Pathfinder Adventure Path # 5: "Sins of the Saviors" (Rise of the Runelords) [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

Sins of the Saviors is Chapter 5 of Rise of the Runelords.  From the forums, it's probably the least-liked chapter in the adventure path because there's a lot of dungeon-crawling and not that many opportunities for role-playing.  In addition, some GMs and players perceive that they've gone through a lot of effort for relatively little gain.  The good news is that the chapter can easily be shortened or swapped out for something else (as long as the party's experience points and wealth doesn't suffer too much).  I've been GMing the Anniversary Edition with my players, and didn't find the chapter the repetitive slog that others had.  But, I can see where the complaints are coming from.

I'll start with the non-spoilery back matter first.

"Magic of Thassilon: Lost Arcana of the Runelords" is an eight-page overview of the schools of Thassilonian sin magic.  Each entry contains a brief description (full of important setting lore) on the relevant Runelord, and then introduces a new custom spell and a magic rune (capable of being tattooed on people with an included feat).  The new spells and runes are pretty good for the most part, though one (blood money) has proven extremely problematic over the past decade.  As a spell learned as a special reward through the defeat of a Runelord, it might be okay--but included in online databases as just another option for players in any campaign to pick, it leads to some major unbalanced gameplay.  As an aside, there's a great drawing of Runelord Alaznist on page 59.  The section also contains an entry on a certain type of weapon, but that heads into adventure spoiler territory so I won't comment further.

"Lamashtu, The Mother of Monsters" receives a ten-page entry.  The entry is very detailed and very interesting, going through the evil goddess's backstory, church, temples, clergy (including some great NPCs), relationships with other religions, two new clerical spells, a new druid variant class (a 3.5 concept similar to an archetype), and more.  Lamashtu is a really *dark* deity when you think about it, and this entry was early in the days of Paizo before they became more PG-13 in orientation.  The excellent artwork continues in this entry.  It probably would have been good to have the entry appear earlier in the adventure path when encounters with Lamashtans were a major theme of Chapter 1, for example, but it's still really good and should be read today for anyone interested in Lamashtu (despite some of it being incorporated in later books).

"Belly of the Beast" is the next instalment in the story of intrepid Pathfinder Eando Kline.  It's a fantastic entry, as Eando tracks down an old adventuring companion to help break into the headquarters of the Red Mantis assassins guild in Korvosa!  There's great flavour on the city (I need to re-read it before running Curse of the Crimson Throne someday) and it's a very exciting tale.

Last up is the bestiary, which contains six new monsters.  Ercinees are basically giant magical birds--they're a bit like rocs or thunderbirds, and I don't see a lot of use for them.  Marsh giants don't have impressive stats, but the description of their religion is really interesting (and I'll always remember one cutting down poor Briza!).  Witchfires are a sort of flaming, incorporeal undead.  The sidebar on "The First Witchfire" is a nice little tale.  Shemhazian demons are pretty much the archetypal demon, but, at CR 14, they pack a punch.  The Night Monarch is the herald of Desna, and it would be a nice treat to use in a campaign featuring a high level cleric of the deity.  Yethazmari, on the other hand, is the herald of Lamashtu and the sire of yeth hounds!  There's a little sidebar on how to treat heralds in general.  Apart from Ercinees and maybe Shemhazian demons, the bestiary has some worthwhile content.

Overall, it's a great issue for back matter.  There's real quality and depth in the entries.

Now, on to the adventure!

SPOILERS

The foreword by Wes Schneider says that the concept with Sins of the Saviors was a dungeon themed around the seven sins of Thassilon.  Schneider reports being impressed by adventure author Steve Greer's incorporation of dynamic politics within the dungeon.

The dungeon that forms the core of Chapter Five is called Runeforge, and a background section explains how it was formed in a timeless demiplane during the age of Thassilon to serve as a shared, neutral laboratory for the Runelords.  Each wing of Runeforge was devoted to one of the sin magics.  Over the subsequent ten millenia, the denizens of each wing had to figure out how to move forward with no word from their respective masters, and many succumbed to war between the factions or madness.  As we'll see, the core of the adventure in this chapter is the PCs discovering the location of Runeforge, figuring out how to get inside, and surviving long enough to have special runeforged weapons constructed in order to eventually do battle against Karzoug.

Part One assumes the PCs are back in Sandpoint (or are summoned there through magical communication) when a sinkhole suddenly forms in the middle of town.  After strange sounds are heard within and town guards exploring the hole never return, the PCs are asked to investigate.  The sinkhole was actually caused by the surge of magical power released when Mokmurian was destroyed (at the end of Chapter Four), because the catacombs under Sandpoint contain one of the magical devices through which Karzoug is collecting power from those marked with his sign.  But what Karzoug doesn't know is that Lamashtu has seen the timing auspicious to resurrect one of her most loyal agents from ancient Thassilon: a man named Xaliasa, who served as a sort of triple agent (ostensibly loyal to Alaznist, secretly reporting to Karzoug, but even more secretly serving Lamashtu!).  Xaliasa was obsessed with finding a way to escape the Runelords should his deception ever be discovered, so he figured out the location of Runeforge and planned to bolt there as a safehouse if needed--only, he died in the same cataclysm that destroyed the rest of Thassilon.  Now, however, resurrected and fairly insane, Xaliasa (soon to be known as the Scribbler) has begun scribbling mad rhymes and cryptic messages all over the walls of the underground shrine to Lamashtu in which he died.  There's a lot of backstory there, much of it convoluted, and the PCs probably won't figure most of it out.

What they will need to do is enter the ancient shrine, survive various traps and denizens, corner the Scribbler, and decrypt the hidden messages on the walls to figure out the location of Runeforge (and the reason they'll want to go there--to create weapons capable of defeating Karzoug).  The shrine encounters are fairly complex for the GM to run, as there's various traps and alarms and the Scribbler is a hit-and-run adversary who hounds the PCs throughout.  He's actually not very tough if the PCs can keep him from escaping, but he can be a fun character to role-play (the voice actor in the audio version did a great job, and might serve as inspiration).  The most memorable aspect of the shrine for my group was a trap carrying a magical suggestion that made PCs paranoid of each other.  PCs always pack so much firepower that they're each other's most dangerous enemies!  As for the hidden rhymes on the walls, it's kind of nice to see an adventure making the most out of Linguistics and even Perform (Poetry).

Part Two is about the PCs figuring out how to get into Runeforge.  They'll know (hopefully) from Part One that the entrance is located far, far to the north.  The adventure leaves it up to the GM to deal with anything during the journey there (my group just teleported).  The scene on the cover of the issue depicts what (probably) happens next: the PCs find a group of seven stone heads in a circle, and as they're fussing with each one to get a key, a white dragon named Arkrhyst silently glides in and attacks!  (I like in the cover artwork how Merisiel seems to be slinking away with a "I think I left the oven on").  For complicated reasons, my group ended up vanquishing Arkrhyst in his lair, which made the encounter much more manageable.

Part Three details the central hub of Runeforge (off of which all of the other wings branch).  There are two key bits here.  First, the central runeforge pool is used to create the special weapons once the group has obtained the necessary ingredients from some of the other wings.  Second, being in Runeforge amplifies the PCs' innate tendencies towards particular types of sin.  GMs are supposed to be tracking this since Chapter 1, and PCs who are aligned to particular types of sin receive mechanical bonuses and penalties depending on what wing they're in.  I *really* like the concept of personalizing consequences for PCs depending on their past actions, but I don't think it really came off successfully in play--the bonuses and penalties were just too subtle.  I tried a variant approach (combining the mechanical with changes in personality) and that worked a little better.

Anyway, essentially the rest of the chapter takes place in Runeforge.  The PCs can enter each wing in any order, and don't have to go into each and every one.  Indeed, once they figure out the ingredients they need to make a weapon against Karzoug, there's only a few necessary wings.  In retrospect, I wish I would have made more of the rivalries between different factions in the different wings and tried to draw the PCs more into the complicated political and adversarial relationships.  Some hints in the adventure on how to do this would have been appreciated.  One interesting difference between the original version of this chapter and how it appears in the Anniversary Edition is that, in the former, each PC has to make a saving throw in order to traverse a hallway to reach another wing--which means, in practice, groups are likely to get split up and face the first encounter in each wing without being at full strength!

Parts Four through Ten detail each of the wings of Runeforge.  I won't spend a lot of time summarizing them here, and will instead just note a few particular things.  First, there's a nasty magical disjunction trap in the Abjurant Halls that will require a lot of preparation by the GM (since PCs carry around so much magical gear, and each item receives an individual saving throw, it could take ages to calculate the bonus for each and go through it all at the table).  The percentage chance of each particular item being permanently destroyed is small, but chances are at least some stuff will be gone.  I know some players hate this, but I always figure one of the challenges of the game is dealing with the theft/sundering/disjunction of precious items.  Second, the story of Vraxeris in the Shimmering Veils of Pride is fantastic.  High-quality writing like this is what sets Paizo APs apart from the adventures of most other companies.  This area also has mirrors of opposition which can force a PC to fight themselves--talk about rocket tag!  Third, the Festering Maze of Sloth is expanded substantially in the Anniversary Edition.  Fourth, the Iron Cages of Lust is one of those things that requires a GM to really know their players or do some "content warning" in advance.  I thought it was really good, but it could easily have gotten to an uncomfortable level at the table.  There's a ton of backstory on Thassilon and the Runelords written into these sections of the adventure so they make interesting reading even if the GM decides to use a substitute adventure.

Part Eleven is where the PCs assemble in the central hub and make their runeforged weapons.  In a great surprise, Karzoug knows what is happening and animates a massive statute of himself to intervene!  It was a really exciting encounter, and the only thing that topped it in the chapter was the PCs' desperate bid to escape Runeforge (which required them to dash through the Halls of Wrath chased by some terribly dangerous foes).  The chapter concludes with presumed escape from Runeforge, setting up the final journey next chapter.

As I said at the beginning, Chapter Five has a lot of dungeon-hacking and few opportunities (especially after the beginning) for role-playing.  This will suit some groups well and annoy others, so the GM should free to alter things.  In one respect, coming to Runeforge is a *lot* of work just to get some special magic weapons that (although certainly useful) are not strictly necessary for success in Chapter Six.  One might consider Chapter Five filler in order to get PCs the experience points and miscellaneous treasure they need to get ready for Chapter Six.  But if it is filler, it's well-written filler!