Pathfinder Module: "Gallery of Evil" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

As part of my “Roots of Golarion” campaign, I ran Gallery of Evil recently (making the minor conversions necessary for Pathfinder characters).  As the back cover states, it’s the first Paizo product to have detailed information on (part of) of Absalom.  It’s always fun to see how such iconic locations began!  The adventure itself has a really interesting, original premise, and the first half has a great combination of action, role-playing, and investigation.  The second half devolves into a more traditional dungeon crawl and is less memorable, though it’s fine.  I’d still recommend the module, as an enterprising GM could make some adjustments to the second half to bring in more of Absalom’s flavour while keeping the essential beats.

Let’s get into the art and back matter.  The cover is really fun, though just a few more visual touches to make it clear the monster is coming out of the painting (as opposed to a doorway or window) would have helped explain the theme.  The inside front cover contains maps of encounter locations in the adventure—they’re not beautiful, but certainly usable.  The interior art really varies in style, but it’s pretty good for the most part.  The adventure itself takes about 22 pages, leaving 10 pages of back matter.  Appendix # 1 is “The Ivy District”, a gazetteer of a particular neighborhood in Absalom, and it contains a fair amount of information (with a couple of potential adventure hooks).  I didn’t know (or had forgotten) that one of the Foxgloves lives in Absalom!  Appendix # 2 is “New Monsters”.  I absolutely love the artwork for the Shadowy Lurker, even if its abilities are a bit of a pain to run.  The other new addition is a template, “Painted Creation”, a type of animated object/construct.  Original and useful.  Appendix # 3 is “New Items”, and it includes Numerian leaf armor, id portraits, portraits of health, and sorcerous pigments.  The inside back cover is a very god map of the Ivy District, suitable for photocopying and handing out to players.

SPOILERS!

No one’s as brutal as an art critic, except an angry artist out for revenge on them!  Imron Gauthfallow, a former adventuring wizard, settled in Absalom with his riches and turned to painting scenes of the amazing phenomena he witnessed during his years on the road.  At first he was a great success, but then imitators began aping his style and the critics turned against him.  That’s how it goes in the art world, but Gauthfallow discovered one rival artist had been bribing his assistant for advanced looks at his works-in-progress and then swiping the designs.  In what he believes is a fitting punishment, Gauthfallow has decided to get back at his enemies in the art world by sending them canvases with enchanted paintings of monsters that come to life!

The PCs get involved when they’re invited to the home of Asheron Coyle, a wealthy collector and art critic.  The premise is that Coyle is a sponsor of various expeditions into tombs and ruins so that he can add to his collection, and wants the PCs for a dig.  As a useful “Designer Notes” sidebar (a great idea that I can’t fathom the reason for abandoning) indicates, it’s not much of a hook and can be easily customised by the GM.  Anyway, once the PCs show up, they find Coyle dead and a pair of giant octopi inexplicably rampaging through his house!  And when the creatures are destroyed, they melt into puddles of paint.  Terrified servants explain the creatures somehow emerged from a painting that had just been delivered to Coyle, and the courier had remarked he had more to deliver in the area.

Assuming the PCs are interested in stopping further attacks and discovering who’s behind Coyle’s murder, they’ll reach the townhouse of another wealthy art critic, Belfor Vittanis.  Vittanis is throwing a drunken party in the ballroom and about to unwrap the “gift” painting that has just been delivered to him, and the PCs only have one minute to stop him!  This is one of the best parts of the adventure, as there’s some great opportunities for role-playing in the PCs sneaking into the party and then racing to stop Vittanis before it’s too late.  A myriad of obstacles (long-winded talkers, drunk and overly-affectionate guests, bouncers, etc.) are strategically positioned throughout the ballroom to slow the PCs down, ramping up the tension in a clever and unique way.  The only downside is that Level 8 PCs may very well have options like flight or dimension door to bypass these obstacles entirely, removing the challenge (and some of the fun) of the encounter.  If the PCs do make it in time, they can keep the magic of the painting from being triggered; if they fail, a trio of bearded devils emerge and begin to cause havoc.

Clues to the courier’s next location are easy to obtain, and this time the PCs can catch him in the act of attempting to deliver a painting to art critic Eleazonna Gertwright.  The courier, a dandy named Darius Finch, doesn’t actually know what he’s been delivering, or that Gauthfallow has sent an invisible stalker to depose of him after the final delivery!  Finch could be an interesting NPC if the GM breathes some life into him (I probably could have done better). 

From Finch, the PCs should learn that a fourth painting has already been delivered to the home of a painter named Endrik Archerus (the rival artist who stole Gauthfallow’s ideas).  In Archerus’ studio, they find no body but a recently-unveiled painting of a scene from Hell full of monsters, hags, giant worms, etc.  The idea is that the PCs are supposed to intentionally touch the painting to enter a small extradimensional space of the scene depicted, fight the monsters, and realise that Archerus is still alive, having been transformed into one of the worms.  My group destroyed the painting the second they saw it to keep any monsters emerging, (unintentionally) dooming Archerus!  But I think that was the logical move; I wasn’t a fan of this encounter because it sort of “broke the rules” of what had been happening.  In all the other paintings, the monsters stepped out of the artwork; in this one, touching the painting would take you into it.  In order to make the distinction clear, the module needed to have Archerus depicted in the artwork, screaming and gesturing for help, for example.

The final part of the adventure has the PCs locating (with little difficulty) Gauthfallow’s house and searching it top to bottom to locate him.  This is where the dungeon (manor) crawling begins, as the mansion has three levels above ground and two hidden dungeon levels below ground.  There are some interesting encounters—for example, I love the creepily-drawn “Painted Servants”, the hellhound polymorphed to look like a normal dog, and that Gauthfallow has used a minor artifact to conjure three aspects of his personality (my son still laughs at how bombastic “The Rake” was before being defeated in one round).  Gauthfallow himself is a pushover of a “boss” despite having time to prepare for the PCs.  I think the adventure would have been more interesting if this part had taken place during an art show or some other way of continuing the interesting story premise with some flavour and role-playing rather than a more traditional room-by-room search for the bad guy.

Overall all, despite the weaker second half, I think there’s a lot of fun to be had with Gallery of Evil.  It has an original premise, the setting (the Ivy District artworld) is an original one, and there are some fun story beats.  It’s not necessarily a challenging adventure (the clues are easily obtained and the foes aren’t hard), so a GM could run it for a lower-level group with few adjustments if desired.  I wouldn’t say the module is a masterpiece, but it’s worth hanging on the wall.