Starfinder Adventure Path # 2: "Temple of the Twelve" (Dead Suns, Chapter 2) [RPG]

 

NO SPOILERS

Although my view is an outlier according to the Paizo forums, I thought Chapter Two of Dead Suns was the best of the whole AP.  My barathu envoy PC had a blast connecting with the NPCs and background of the chapter, and although admittedly that may have just been a fluke, I do think the adventure is put together and that good use is made of the setting.  It's still an adventure that is very much on rails, but the writer has hidden it here better than in other chapters.  I was also impressed that the adventure made great use of some resource limitations that players often skip over but that well-prepared players are rewarded for thinking about.  Anyway, more on that later.  Here, in the "no spoilers" section of the review, I'll cover everything except the adventure.

First up, it's a cool cover image both in the foreground and the background.  I'm still not a fan of the overall design aesthetic, but I think this one works a lot better than the cover for Chapter One did.  The inside-front and inside-back covers are stats, background, and interior layout for a new bad guy ship that appears in the adventure and could easily be re-used by a GM in other contexts.

The back matter starts with a ten-page gazetteer of the planet Castrovel.  Castrovel has four large continents, three of which are ruled (respectively) by lashuntas, ant-like formians, and xenophobic elves, while the fourth continent is a sort of agreed "no-go" jungle wilderness full of megafauna and exotic plants.  The section starts with a handsome two-page map spread of the planet and then goes into an overview of each of the four continents.  It's a well-written and interesting overview, though not as self-consciously full of adventure hooks as some RPG gazetteers are.  A couple of bits I liked is the idea of Mountainheart Cities (cities built to be retractable into subterranean chambers in times of war) and a "portal grove" owned by a green dragon who sometimes hires adventures to explore their myriad destinations.  I should note that a quick skim of the Pact Worlds hardcover shows that its entry for Castrovel is largely a reproduction of the text in this AP volume.

Next up is an eight-page overview of the Cult of the Devourer, a chaotic evil movement devoted to anarchy, destruction, and bringing about the end of the universe.  The entry quite cleverly and persuasively discusses how a group devoted to anarchy and chaos could also form an "organisation", and there's an excellent description of how they recruit from the dissatisfied elements of society.  I like the distinction between "wall breakers" (the visible berserker thugs the pubic is cared about) and the "hidden ones" (devotees who live "normal" lives but are secretly gathering information, sabotaging defenses, spreading rumors, etc.).  The Devourer is a god, and sometimes it sends representatives called atrocites to help particular cells of the cult.  The scariest part of the cult are "feaster cells" that are like the reavers from Firefly: they will happily spend their time making sure an unconscious foe is dead and start engaging in cannibalism rather than do the (tactically smarter) thing of moving on to the next active threat.  The section includes a new mystic connection ("Devastator") that is really powerful compared to most.  It also includes some new gear, such as disintegrator weapons (used by one of my later PCs).

The "Alien Archives" section of this issue introduces seven new creatures.  Two of them are playable races: "ferrans" (squat humanoids from Ratheren, the high-grav world detailed at the end of the issue) and "woioko" (watery humanoids from the planet introduced at the end of the last issue).  Other creatures include "kaukariki" (super annoying monkeys), "lore guardians" (essentially golems, but with enough differences to warrant a separate entry), "whiskered renkrodas" (standard predatory dinosaur), "sky fishers" (aerial threats with handy camouflage), and "yaruks" (trampling herd animals).

The new planet on the "Codex of Worlds" page is Ratheren.  To be precise, Ratheren is a moon that once orbited a planet that was sucked into a mysterious black hole-like space anomaly!  Those who reacted to the threat quickly enough built a shielded city on the moon, but no one knows what happened to the planet itself.  It's a solid SF hook and perfect for a GM to use their imagination with.

Overall, an excellent selection of supplementary material.  

SPOILERS

The backstory to the adventure concerns the Temple of the Twelve, a sort of monastery/observatory on Castrovel constructed by ancient elven scholar-priests.  The temple’s builders had observed a strange ring of twelve stars in the sky, which their research and divinations indicated was of great cosmic significance.  When they had learned as much as they could on Castrovel, the temple’s builders departed for parts unknown, leaving the building to gradually fall to ruin in the jungles around it.  Centuries passed until, shortly after the Gap, an explorer named Halkueem Zan braved the interior of Ukulam (the wilderness continent) and located the Temple of the Twelve, narrowly escaping with his life and enough notes from his journey to become famous.

Part 1 of the adventure starts off right where Chapter One left off.  As the PCs fly their new ship off the Drift Rock and back toward Absalom Station, it’s attacked by a Corpse Fleet ship called the Iron Rictus.  Essentially, it’s the required starship combat because otherwise the chapter doesn’t have any.  And an annoying trend continues: whether the PCs win or lose the starship combat doesn’t matter, as the story proceeds exactly the same either way.

On Absalom Station, there’s no more intrigue or adventure to be had with resolving the conflicts between Astral Extractions and the Hardscrabble Collective.  Instead, Chiskisk of the Starfinder Society tells the PCs that the symbols they found on the Drift Rock are similar to those found in the diaries of Halkueem Zan stored in the Qabarat University of Xenoarchaeology and Xenoanthropology on Castrovel.  Obviously, the connection needs to be investigated, so the PCs are about to go planet-hopping!

As an aside, the chapter goes to great lengths to establish how reckless, unprofessional, and irresponsible Halkueem Zan was as an archaeologist—he’s portrayed as very much an Indiana Jones-type rather than a serious, careful scholar.  But my PC loved the stories of Halkueem Zan and tried to imitate him as much as possible, which was great fun.

When the PCs reach the university, they get caught up in a “pulled from the headlines” situation.  One of the professors on campus has unwittingly said something perhaps factually true but nonetheless incredibly offensive, and activists have called for his resignation.  The professor, however, doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong and is upset that he’s been suspended by the university.  The adventure only presents one solution, which is to persuade the professor to apologise.  A one-sided and simplistic answer to a complex problem is the sign of poor writing, and I’m not impressed with how it’s handled here.

Anyway, once the PCs get access to the office of the scholar they need to speak to in order to see Halkueem Zan’s notes, they quickly figure out she’s been kidnapped!  To be precise, the PCs could miss every single one of the many clues in her office, but a police detective will then arrive and find everything they missed and explain it all to them.  Examples abound of why people complain that Dead Suns is an adventure on the rails.  Fortunately, I guess, my group did things very conventionally in Chapter Two and railroading wasn’t as visible a problem as it would be for us later.

In Part 2, the PCs have taken a magical gate to a coastal staging area on Ukulam in order to follow the trail of the kidnapped academic.  This part of the adventure requires some heavy wilderness travel, and really takes advantage of things like rations, heat endurance/armor environmental seal charges, ammo reserves, etc.  In short, all those things that lazy players neglect come into the foreground here, and I loved it!  This part includes a really exciting, well-handled chase sequence as the PCs have to escape from an angry herd of beasts.  Other problems include natural hazards, memorably annoying poisonous monkey-creatures, and the first signs of who’s responsible for the kidnapping: the Cult of the Devourer!  It seems the Starfinder Society isn’t the only group to put two and two together and realise the Drift Rock could connect to the Temple of the Twelve.  There’s a long-range sniper encounter (always good to make weapon range increments significant), an interesting encounter with a diseased cultist left for dead, and then great set-piece battle in, on, and around a giant statue of a reclining elf (good staging makes all the difference!).  The artwork and maps help make everything clearer.

In Part 3, the PCs reach the Temple of the Twelve.  To get inside, they have to get past an ancient guardian who is one tough dude!  The temple itself is full of interesting lore and very flavourful.  The first hints may come to the players that the Drift Rock is actually a small part of an ancient sun-destroying weapon called the stellar degenerator (“It’s not a copy of the death star, you see, because it like, brings death to the stars!”)  The rest of the cultists are here, but they’ve already transmitted their findings to a mysterious location in the asteroid diaspora and set up the next chapter of the AP.

Overall, there are definitely some flaws in Chapter Two, but they’re much more noticeable on reading it afterwards than on the first instance.  I had a great time in this part of the adventure, and it remains probably some of my favourite Starfinder gaming to date.