Pathfinder Society Scenario # 4-18: "The Veteran's Vault" [RPG]

 

NO SPOILERS

I played The Veteran's Vault via play-by-post with one of my favourite Iconics, Quinn the Investigator.  As I'm currently running Curse of the Crimson Throne, it was especially exciting to play a scenario set in Korvosa.  Although from one perspective this scenario is a pretty straightforward dungeon crawl, the author did a great job incorporating setting lore and some role-playing opportunities to put this one up a notch.  It's not a "must-play" by any means, but it's a solid scenario overall (and a good, speedy introductory scenario for new players).

SPOILERS!

The backstory to The Veteran's Vault centers around an NPC, Sascha Antif-Arah, who has made appearances in some other scenarios and (I think) one of the early Pathfinder Tales stories.  Sascha is a former Pathfinder and adventurer who retired from the business some years back.  She got caught up in some business involving Eando Kline and drew some very unwelcome attention from the Order of the Nail Hellknights and has had to lay low in Korvosa ever since.  In a previous scenario, agents of the Pathfinder Society saved Sascha's life, so to repay the organisation she's offered up the contents of a hidden treasure cache from her adventuring days, currently concealed in an old shrine to Zon-Kuthon in the sewers under the city.  All Sascha wants from the cache is a locket that bears purely sentimental value.  I think it's fair to wonder why an adventure that takes place purely in the city's sewers is likely to attract the attention of Hellknights, so maybe it would have made more sense for her to come along with the PCs.  Anyway, all of this exposition is delivered by the rarely-seen male half of the Heidmarch husband & wife team, Venture-Captain Canayven Heidmarch.  There are good pictures of him and Sascha, and excellent interior artwork overall.

Apart from the briefing, the entirety of the adventure takes place in the sewers, with encounters using the excellent Sewer System map pack.  First up, and perhaps best, is an encounter with an otyugh (sewer beast) named Togg.  Togg isn't quite as memorable as Hats, but role-playing with him could still be lots of fun with the right GM and the right group.  There's a fair chance this becomes a combat (Togg is pretty hungry!), but the encounter can also be resolved peacefully if the PCs share some food and make a good Diplomacy check.  

Next up, there are a couple of stolen-good-traffickers from the Cerulean Society that are on the run and lost in the vaults.  Although these two wouldn't necessarily attack normally, they'll be deceived by a sneaky gremlin (a jinkin) into believing the PCs are hostile, so a fight is inevitable.  Still, in a battle of 5 or 6 against 2, the PCs will win this fight pretty easily.

Continuing on, there's an encounter with a "fungus leshy" (also potentially solved through diplomacy) and some patches of harmful fungus and then an (optional if time permits) encounter with an ooze.  A couple of traps can weaken an unwary party further.

The big climactic encounter is against a jinkin sorcerer and its darkmantle pet who have taken up residence in the vault where Sascha hid her treasure.  I remember this fight as actually being reasonably challenging purely because of the darkmantle's darkness ability, even though on paper it should be a real cakewalk for the PCs.  Afterwards, the PCs won't have any trouble finding the treasure cache and making it back out of the sewers with a locket for Sascha implying that perhaps she and Eando Kline had a past romance.

So it's a pretty basic dungeon crawl railroad plot: hit the sewers, fight (or potentially talk) past a series of encounters, get the treasure, the end.  It's really the incorporation of setting lore that makes this scenario work for me, with elements like the Cerulean Society, Sascha, and some good faction missions making it more than a purely dry exercise in hacking and slashing.