Pathfinder Society Scenario # 0-10: "Blood at Dralkar Manor" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

Because it has been retired from official PFS play, I ran Blood at Dralkar Manor at subtier 3-4 as part of my "Roots of Golarion" campaign that incorporates 3.5-era Pathfinder adventures.  Long story short: I can see why this one was retired.  It's lethal!  It has an interesting approach and I like how it doesn't railroad, but I just don't see most groups getting through it without multiple casualties or a TPK.  It delivered one of my player's first ever PC death, and in retrospect it just wasn't a fair encounter.  I'm glad Paizo learned from mistakes like this one.

SPOILERS

Blood at Dralkar Manor starts with the PCs standing outside the eponymous building, remembering the instructions given to them by Venture-Captain Savarre back in Absalom.  Savarre is about ready to retire, and he intends to purchase Dralkar Manor in Andoran with his life's savings.  However, Dralkar Manor has been abandoned for years and rumors persist that it's haunted.  So Savarre has sent the PCs to see if the rumors are true and, if so, to make the place safe for him to reside in.  It's the only PFS scenario I can think of where the PCs are essentially doing a personal errand for a Venture-Captain, and to me it comes across like trying to have the office receptionist pick up your dry cleaning!

Dralkar Manor does have elements of a classic haunted house.  There's an interesting and well-written tragic backstory involving dark secrets, and the place is very dangerous.  But the scenario smartly layers onto this a storyline involving an evil cult using the abandoned house as a site for murderous experiments.  As the PCs investigate the house, they have to fend off its inherent threats and the cultists at the same time.  It makes for an interesting dynamic.

I'll start with the cult.  There are three main named members, with the possibility of some additional unnamed thugs depending on subtier.  As correspondence the PCs may find inside the house will reveal, the three cultists are involved in a love triangle.  The subordinate male is an illusionist and hides in the house, using minor glamers to make the place seem more haunted.  I thought this was a good touch--the house doesn't have "ghosts" per se, but it helps to explain why the locals think it does.  The sole female member of the cult is a rogue who hides (quite well--DC 40 to spot!) in the exterior gardens, and stalks the PCs with the intent to sneak attack if the illusions don't scare them away.  The leader of the group, a wizard, is off to kidnap the sheriff of the local town (Alvis) that ousted them.  As more correspondence will reveal, he'll return at dawn.  This potentially gives the PCs the opportunity to set up an ambush for him.  I always like it when scenarios reverse things and give the PCs more agency in how encounters begin.

The unfortunate thing with this cult is that, although we learn some of their interpersonal dynamics, the scenario gives us absolutely no information about what this cult is, what it's called, what its goals are, etc.  It's as generic a cult as it gets!  I'll also mention now, although the PCs probably won't encounter him until the end of the session, that the wizard is Level 6 and this doesn't change regardless of subtier!  (Some of his spell selection is limited at low subtier, but he's still potentially an extremely dangerous foe).  A final annoying bit about the cult is that everything about them is in a separate section of the scenario from all of the room descriptions--the GM needs to prepare carefully to incorporate the cultists' appearances as intended.  Additional confusion can arise because the  illusionist hides in the burned/collapsed remnants of the second floor, and there's also a trapdoor on the second floor leading into one of the first-floor rooms--but the scenario provides no map of the second floor.  The fact that the upper story of the mansion is a burned ruin also makes me wonder why the Venture-Captain wants to buy the place in the first instance.  He really should have demanded an inspection first.

The house itself only has two encounters, but both are very nasty.  First, one of the rooms contains anywhere from 2 to 5 vargouilles (depending on subtier).  Vargouilles are low CR creatures, but their paralysing shrieks can completely disable a party with some bad dice rolls.  Add onto this that they can then infect victims with a disease that turns them into vargouilles makes them far more dangerous than their CR might indicate.  Second, the house's kitchen contains one or more assassin vines.  Again, a normal assassin vine is far more lethal than its CR would indicate, but this scenario exacerbates the problem by placing a special advanced assassin vine (with 108 hit points!) at subtier 3-4.  That's what easily killed one of the PCs when I ran the encounter.  I'm all for not coddling players, showing them that not every battle should be fought, etc., but the way the scenario sets things up is essentially--open the door, there's a deadly foe with 30' reach, it grapples you, and constricts you until you die.  I have to imagine either there was no play-testing of the scenario before it was published, or the writers (oddly, there are three of them) played super min-maxed PCs.

Sometimes when I run these retired scenarios, I think that just by changing one or two little things, Paizo could have salvaged a perfectly good adventure.  But Blood at Dralkar Manor would take a lot of work to redeem.  Although I like that there's a chance for the PCs to turn the tables on the cult, I just don't think this one is realistically playable in its current form.