with a potentially cool setting and antagonists.  More, there's almost no opportunity for role-playing, with only the faction missions livening things up a bit.

Overall, The Devil We Know Part II: Cassomir's Locker is an eminently forgettable little dungeon crawl.  I'm glad Pathfinder Society scenarios have evolved in a much better direction!