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City of Golden Death is the third and final
part of the Price of Immortality trilogy. Like the first two parts, Crypt of the
Everflame and Masks of the Living God, I ran it via play-by-post for
Pathfinder Society characters. One of
the strengths of the trilogy is that each of the three parts is distinct in
setting and story type. If Crypt
was a classic dungeon crawl, and Masks was a rare infiltration mission, City
of Golden Death features both a major overland exploration component
combined with a cool (not literally!) high-concept setting against a countdown
clock. I think Masks remains my
favourite just due to telling a really unique story for Pathfinder (despite its
defamation against the Church of the Living God—All Hail Razmir!), but this one
is a close second and a memorable, satisfying way to wrap up the trilogy.
Here’s a few non-spoilery comments before we get into the
heart of the review. The cover art
doesn’t do much for me—the figures look stiff, and the skeletal gold dragon is
too small. The art is reproduced without
logos in the inside-back cover. The
inside front cover is a map of a major overland location the PCs will travel
through; I like the art style, but it contains spoilerly information on it such
that a GM couldn’t share it with the players.
The last page of the module contains four Iconics (Valeros, Ezren,
Merisiel, and Kyra) as Level 5 PCs. The
interior art of NPCs and monsters is strong.
I like in principle that some of the interior encounters use Map Packs,
but I would have liked more tiles to be deployed so those combats don’t feel as
cramped (especially the outdoors ones).
The custom encounter maps have an interesting style, but the gridlines
are *very* faint (to be fair, the expectation at the time the module was
created was that GMs would have to hand-draw them anyway, as scanning them for
online play wasn’t as easily done).
SPOILERS!
As I usually do with these reviews of modules and adventure
paths, I’ll cover the front- and back-matter first and then circle back for the
adventure proper.
The Adventure Background is about a page and a half, and
tells a solid story to integrate all three parts of the Price of Immortality
trilogy. Two centuries ago, a trio of
brave adventurers, Kassen, Agar, and Iramine set out to find the lost treasure
city of Tar-Baphon, the Whispering Tyrant.
They located it on the Isle of Terror in Lake Encarthan and, by
combining three pieces of an amulet individually recovered from different
crypts and dungeons (very video-gamey!), restored the key and entered into legendary
Xin-Grafar, known as the City of Golden Death.
Inside, they found wealth beyond imagination, so they made a pact to
carry out as much wealth as they could while separating the key back into three
pieces so no one in the group would be tempted to return without the
others. Iramine, however, felt the lure
of the jewel of everlasting gold, an artifact within the city that
enabled Tar-Baphon to conjure great wealth.
Over the subsequent two-hundred years, she never forgot about the city
even as she joined the Church of the Living God and become a true disciple of
Razmir. Promising him access to all of
the wealth in the city, she put a plan into motion to recover the other parts
of the key (as seen in Crypt) and, with several other cultists, has set
out on an expedition back to the Isle of Terror. (Scattered through the module is actually
some even deeper background and a really interesting story about how the
wizard-king Tar-Baphon ousted the native population of what would become the
Isle of Terror in Lake Encarthan, built his treasure storehouse there, tried to
turn the island into a trap for Aroden, failed and died in the attempt, and
came back to existence as the undead Whispering Tyrant!)
Appendix 1 is a new Simple Template called “Terror
Creature”, and represents living creatures warped by exposure to the negative
energy that permeates the Isle of Terror.
They basically get a fear aura and heal from negative energy
attacks. Appendix 2 introduces a new
monster, the Golden Guardian (cool artwork!), essentially a golem made out of
molten gold. It constantly radiates heat
and has a cool “Molten Destruction” effect when destroyed (I have a soft spot
for bad guys that explode when destroyed, making them risky to battle in melee
combat). Appendix 3 has a page and a
half on the jewel of everlasting gold, a new major artifact. It has a lot of powers around conjuring
wealth, but as neither the artifact nor the wealth it creates can leave the
treasure storehouse, it’s effectively just a MacGuffinish plot device. (I did like the bit about how it can only be
destroyed by casting it into Karzoug’s runewell of greed, as greed is
definitely a major theme in this module!)
Ok, enough preliminaries: let’s get to the main event!
Part One (“From Tamran to Terror”) has the PCs recruited by
their Pathfinder contact Reginar to go after Iramine and stop her from
plundering Xin-Grafar in the name of the Living God (All Hail!). Reginar says the PCs should only be two or
three days behind Iramine, and has again retained Captain Walren and his barge,
the Black Mist, whom the PCs will remember from Masks. It takes a week in-game to travel from Tamran
(in Nirmathas) to the Isle of Terror in the center of Lake Encarthan, and as
every good adventure does, a random encounter table of aquatic threats is
included to liven things up. I like
having the PCs travel aboard a flat-topped barge as it simplifies angles,
climbing, and cover compared to a tradition high-hulled sailing vessel.
Part Two (“The Isle of Terror”) has the PCs dropped off on
the west coast of the Isle of Terror at the ruins of a place called Fort
Landing. They’re under strict
instructions to return within 10 days, or Captain Walren says he’ll leave them
behind (and he keeps his promise!). The
Isle of Terror itself is a foreboding place, covered by chaotic negative energy
storms for weeks on end—a cruel GM like me cackles with glee in following the
instructions to roll % dice to see if random PCs are struck by bolts of
negative energy lightning! In addition,
there’s another random encounter table for travel across the island, with many
of the monsters having the Terror Creature template mentioned above. The inside front-cover is a map of the Isle
of Terror, and the adventure contains a brief gazetteer of locations the PCs
could come to if they stray too far off Iramine’s trail (a precaution I always
appreciate, even though it didn’t prove necessary for the group I ran it
for). One curious omission here is the
lack of flavour text for the approach to the Isle of Terror, the arrival on
Fort Landing, the experience of the negative energy storms, and the start of
the scripted encounters on the island.
As GM, I’ll do what I can to extrapolate details from the text and make
these things interesting and exciting, but an assist from the professional
adventure writer would be appreciated.
Following the trail of the Razmirans won’t be hard (DC 15
Survival checks) unless all the players neglected to invest in wilderness
skills—and there always seems to be someone who thinks land journeys will just
be handwaved, and so forgets to buy rations!
Anyway, this part of the adventure has three scripted encounters. There’s an attack by “Terror Wolves” (wolves
with the Terror Creature template), a band of Whisperscale lizardfolk
(lizardfolk with the template), and my favourite, Dusan Dremlock. Dusan is a delightfully insane Pathfinder
who’s survived alone on the Isle of Terror since an ill-fated expedition nearly
a decade ago. He’s disgusting in a way
that reminds me of my first-ever Pathfinder PC, Little Bigtoes (may he chew toe
gunk in peace!), but can prove useful to the group if they can make sense of
his blubbering and rambling. He’s also,
quite literally, the only role-playing opportunity the players are likely to
have in the module. I especially like
the detail that if the PCs are mean to Dusan, he scribbles in his journal and
narrates aloud the unflattering things he’s writing about them.
Part Three (“Xin-Grafar, the City of Golden Death”) has the
PCs entering the surface gates of a massive subterranean city dating to the
days of Thassilon and long uninhabited.
The layout of Xin-Grafar is a little hard to conceptualise and
explain. It’s composed of three rings
separated by floor-to-ceiling walls to form an inner ring, a middle ring, and
an outer ring. The three rings have different
elevations which is key because of two related things: canals of molten gold
flow through all three rings, and (due to a trap left by Tar-Baphon) a
countdown starts the moment the gates to the city were opened by Iramine, and
when that countdown expires, the city is flooded with that molten gold (up to a
height of 40’ in the outer ring!). If
the PCs study the mural in the first chamber and make a high Intelligence or
average Knowledge (Engineering) check, they’ll realise the risk (my group
didn’t, but it didn’t end up mattering).
The countdown is pretty generous, as the adventure scripts it as 66
hours until the countdown expires (regardless of how long it took the PCs to
cross the Isle of Terror to reach the entrance to the city). Unless the group ends up camping out for a
few days for some reason, they should be fine.
Anyway, it’s a cool setting, if hard to describe given the minimal
flavour text provided.
As the PCs make their way through the city, still on the
trail of the cultists, they’ll find encounters at most intersections and
bridges. The foes are sentinels left
behind by Tar-Baphon, and consist of Golden Guardians (the constructs
introduced in Appendix 2), human and ogre skeletons covered in gold, fire
elementals, and a babau demon. There’s
also an ambush by a group of cultists left behind by Iramine to cover her, but
it’s almost trivially easy (with several of the cultists at CR ½!).
Part Four (“The Third Ring”) has the PCs advancing into the
city’s innermost ring. They have to do
battle with the gilded skeletal dragon featured on the cover, a dark naga, another
group of cultists, and finally Iramine herself, mechanically represented as an
eldritch knight (a rare Core Rulebook prestige class) wielding the jewel
of everlasting gold to transform into a fire elemental. It’s a reasonably tough succession of
opponents for fifth-sixth level PCs, especially if they (understandably) feel pressure
not to rest in between.
The Conclusion is a full half-page, and mostly proceeds
along the lines one would expect. I like
that there’s a potential return journey to Kassen to return the piece of the
amulet to the Crypt of the Everflame and set Kassen’s and Asar’s spirits at
rest. In many adventures, things don’t
come nicely full circle like this. And
if the PCs do get tempted to reassemble the amulet pieces into the key to
return to the City of Golden Death, they find the gate can only be opened once
every ten years! Of course, as it was
4710 A.R. when the module was released and it’s now circa 4726 A.R., it sounds
like the perfect time for a return expedition!
