Pathfinder Module: "Academy of Secrets" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

Academy of Secrets is memorable to me as the first Pathfinder adventure I ever owned.  I picked it up years before starting to regularly play Pathfinder, intending to use it as a side-quest during a long-running Forgotten Realms game.  When the PCs got to the right level in that campaign, I dangled the adventure hook and . . . nothing!  No bite.  "It's obviously a trap!" they said, and went off to do other random things.  Years later, I started running Rise of the Runelords (my first foray into the Golarion campaign setting) and when the PCs got up to the right level for Academy of Secrets, I dangled the hook.  This time, I got a bite, and hurried to do all the necessary prep between sessions.  But one of the PCs was unhappy with his spell selection after the first encounter, and, just a few pages into the module, they teleported away to do AP stuff.  Vexed but undeterred, I scheduled Academy of Secrets as a Pathfinder Society special.  I was going to run it, hell or high water!  It turned out I couldn't actually use it for PFS (there's no "campaign mode" for it, and the players didn't have characters of high enough level.)  But I convinced the players to play "just for fun" (such a weird notion!), and I finally got the module off the ground and justified the $ 13.95 Canadian dollars and cents I spent on it lo those many moons ago at The Hairy Tarantula.

Was it worth the wait?  Well . . .  maybe not exactly.  It's not an earth-shattering story.  But it is a fun module, easy to integrate into any campaign.  PCs can teleport in after receiving the hook anywhere in Golarion, take part in the adventure, and then teleport back to get on with whatever else they have going on.  Unlike many modules, it avoids the cliche of "stumble into a new village and help it solve its problems", and, unlike some modules, it won't take months to finish.  You can run through Academy of Secrets in two or three four-hour sessions and not feel like you hurried past a ton of content.  At 32 pages, it's just the right length for a satisfying side trek that won't derail an on-going campaign.  And frankly, there aren't that many modules for PCs in the Level 12-14 range, so I'm grateful for what we have.

It's not a spoiler to say (given the blurb, module title, and initial adventure hook) that the module involves the Acadamae, Korvosa's elite magical university.  Appendix 1 of the module is a three-page neutral presentation of the Acadamae suitable for use in any campaign.  If, for example, you're running or playing through Curse of the Crimson Throne and want to flesh out a wizard PC's background or add some colour when they go to get an item identified, the description here would be quite useful.  It contains a half-page map of the grounds of the Acadamae, description of the various buildings, and a list of notable personalities (the headmaster and deans of the various schools).  Setting lore completists would still find it useful to integrate the material on the Acadamae from the Guide to Korvosa, as there are some nuggets of slightly different information.  Appendix 2 introduces a new monster called a Garipan--a sort of outsider that often masquerades as a gargoyle. The artwork is cool, even if the concept isn't super exciting.  The inside front- and back- cover show how tiles from the Magic Academy map pack can be arranged to form rooms used in the module.  I thought this was a really clever idea, and I wish this concept (integrating adventures with map packs and flip-mats) had continued through future modules.

Anyway, that's enough background--on to the main event!

SPOILERS

Academy of Secrets is all about an annual event at the Acadamae called the Breaching Festival.  The Breaching Festival is a carnival-like day in which students and adventurers from around Golarion participate in a contest to see if they can penetrate the university's Hall of Wards and emerge before any other contestant.  From the Acadamae's point of view, it's a way to test the skill of its best abjurers, from the public's point of view it's an entertaining spectacle, and from the contestants' point of view, it's a way to win a prize of 153,000 gold pieces!  But what no one except the Acadamae's Headmaster, Toff Ornelos knows, is that the Breaching Festival is really a century's old trap to feed mortal souls to an archduke of Hell.  Those who enter the Hall of Wards aren't entering a building, they're entering a Hell-like demiplane facsimile of the building named Belzeragna!  The first couple of pages of the module go through the background of how the Breaching Festival came to be, summarizes the adventure, and offers a handy sidebar for GMs who want to try to fit it in or around a Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign.

Part One ("An Unexpected Invitation") contains the adventure hook and preliminaries to the Breaching Festival.  The hook is simple but effective: a courtier sent by Headmaster Toff Ornelos teleports to wherever the PCs are, hand-delivers the invitation, and stands ready to teleport back with the PCs.  PCs of every level like gold, and 153,00 gp in cash is pretty sweet at any level.  As I said above, it's nice that you don't have to manipulate the PCs into already being in Korvosa for the adventure to work.  Assuming the PCs agree and teleport to the Acadamae, they'll be introduced to Toff Ornelos.  The artwork he's given (on page 27) is pretty imposing, so I role-played him as an imperious jerk and I think it worked well.  Ornelos explains the details of the Breaching Festival and isn't shy to say that it's been a century and a half since anyone won the prize--which is enough to raise the suspicions of necessarily-paranoid PCs.  They'll definitely suspect something is up, but won't know quite what, and that amount of gold should be worth the risk.

After the meeting with the Headmaster, the PCs will be guided toward the dormitories.  While passing by a classroom, they'll hear a disturbance and get their first encounter, as another contestant, hoping to get an edge, has summoned a demonic creature far beyond her prowess and paid for the mistake with (probably) her life.  The demon, an Advanced Retriever, has some nasty eye ray abilities (like petrification!).  It's an introductory taste to the desperation some contestants will get to, and can be used to set the tone for the Acadamae as a ruthless place.  I mention this last bit since sometimes the Acadamae is presented as a cut-throat place of strivers and back-stabbers (such as the Pathfinder Tales story "The Illusion" available here), whereas Academy of Secrets probably presents the Acadamae as a nicer place than that.  I went with the former view, as it's a lot more interesting.

This part of the module concludes with the PCs having an opportunity to meet the rest of their competition.  This is primarily a role-playing and story opportunity, as the fate of these competitors will be revealed later in the module.

Part Two ("The Breaching Festival") starts with Headmaster Ornelos giving a little speech on the morning of the festival before the assembled masses (including, perhaps Queen Ileosa!).  Ornelos goes over the rules, explaining that, before any contestant can actually enter the Hall of Wards, they have to find a small magical "key-light" in one of the other buildings on campus.  Once the competition starts, the NPC contestants scatter, and the PCs have seven different buildings (all representing different schools of magic) to choose from.  Each building's key-light is guarded by a magical trap and/or monstrous guardians, and the PCs need one key-light for each member of the group.  But although they'll need to enter multiple buildings, they don't need to enter every single one, and this part of the module plays pretty quickly because searching each building for the key-lilght is handled abstractly through a skill check.  The obstacles to getting a key-light are suitably challenging given the level of the PCs (with magical traps like phantasmal killer, baleful polymorph, confusion, and a heightened horrid wilting), and, when I ran this, one of the four PCs was killed before even making it into the Hall of Wards!  This is an opportunity for rogues with magical trap-finding abilities (or spellcasters with dispel magic at the ready) to really shine.

Part Three ("Belzeragna") starts once the PCs enter the Hall of Wards with the key-lights.  Without realizing it, they've arrived in a demi-plane that is very difficult to escape.  The mangled body of one of the NPC contestants is on the ground, reinforcing the tone that this competition is not for the faint of heart!  Another room, a library, contains a strange sight: a crazed wizard rushing back and forth trying to grab one of dozens of books and scrolls that continually fly through the room and evade his grasp.  The wizard, Terentius, is a former contestant from last year's Breaching Festival, but because time passes differently in the demi-plane, he's been trapped here for 25 years of local time!  He's searching for his spellbook, but doesn't realize that invisible stalkers are tormenting him by moving books around willy-nilly.  He's actually a potent threat if the PCs anger him, and thus it's best to get on Terentius' good side.  The next room, a lecture hall, also contains an NPC competitor, but one from this Breaching Festival who made it into the Hall of Wards before the PCs.  Illia Ean, a local member of the thieves' guild, has been tortured by a handmaiden devil.  She begs to be set free, but is not trustworthy as she'll betray the group to mollify any devils they encounter.  And devils are certainly going to be encountered: bone devils, handmaiden devils, barbed devils, and, in the final room of Belzeragna, a contract devil.

This last devil is a CR 15 threat named Chyvvom.  By the time my PCs reached him, another member of the group had fallen in combat (caught between a barbed devil and a devourer), so it was a "then there were two" situation.  I liked the encounter here because Chyvvom doesn't have to be fought.  He's a very "reasonable" fellow, and PCs can make a deal for their escape that doesn't even require them to pledge their mortal souls.  However, the module isn't clear on what terms Chyvvom will or will not agree to, as a sidebar on page 20 and the discussion on page 21 seem to disagree.  If the terms are too exacting, then combat is inevitable and the whole situation becomes less interesting.  I was also a bit fuzzy on how Chyvvom handled previous contestants, since there hasn't been a "winner" in a century and a half--does no one ever escape, or is there a contract term that they can't reveal what happened inside the Hall of Wards and arrive someplace else on Golarion? Anyway, although I did my best, the two PCs were unwilling to make a deal with the devil and decided to fight--and won!  Contract devils, as I also learned in a recent PFS scenario, really aren't that tough when cornered in melee.  Once Chyvvom is defeated (or a deal is in place), the PCs can escape Belzeragna.

Part Four ("Hells Breaching") felt tacked on, and, although I prepped it, I didn't run it.  Essentially, by escaping Belzeragna, the PCs have stretched the demiplane to the breaking point and a horde of devils pour out into the grounds of the Acadamae.  I didn't really understand the logic here, as Belzeragna isn't Hell itself (just a Hell-like demiplane).  Anyway, this part plays out as a series of little encounters that can be run in any order as everything from warmonger devils to bone devils to ice devils to erinyes run rampant.  Good-aligned PCs might stay to try and save the day, but I think many PCs (having narrowly survived Belzeragna after being screwed over by the Headmaster) won't have the appetite to intervene.  It comes across as rather anti-climactic.  After the encounters, the PCs have a choice to make in whether to implicate Headmaster Ornelos in what's been going on, and there's a good discussion of other fall-out from the adventure.

Academy of Secrets doesn't stick the landing, so I have to come down in the four out of five stars department.  That aside, it features an original setting  (and I could imagine further shenanigans at the Acadamae!), a robust hook, a classic adventure design, and balanced high-level play (which isn't always easy).  It took a while, but I'm glad I finally got to run this module and I imagine I'll make use of elements of it again in the future.