Pathfinder Adventure Path # 6: "Spires of Xin-Shalast" (Rise of the Runelords) [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

Alright, here we go!  The final book in the Rise of the Runelords adventure path, a campaign I spent three years' of Sunday nights and uncountable hours of prep to run.  It was an amazing ride and an unforgettable experience, and I'm really glad I got the opportunity to take part in it.  But I'll have more on my personal experiences later--for now, I'm here to review specifically Chapter 6 of RotRL as published in the monthly AP format.  I'll discuss the (mostly) non-spoilery back matter of the issue first, and then move onto the adventure itself in the Spoilers heading below.

First up is "Hazard's on the World's Roof: Adventuring at High Altitudes."  This section builds on and expands the (then-DMG's) rules on topics like mountain climbing, cold weather, and altitude sickness.  The PCs are headed to the very extremes of the world, and perhaps past the point where humans can be expected to survive.  The section is very detailed and very useful, and I used it extensively as a supplement to the shorter treatment in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and RotRL Anniversary Edition.  There's a lot of detailed tracking involved, and some GMs probably just handwave thinks like climbing checks, nonlethal damage from cold, fatigue from thin air, and so forth--but I went all out on the theory that these things are crucial for rewarding "wilderness-ready" PCs and making it clear how dangerous this terrain is.  (My group of players definitely didn't fall in the "wilderness-ready" category, so they made up the shortfall with extensive spellcasting every morning).

Next is "Of Endings and Beginnings", the last serialized entry in the fictional escapades of Eando Kline (for now).  The noted Pathfinder has been trying to figure out what's in a mysterious puzzle box, and in this chapter he takes it to a wizard at Korvosae's Acadamae for help.  There's a betrayal, a Hellknight, an exciting escape, and a very satisfying conclusion to the tale.  Though, I do wonder . . . what's in the box!  I'd like to sit down and read these all in order one day (I think they've been collected as e-books).  I'll definitely use some of the flavour from them for my next big campaign.

The issue's bestiary is quite extensive, with seven new monsters, all but one of which receives a two-page entry chock-full of background and description.  There's only one bland entry (a crag spider), while the others all expand on the creatures the PCs might meet in their quest to stop Karzoug such as the dreaded wendigo, the massive rune giants, and the creepy-cool denizens of Leng.  Three of the entries and much of the shared background in the section fleshes out the "lamia" category of monster.  Here, we have kuchrimas (birdlike scavengers), harridans (the leaders), and hungerers (amorphous, terrifying monsters--sometimes the classic artwork is better than the new stuff!).  With the one exception, this is a winning collection of new monsters that incorporates a great deal of setting lore.

Last up is a four-page preview of the next adventure path, Curse of the Crimson Thrones.  This is for GMs only, as it's quite spoilery.  But I'm convinced!

SPOILERS

A brief foreword explains the inspiration for this chapter: a lost city along the lines of Shangri-la or El Dorado.  There's also a bit about why a wizard like Karzoug was chosen to be the big-bad for the entire AP.

Part One, "On the Trail of Xin-Shalast," explains how even finding the legendary City of Greed is incredibly difficult due to its location on one of the highest peaks in all of Golarion (Mhar Massif) and its proximity to a thinning in the dimensional wall with another plane known as Leng.  Although the PCs may know the name of the city they need to find in order to face Karzoug, actually locating Xin-Shalast is another matter entirely.  The adventure assumes the PCs call on Brodert Quink, a local sage in Sandpoint who has always had a fascination with all things Thassilonian.  If they do, Quink is able to dig up a story about the Vekker Brothers, dwarven miners who claimed to have discovered a lost city of gold high up in the Kodar Mountains.  However, the Vekkers disappeared decades ago.  The PCs will need to travel to the Vekkers' old mining cabin to see if they left any hints about Xin-Shalast's location behind.  This part of the chapter is mostly exposition and role-playing, but it worked perfectly (and quite organically) when I ran it because the PCs had already built up a rapport with Brodert Quink.  It's always nice when those connections with NPCs, built up over many sessions, pay off.

Part Two, "Whispers on the Wind," starts with the PCs at the Vekkers' mining cabin.  The cabin is in a remote part of a treacherous mountain range, and the adventure leaves it up to the PCs to figure out exactly how to get there.  My group had a fun, brief detour in Urglin and then made their way into the mountains.  The GM can start implementing the rules for mountainous terrain (discussed above) at this point.  The bulk of this part of the adventure is essentially an elaborate variant on a haunted house.  An extremely grisly tale involving starvation and cannabalism will be slowly revealed to the players through encounters with haunts.  But they're extremely flavourful, creepy haunts that work well in the atmospheric setting.  Until re-reading the book for this review, I had never noticed the (obvious) thematic connection to greed in the backstory.  Events in the cabin gradually dovetail in a nightmarish, multi-step haunt and the looming presence of a battle against a wendigo.  I think it was one of the most memorable parts of the campaign, as one of the PCs (the only one with a low Will save) fell under the sway of the cabin's evil.  I was blessed with some excellent role-players in the group, and this section of the adventure can really bring out some quality storytelling if your group is up for it.  This part could also easily be adapted a standalone story arc for high-level PCs who aren't in RotRL.  Interestingly, the original version of the adventure here doesn't have the encounter with the frost worm that appears in the Anniversary Edition--something I noticed because that thing killed half the party when I ran it!

Part Three, "On the World's Roof," is all about the journey from the Vekkers' cabin to Xin-Shalast.  The process is rather complicated the way it's laid out here (and in the Anniversary Edition), so I had to take careful notes in prep.  There's a possible encounter with a sort of icy swamp nymph who, if befriended, can give the group some useful information about what they'll encounter in the City of Greed.  But for the most part, this section of the adventure is where the PCs will be hit the hardest by the rigors of travelling through the foreboding Kodar Mountains.  My group made things easier on themselves by wind-walking much of the way, at the cost of missing out on some encounters and clues they might have otherwise come across.  But all choices have consequences, and I can't blame them.

Part Four, "Xin-Shalast," is probably the meat of Chapter Six.  This section sees the PCs reaching a city of truly gargantuan scale (it was built with giants in mind, after all) and incredible age (ten millenia since it was largely abandoned!).  There's a lot to take in here for both the GM and the players.  The adventure addresses it by providing an overview of different sectors of the city and brief description of some major landmarks, and then devoting more content to a few particular events that will occur as the PCs explore.  As the PCs will discover, their ultimate goal is to defeat some of Karzoug's minions in order to gain magical items needed to safely pass through the "occluding field" around his headquarters.  Much of the adventure here is open-ended and freeform, which I appreciate from a "lack of railroading" perspective.  The difficulty I found, however, is that there's too little detail for parts of the city, and passing mentions that this area here is full of strange and terrifying forms of plant life and that area there is full of strange undead beings makes a lot of work for the GM at a point in the campaign when coming up with custom content is at its peak difficulty.  Another annoyance is that too much of the limited description of the city is about what particular areas or buildings were like 10,000 years ago, when I what I really need is more information about what they're like *now*.  Every GM needs improv skills, but this was probably the one part of the whole adventure path where I really wished I had more detail and guidance to work with.  Even more artwork of what buildings look like from "street level" or a sample encounter map for random encounters would have really helped convey the scale of the place.  I don't need extensive handholding from adventures, but this was more in the line of "here's some seeds--go plant some crops".

The next part of the adventure, "Scaling Mhar Massif", is also labelled as "Part Four".  This section details the full effects of the occluding field (nasty!) and gives capsule descriptions of the buildings around Karzoug's headquarters.  Again, I felt like I didn't have enough to work with here. It's a very brief section that's fleshed out slightly in the Anniversary Edition with an encounter with Leng spiders that provides more insight into what's happening inside a particular part of Karzoug's palace.

Part Five/Six is "The Pinnacle of Avarice."  This is the final "dungeon" of the campaign, and it's quite the affair.  The sheer scale of Karzoug's fortress is difficult to represent (I combined several blank flip-mats and we had to play on the floor!), and what's inside is a cascading series of battles against Karzoug's upper echelon of servants.  A really useful summary is provided, however, of the inhabitants, their response times, and their replenishment rates.  One thing the PCs may or may not be aware of is that Karzoug's ascension to freedom really is imminent, and if they take too many rest breaks in between assaulting the place, they might lose by default.  There are different routes through the Pinnacle of Avarice, and through happenstance some groups could go the "hard way" and fight almost everything (which happened to my PCs) or go the "easy way" and only have a few encounters before the big finish.  Either way, the GM really needs to prepare well for this considering how many lengthy and complex stat blocks they'll have to deal with at any given time.

And the climactic showdown?  First, I have to say that the Anniversary Edition handles it *much* better than the original version does here.  In the original version, the battle takes place in a bland circular room and Karzoug is all by himself.  Whereas in the Anniversary Edition, the battle is in an awesomely-described throne room and Karzoug has bodyguards in the form of a blue dragon, a rune giant, and some storm giants.  This is crucial because even a level 20 wizard can get cornered and locked down in a confined space by a couple of melee brutes and beaten much easier than he should be.  This is much less likely in the Anniversary Edition, and the resulting battle in my campaign was much more epic and memorable (even though it sadly ended with Karzoug victorious).

So all in all, Chapter Six as originally presented has some flaws: Xin-Shalast is described in too cursory a manner, and Karzoug probably wouldn't be challenging enough for most groups.  On the other hand, there's a fantastic horror story inside the Vekkers' cabin and the issue contains excellent back-matter entries.  I'd recommend a RotRL GM buy and read this issue for the useful content, but should use the Anniversary Edition for the big finale.

And don't forget the hidden message in the credits: "The runelords will return."