Pathfinder Society Scenario # 8-16: "House of Harmonious Wisdom" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

House of Harmonious Wisdom is a series of five quests that take the PCs to various sites in Tian Xia, an Asian-inspired part of the Golarion campaign setting.  This was one of the first PFS scenarios I ever played (at PaizoCon 2017 with my "caveman shaman" Gurkagh) and I had a blast.  Reading through it now for the purposes of this review, I can see some plot holes, but I'm still impressed by it and would like to find time to run it myself for another group.  It's a fun, fresh adventure and just has a good feel to it.

SPOILERS

The backstory to House of Harmonious Wisdom makes good use of the setting's history.  After an empire known as Imperial Lung Wa fell and fractured into several Successor States, one of them (Shokuro) had a peasants' revolt and declared independence.  Now, several decades later, Shokuro retains stability but would fare even better in its relations with the other Successor States if it could prove a better link to Imperial Lung Wa.  Recently, word has reached one of the original Shokuro rebels, a woman named Mai Chun, that a ruin dating to the age of the empire has been found in the dense forest near her village of Ashima.  With locals afraid to approach due to reports of a bear, Mai Chun has contacted a friend for help--Venture Captain Amara Li of the Pathfinder Society.

The first quest, "Fragments," starts with the PCs arriving in Ashima and meeting with Mai Chun.  I really enjoy the personality and style of speech given to the NPC (although the picture makes her look a lot younger than described).  After explaining the situation, she asks the PCs to explore the ruins in the hope of finding anything useful to Shokuro's cause.  The ruins are represented by the Noble Estate flip-mat, but only three of its many rooms containing anything of interest.  The PCs first have to defeat a bear (a poor panda bear in low subtier!) possessed by the spirit of the last owner of the estate.  There's then one trap before the big discovery: a map that hints at the location of the legendary Summer Palace, a crucial location from Imperial Lung Wa lost to history.  This first quest is pretty slight, and probably won't even take the full hour for PCs to complete it.  I also think there should have been more background or description on the spirit--Pathfinder players have been trained to think that spirits are either malevolent ghosts or trapped souls, and that either way something special needs to be done to set them free.

The second quest, "Inkstains," starts with the PCs in Xiwu, the capital of Lingshen, at a calligraphy academy named the School of Affinities.  They've been sent here by Mai Chun to "retrieve" (steal back!) a map dating back to the days of Imperial Lung Wa that could help further narrow the location of the Summer Palace.  The school makes surprisingly good use of the Village Square flip-mat as the PCs receive a tour from a student named Jianghong.  This quest has all the makings of a classic heist (assuming the PCs sneak in at night, steal the map, and then escape before getting caught).  But there are two complications.  First, the map on public display is only a copy of the original--which is stored in a more secure place.  Second, as the PCs are in the middle of their heist, they catch another burglar (Jianghong) in the act--and he's got the map!  A very simplified chase scene follows.  I love the idea of planning a heist (it's not something PCs get to do very often), but I didn't like the interruption from the other burglar.  It seemed far-too-coincidental that he would strike exactly the same night as the PCs and be after the same thing, and there's no real explanation given.  The bit about there being an original version and a copy was also confusing when I played through it, because our PCs had no reason to think that there would be any advantage in having one over the other--after all, the maps here are supposed to be copied by experts.

The third quest, "Constellation," has the PCs meeting with a bureaucrat named Yue Xin in the city of Changdo in the nation of Po Li.  Yue Xin knows the location of a ruined communications station dating to Imperial Lung Wa, and says there may be crucial clues to the location of the Summer Palace inside.  Yue Xin is an interesting character, as he speaks in faux-meaningful allusions and metaphors to make himself seem wiser than he is.  At the ruins, the PCs will discover several sets of fireworks of different colours.  If they figure out a bit of a riddle (which is one of those things that can be really simple or really hard, depending on the group), they'll know to shoot off a blue and a yellow firework simultaneously to create "words written in green" in the sky--and the words are another clue to the location of the Summer Palace.  Setting off the magical fireworks also unleashes some small fire elementals that the PCs have to battle.  This didn't make a lot of sense to me, and seemed like a battle shoehorned in just for the sake of a battle.

The fourth quest, "Teahouse," is my favourite and one of my best PFS experiences.  The PCs are sent by Mai Chun to the city of Lanming in the Successor State of Quain.  There, they need to obtain a family heirloom passed down over centuries to a woman named Jiang Fei.  But Jiang Fei will only let the PCs look at it if they help her with a problem.  She's trying to start a new martial arts school with her "Jade Ogre" fighting style, but hasn't had any luck finding students.  She wants to put the PCs through a crash-course and have them intentionally start a fight with the arrogant, bullying students of the Scorpion School so that everyone in town will see the value of her style.  After the training, every PC gets access to four special combat maneuvers.  They then travel to the local teahouse, where they need to devise a way to insult the students of the Scorpion School enough to provoke a fight but without being crass about it (the example the scenario gives--sending over a pot of extremely weak tea--is fantastic).  The resulting battle is just hilarious fun.  Most of the furniture in the tearoom is breakable, and the PCs are encouraged to show off their new "Jade Ogre Style" moves because "winning" the battle isn't the only goal.  When I played it, I finally got to put my PC's speciality in improvised combat to full use.  Though I think I made the GM mad by using some WWF-style bodyslams--Gurkagh's not the type to take instructions well :)

The last quest, "Prophecy," sees the Pathfinders reach the Summer Palace.  Inside, they find the final prophecies written by the last emperor of Imperial Lung Wa--and the spirit of Song Rui, the last princess of the empire!  Song Rui is friendly and even offers to travel with the PCs to help Mai Chun interpret the prophecies.  This was all pretty easy and anti-climactic.  But as the group travel the mountain path away from the Summer Palace, they have one last obstacle: the main NPCs from the three previous quests are waiting for them.  All three (Jianghong from the calligraphy school, Yue Xin the bureaucrat, and Jiang Fei the martial arts instructor) have separately followed the PCs and want the prophecies for the glories of their own nations.  If the PCs give the prophecies to one of the NPCs, the other two NPCs attack that NPC (and the PCs).  If the PCs refuse to give it to any of them, then all the NPCs join forces to attack the PCs!  It's a really interesting, unpredictable encounter that could certainly play out in a lot of different ways.  In addition, one of things the GM will have tracked from the previous quests is whether the PCs made a positive impression on each NPC; if so, that NPC will choose a different set of tactics.  After the battle, there's a brief but satisfactory epilogue with Mai Chun.

Tian Xia is a large, diverse region and it was clever to set each of the quests in a different one of the Successor States.  A GM who puts a bit of work in can bring the different nations to life in an interesting way.  Each of the quests was written by a different author, which is sometimes a problem, but here everything ties together well.  Although some of the plotting stretches credulity on occasion, there's a good mix of different encounters and some really good NPCs.  One of the boons on the Chronicle sheet (the Sun Shogun Talismans) has saved Gurkagh's life on multiple occasions, so I'm glad I played this one early in his career!