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.  

Pathfinder: "Sihedron Medallion" [RPG]

 I bought a couple of these to give to the players who had made it through the entire Rise of the Runelords AP from beginning to end.  They don't come in any custom packaging.  They're nice, solid, palm-side disks with the Sihedron star clearly visible on each side, and well-detailed runes.  In the center of one side is a little faux-gem.  A decent-looking chain could allow someone to wear it around their neck, though I haven't tried that.  To me, it's a really cool collectible and a nice way to remember the campaign.

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: "Tombs of Golarion" [RPG]

 Tombs of Golarion presents six fully-fleshed out adventure sites featuring lost, buried, or otherwise hard to access complexes.  Each of the sites gets ten pages of coverage in the book, broken down into sections like "History", "Description", a room-by-room overview, adventure hooks, and then some new gameplay elements like magic items, new monsters or NPC stat blocks, and so forth.  The great part is that everything a GM needs to run an adventure is in one place (unlike some earlier books that required GMs to populate maps with monsters and treasure themselves).  The book features quality interior artwork and clear (though not beautiful) maps.  The inside front and back covers are capsule descriptions of the six tombs covered in the book, and I'll summarise each of them below.  But before that, I have to give a shout-out to the two-page preface, written in-character from a member of the Aspis Consortium, that features brief notes of other sites of interest not covered in the book.  It's really fun to see something written from the Aspis point of view instead of all that goody-goody Pathfinder Society nonsense!

CAIRN OF ATTAI HORSE-SPEAKER

This is the tomb of a Kellid chieftan named Attai Horse-Speaker who died a good ten thousand years ago!  Existing now as a wight, there's a backstory involving a nereid wanting her shawl back and a lot of interesting story detail throughout, though I imagine much of it would be hard to convey to PCs.  I'd peg the adventure as around CR 9 or 10, and the chapter includes a lot of good adventure hooks to start things off.  New additions include a magic item called the horse-speaker's saddle (allowing communication and even the magical awakening of animals) and a new monster named an equine bone golem.  Overall, it's a solid adventure site.

CLOCKWORK VAULT

This is a really cool vault that doesn't have an undead theme.  Instead, it's the burial vault of a clockwork genius in Rahadoum who died hoping that someday his descendants would carry on his work--if they proved themselves worthy by solving his tests and riddles.  The map is pretty neat (it carries on the clockwork theme), and the setting is original.  It's probably around CR 6, and perfect for players who are into problem-solving challenges.  Three new/variant monsters are introduced: Golden Defenders, Mechanical Efreeti, and a Toy Golem (awesome pic!).  I could definitely see using this tomb in a campaign.

EVERFORGE

This tomb has an awesome backstory.  Under a dwarven sky citadel named Kravenkus lies an ancient temple to Magrim, the dwarven god of the underworld.  The temple holds an incredible artifact called Soulforge, which allows petitioners in the afterworld speedy judgment by Pharasma and a place in Magrim's afterlife.  But now, the temple is infested by duergar seeking to corrupt Soulforge to serve Droskar, the evil dwarven god of mirthless toil.  The tomb is, in a sheer geographic sense, *huge*.  I don't know how many flip-mats it would take to draw it all, but I'd estimate at least four or five of the bigger-sized ones.  I'd suggest it for PCs around Level 12 or 13; there are some nasty traps inside. It's a great dungeon that could become the centrepiece of a mid to high level campaign.

GOLDEN OSSUARY

This is an original concept for a dungeon.  The Golden Ossuary is a gold-covered boneyard for wealthy Kalistocrats in Druma.  An annual lottery is held, giving adventurers 24 hours to loot as much as possible from the place!  It's a fun idea, though it's too small to really take 24 hours for a group to cover exhaustively.  I'd say it generally presents challenges around CR 10.  A new monster, an animate hoard, is introduced (I would have done it as a swarm instead), and there's a new magic item (an ossuary mask) that's pretty forgettable.

PRISMATIC LANTERN

Another original concept, the Prismatic Lantern was a magical defence tower in Nex that had a cataclysmic explosion that someone connected it to a demiplane.  Magic users will have a field day uncovering all the strange phenomenon within, though other PCs may find it a bit less interesting.  This is probably for characters around levels 14 or 15. A new magic item is a force casket (designed to protect a corpse for eternity), and there are a couple of new constructs: a gravitic globe and a prismatic orrery (the latter of which is functionally an artifact if the user has the matching control rod).  

TOMB OF THE NECROPHAGE

Man, you do not want to get captured by the creepy cultist cannibals (and their undead minions) that reside in the Tomb of the Necrophage!  This is perhaps a more traditional adventure site than some of the others, but it's really good and quite gruesome.  An interesting feature is that this tomb is in the Sodden Lands, so there are some partially- and wholly- submerged chambers.  It's probably for characters around levels 7 or 8.  The artwork for the juju zombie brute is nightmare-inducing.

Overall, Tombs of Golarion is a great package.  It's easy for a GM in need to drop one of these locations into campaign, altering some backstory and details if necessary.  I haven't really used the book yet, but it's something I'll keep in my back pocket for a rainy day when the PCs go off the beaten track and I need a well-crafted adventure site in a hurry.

Curse of the Crimson Throne Recap # 7 [RPG]

[20 Gozran, 4708 A.R., continued]

As everyone’s heading out the door to respond to The Harrower’s request for a meeting, Ralph receives another message: one of the street urchins in his intelligence network has come up with an important lead.  He excuses himself to go investigate while the others proceed.  As they get closer to the riverside docks, Yraelzin, Goldcape, and Takota can see that hundreds of people have filled the street, protesting against what they view as the illegitimate ascension of Queen Ileosa to power.  On-going labor strikes by dockworkers add to the atmosphere of impending violence, leading Goldcape to suggest the group travel via rooftop as much as possible.  Soon, the ominous marching of a Hellknight legion coming to break up the now-illegal assembly can be heard.  But the real danger comes not from the Hellknights or the angry protesters—instead, it comes from below!  The ground starts to rumble, and a moment later the city street cracks apart and long fissures run across the bricks.  The road bursts upward, casting chunks of rock into the air and raining bricks on the surrounding area.  The stench of sewer filth and garbage belches forth, heralding the approach of a freakish sewer beast!

Tentacles lash out wildly, stunning many of the protestors, as the hungry beast looks at the moving feast before it.  But from a nearby rooftop, Takota conjures a roiling ball of fire and hurls it at the beast, distracting it!  The Shoanti shaman isn’t prepared for the sewer beast’s response, which is to slither a tentacle up the side of the building and yank the man down by the ankles!  Yraelzin and Goldcape launch arrows and crossbow bolts that gradually weaken the monster, but the situation looks dire when it seems they’ve only driven it to drag the unconscious and nearly dead Takota toward the hole it emerged from.  Fortunately, Rocky blocks the path and the aberration finally releases Takota before fleeing into a maze of alleys.  With the sound of marching coming closer and closer, the Harrowed Heroes get Takota to his feet and hurry towards the safehouse.

Inside, the fortune-telling shop, lit by candlelight, looks comfortable and well-maintained.  The veiled woman known only as The Harrower sits on the far side of a round table, shuffling a deck of cards.  When Yraelzin, Goldcape, and Takota take seats, The Harrower begins by congratulating them on finally bringing Gaedren Lamm the justice he had long evaded.  She goes on to say that with the recent turmoil, the city could very well teeter into anarchy—but that the cards foretell a chance to avert that fate, if heroes arise.  She says that only if those assembled around the table are truly unified will they have a chance to stem the tide of darkness that is coming, but that secrets breed mistrust.  She invites the trio to forge a stronger bond by trusting each other with something they’ve been keeping hidden.

Perhaps surprisingly, Yraelzin is the first to respond.  For the first time ever in their company, he removes his mask!  Revealed to be a blond-haired, nervous-looking man in his early twenties, Yraelzin goes on to say that he needs help.  For the past week, he’s had the feeling of being watched . . . hunted!  A few days ago, he says a brick fell from a building ledge and almost crushed him, and other “accidental” near misses have occurred as well.  For her part, Goldcape shares that vanara normally have more fingers on each hand—but that Gaedren Lamm once cut some of hers off!  When his turn comes, Takota explains that he was born a boy named Mato who wished to be a warrior, not a shaman.  The Harrower then spreads her deck of cards and looks at them carefully before revealing their cryptic import.  She says that the evil legacy of Gaedren Lamm is not finished—that “the son is worse than the father”; that soon the Hellknights will depart, but in their place will come a much worse threat—the “women in grey”; and that when she next meets them, there will be but “seven days to the grave”.

As she finishes, there’s a loud knock on the door.  The candles flicker for a moment, plunging the room into momentarily darkness, only to then reveal that The Harrower has disappeared—and that the fortune-shop looks like it has been abandoned for months.  Goldcape answers the door to reveal a fashionably-dressed young woman.  She introduces herself as Zeeva Foxglove, and shows them a Harrow card with the address of the fortune-telling shop and a promise that her troubles will be solved scrawled on the back.  She explains that she’s the owner of the Green Market, a large space in South Shore where vendors from in and around Korvosa set up stalls to sell fresh produce, jewellery, crafts, and more.  Two days ago, she explains, the Hellknights violently enforced the dusk curfew in the Green Market and, since then, inexplicable phenomena has been taking place!  Objects seem to move on their own accord, tables upend themselves, wagons roll without being pulled by horses, and howling winds almost sweep people off their feet.  She says she’s had to close the place until the problem could be dealt with, and that’s when she found the Harrow card.  She offers a small reward for help, and the listeners agree to assist if they can.

After Zeeva Foxglove has left, the trio make a plan to research the Green Market to see if they can find any clues about what might be causing the problems.  Takota talks to some residents of the area, and although some are unwilling to talk to an “uncivilised barbarian,” he does meet one recent customer who claimed to hear a voice carried on the swirling winds inside.  Goldcape and Yraelzin decide to do some historical research and head toward the Jeggare Museum, one of the city’s oldest private institutions of history and culture.  The curator, Mercival Jeggare, is happy to point Yraelzin in the direction of some relevant records but the priest runs out of time before the museum closes to examine them fully.  Goldcape hires a private scholar to look into The Harrower’s mysterious reference to “the women in grey”, but, unfortunately, the researcher doesn’t turn up anything useful.

[21 Gozran, 4708 A.R.]

Dark clouds threaten rain as Yraelzin finishes his research in the museum’s archives.  He learns that the Green Market was built just under three decades ago in the city’s newest area of expansion.  But, almost three centuries ago, before Korvosa was founded, the land was the domain of the Sklar-Quah—the Sun Clan of the Shoanti peoples.  A respected shaman named Galdron Greenheart embraced the way of peace and dedicated a shrine to his people nearby before he was persecuted and murdered by the Chelish colonists who soon came to occupy the land.  When Yraelzin shares this information with the others, Takota surmises that the recent violence in Green Market has awakened Galdron Greenheart’s long-dormant spirit!

[22 Gozran, 4708 A.R.]

In the morning, on the way to Green Market, Goldcape decides to stop in and check with Old Lady Cloggins, her land-lady.  Old Lady Cloggins is not best pleased that a small number of Hellknights are still billeting in her house, but admits that, if nothing else, they are a tidy bunch!  Goldcape hears a scream from outside and rushes to see that Yraelzin, has been impaled by a crossbow bolt!  No assailant is visible.  With magical healing, the bolt is removed, though he still seems weak and suspects it may have been poisoned.  Perhaps his tale of being hunted is true after all!  Goldcape insists on reporting the attack to the Korvosan Guard, and they say that when time allows, they’ll look into it—but that they have more pressing matters at the moment.

When the trio arrive outside Green Market, Takota explains to Zeeva Foxglove his theory of what’s causing the disturbance.  As he’s trying unsuccessfully to get the nearby Hellknights to depart, Goldcape decides to take a look around inside.  She’s almost crushed by a wagon wheel that somehow breaks off an axle and comes rolling towards her!  Takota enters and can hear a Shoanti voice carried on the wind, warning against war being brought to this sacred land.  With his spiritual magic, Takota confirms that the Green Market is haunted by the awakened spirit of Galdron Greenheart, and is able to formulate a ritual that could put the spirit to rest.  He walks south to nearby Skaldwood and speaks with Telmayne Fire-Eyes, a young shaman, and she helps him collect seven broken klar blades.  Takota returns to Green Market, finds the specific site where Galdron Greenheart was buried, and, although battered by the winds and hurled objects, ritually places the broken blades on the ground in a symbol of tribal unity and peace.  With a whisper in the wind, Takota knows he has been successful and that Galdron Greenheart will rest once more.

------------------------------

GM's Commentary

The player running The Reckoner wasn't able to attend this session, the only one he's missed in the campaign to date.

The sewer beast encounter comes right from the AP, and I pretty happy with how it turned out--very exciting!

I worked in some background flavour about protests and how trade unions are illegal in Korvosa, something mentioned in the Guide to Korvosa.  I never really developed the idea further, but if there wasn't so much else going on, I might have.

The Harrower encounter was good for role-playing (opportunities to get PCs to talk about their backgrounds are valuable) and also for foreshadowing Chapter 2 with nods to the Gray Maidens, Rolth Lamm, and more.

The side-quest in the Green Markets was derived (with some alterations) from Pathfinder Society Scenario # 4-06: "Green Markets."  Especially with a Shoanti PC and knowledge that Shoanti would be a big part of Chapter 4, I just couldn't pass up the chance.  I thought it went really well and helped introduce the PCs to a different part of the city.

Starfinder Society Scenario # 2-08: "The Stumbling Society, Part 2: Sangoro's Gifts" [RPG]

 

NO SPOILERS

I played The Stumbling Society, Part 2: Sangoro's Gifts with my Steward, Officer Swizzers, with the same PBP crew as in the first part.  The scenario offers a lot more opportunities for role-playing, especially if the GM gets into the NPCs.  There's also a chance to showcase some skills and, of course, some combats along the way.  The scenario does a really strong job of introducing a new alien race, and it also continues the main Season 2 meta-plot.  Interestingly, there's not that strong a connection between this scenario and part 1 (apart from some background), so a player shouldn't feel like they *have* to do both in order.  Anyway, I enjoyed the scenario and would rate it as 4 out of 5 stars.

SPOILERS!

In The Stumbling Society, Part 1: Sangoro's Lament, the PCs discovered that Datch has stolen crates full of military equipment from a Starfinder Society installation called the Arsenal.  In The Stumbling Society, Part 2: Sangoro's Gifts, we learn what she's doing with them: dropping them off on low-technology worlds for the locals to fight over, filming the results, and making it look like the Starfinder Society is responsible!  In the mission briefing, Fitch plays one of the anti-SFS propaganda vids filmed on a jungle planet called Stabrisis-14, home to strange, moth-shaped creatures known as kiriintas.  The SFS has avoided making first contact with the kiriintas so as not to interfere in their developing civilisations, but Fitch says it's now unavoidable: the SFS has to get those weapons back before the situation turns even worse.  In a departure from the norm, however, the PCs won't be travelling alone to their mission site; Fitch has assigned another agent, a maraquoi named Saivessa, to trail them in a second ship to help pick up the supplies.  Saivessa isn't really integral at all to the plot, but they have a great pic and an interesting personality, so a good GM could make them memorable.

After a short jaunt through the Drift (broken up only by a brief cameo from Captain Winks of the Clutter Collector, a nod to # 1-03), the PCs emerge near Stabrisis-14 only to find it protected by drone starships launched from a (cloaked) orbiting base.  The ensuing starship combat has an interesting twist in that more drones get launched until the PCs figure out that they're coming from a cloaked launch base, scan to locate it, and then destroy it.  Like almost all SFS starship combat, it's still not great, and in my game the GM called it once it became obvious we were (eventually!) going to win.  The interior artwork for the scenario is really strong, as the launch base also has a cool pic.

The PCs have no trouble locating a recently-dropped and unopened crate of weapons on the surface, but their timing could hardly be worse because two rival groups of kiriintas arrive at the same time!  The PCs are thus caught in the crossfire, and have to quickly decide what to do.  The scenario provides a fair amount of backstory into the two groups, explaining that they were once all part of the same kiriinta community but split when the weapons started dropping from the sky, with one group (the Builders) believing the weapons are a gift from the gods and meant to be studied and used, while another group (the Reflectors) also believe they're gifts but that tampering with them would be a type of blasphemy.  The PCs, of course, won't know any of this when they have to decide to fight back against one group, both, or try to stay out of the battle entirely.  (Oddly, the scenario provides information on what happens for the first two choices, but doesn't seem to contemplate the third.)

Whichever side prevails in the battle invites (with some language barriers that the PCs should have prepared for) the newcomers back to their camp, believing they're agents of the same divine authority that has been dropping the crates of weapons.  The fact that the crates bear the symbol of the Starfinder Society and the PCs probably do as well makes this a reasonable inference.  There's a lot of room for role-playing in this part of the scenario, and the author did a good job developing the kiirintas as a whole as well as particular NPCs from each faction.  Presumably, the PCs will try to persuade the kiirinta group they're with to abandon use of the weapons, in which case the kiirintas will put the PCs through a series of hastily-improvised tests to gauge whether they're really acting with divine sanction. The tests including drinking a local beverage, an athletics or debating contest, and (my favourite) what the PCs are told will be "Death Match."  But even jaded players should smile when they learn that "Death Match" is actually a local card game and completely harmless.

As the tests are winding up, the PCs receive a message from Saivessa: one final crate is on it's way to the planet.  When the PCs head to the drop site, they'll find whichever faction of kiirintas they didn't bond with there, but under attack from a huge burrowing monster called a tiraka.  Not-so-nice PCs will wait for the kiirintas to wear down the tiraka before joining in, but if they don't wait to long, they'll have a better chance of convincing the opposing kiirinta leader to renounce using the new weapons and mend fences with the other leader.  When I played, we did a really fast run and the tiraka only lasted a single round.  Anyway, that's the end of the scenario, apart from a brief epilogue.  The scenario has a nice boon (assuming  Part 1 has also been played): the opportunity to have a kiirinta character.  I liked the kiirintas, and I hope we get a chance to see more of them in future scenarios.

Pathfinder Map Pack: "Palace" [RPG]

 I've used the Palace map pack a couple of times in my "Roots of Golarion" campaign, and I really like it.  Unlike most map packs designed to be completely customisable, this one really only has tiles for three configurations: a massive throne room (complete with dais, thrones, statues in alcoves, and a long red carpet), a reception chamber (with chairs, tables, etc.), and a treasure vault (packed with loot, including a blue dragon skull!).  Admittedly, it's not a map pack that I have frequent occasion to pull out, but I really like the design of it--and it does add a nice feel of pomp and circumstance to any "talking to the queen" scenes that do come up.  

Pathfinder Tales: "Reign of Stars" [RPG]

 

NO SPOILERS

This is such a great book, full of action, great characters, a memorable setting, and lots of genuinely laugh-out-loud moments.  I've been a huge fan of Tim Pratt's writing (such as the excellent Marla Mason series), and he 100% "gets" Pathfinder.  Reign of Stars features the same main characters that appeared in Pratt's previous Pathfinder Tales novel, City of the Fallen Sky: the exiled Numerian alchemist Alaeron and his unsavoury, knife-wielding companion Skiver.  The book is branded as a tie-in to the Iron Gods adventure path, and certainly adds a wealth of color and lore to the area of Golarion where that AP is set.  I could rave more, but the gist of the matter is I enjoyed this book from start to finish.  It was a genuine pleasure to read.

SPOILERS!

In Reign of Stars, Alaeron, who has long been living in Almas since his hasty departure with stolen tech from Numeria, receives a surprising invitation.  His mentor, the Techno League captain Zernebeth, is alive and wants him to come back to Numeria for a special project--with all past misdeeds forgiven.  An obvious set-up for a trap, as Alaeron and Skiver well know, but the incentives provided are enough to persuade them to take the risk.  The novel is a great way to learn about the history of Silver Mount and to get a feel for present-day Numeria, and there are some great scenes that only that particular geographical setting can provide.  There are hilarious bits throughout, like a cleric worshipping the Holy Fundament, the Black Sovereign's feast that I can't even begin to describe, and so much more.  Pratt always plays by the rules of Pathfinder, so descriptions of things like Alaeron using a mutagen are both fun and "realistic" in terms of effect.  There's also some fun little easter eggs, like references to Gad, Rodrick, and Hyrm from other Pathfinder Tales stories.  Anyway, I definitely recommend this one.