Posts
NO SPOILERS
experience. A few elements are a bit clunky. I’d say it’s a good one for players particularly interested in the region or for GMs who need a session that’s easy to run because the encounters are discrete and concise, with little complication.
SPOILERS
The scenario has a bit of an involved backstory, but it does
support the adventure well. Centuries
ago, angry at the intrusion of humans into Darkmoon Wood, a
particularly-territorial dryad named Isandrea crafted a magically cursed basin
that would lure loggers into drinking water that carried a debilitating (and
ultimately fatal) wasting disease.
Flash-forward to recent years, and the child of parents who died from
the disease grows up, falls in with the cult of Urgathoa (goddess of disease), becomes
their leader, and then proceeds to seek out and finds Isandrea’s Basin. Using the
basin, the evil priestess (“Vondrella”) hatches a plan to use the cursed water
to grow flowers that carry the disease before spreading them around the lumber
camps around Falcon’s Hollow and the town itself.
The PCs get called in by Venture-Captain Brackett in Almas,
who explains that he’s received a letter for help from the nymph queen Syntira
of Darkmoon Wood, reporting that a deadly plague is affecting the fey of the
wood. Brackett wants to make Syntira
into an ally, and if the PCs can travel to the area and find a cure for the
plague, the Pathfinder Society will earn her trust. Brackett tells the PCs to first check out a
particular lumber camp that has been involved with several conflicts with the
local fey—he suspects that, perhaps, the Lumber Consortium is behind the
plague.
When the PCs arrive at the lumber camp, however, they
quickly realise that the loggers are just as much vicims of the plague as the
fey are! And more pressing, strange
undead animals stuffed with brightly-colored flowers are invading the
camp. In reality, these are variant
plague zombie animals sent by Vondrella because some of the loggers stumbled
upon the fields where the flowers are grown.
Once the PCs destroy the invaders, they can interview survivors and get
a lead on the flower fields. It’s a good
first encounter, and I like the little twist that the Lumber Consortium (bane
of decent folks in Darkmoon Vale) isn’t actually behind this particular evil.
Following the lead, the PCs will soon arrive at a clearing
in the first with rows upon rows of the plague flowers. The fields are guarded by some evil ex-druids
who probably won’t put up much of a fight.
Still, this encounter presents a real risk of PCs catching the disease
which is called palepox. One thing I
think the scenario fails at is making palepox way too mild. The scenario assumes that PCs will be in a
desperate urge to concoct a cure for the disease (as seen in the next
encounter), and the scenario includes a special “Pathfinder Infection Tracker”
to make it easy for the GM to mark the course of the disease’s progression of
each member of the group. The problem is
that the onset of the disease is just 1 Charisma damage, and the disease then
recurs only on a daily basis. The
disease has worst effects on future failed saves, but there’s no particular
reason the adventure would take a group more than a single day to complete, and
so that risk is probably never going to be experienced. The solution would have been to hard-code
some distances the PCs had to travel between different places in Darkmoon Vale
so that days would start to pass, but that’s not done.
In any event, the group is now supposed to visit the town of
Falcon’s Hollow, seek out the local herbalist named Laurel (an NPC from the
modules), and help her formulate a cure for the disease. This is handled as a skills challenge, with
PCs allowed to roll any skill they can justify as being relevant (even
Perception to “find some rare herbs hidden in her lab”) to give Laurel a bonus
to her final check to make the cure. The
actual mechanics of how many checks a PC is allowed to make and what effects
they have is pretty confusing and clunky, and could have been written in a much
more clear way. I’ve re-read the dense
paragraph a couple of times, and I’m still not 100% sure how it works. The scenario also doesn’t give Laurel any
personality (and doesn’t even re-use her picture from the module), so she’s
something of a cipher for the GM to portray.
As the PCs leave the herbalist with the antiplague for
Syntira, they’ll likely realise a wagon full of the plague-treated flowers is
right outside. The cultists of Urgathoa
are planning to spread the flowers around during a big festival in the evening,
and the PCs need to intervene. It’s a
pretty forgettable encounter, with the only meaningful bit that the PCs need to
interrogate one of the cultists to discover Vondrella’s location. On the way there, there’s an optional
encounter (depending on much time is left in the session) that involves a satyr
patrol that may or may not turn into a combat encounter depending on how the
PCs handle it.
The big finale sees the PCs assaulting the entire local cult
of Urgathoa as they hold a disgusting, gruesome festival of their own in a
forest clearing. Most of the cult flees,
but the PCs will need to battle a certain number that stay (depending on
subtier) as well as Vondrella herself.
At least at low subtier, this is an almost laughably easy
encounter. One thing I do really like
about the scenario is that it provides a different epilogue and different set
of boons depending on whether or not the PCs were successful in helping Laurel
come up with a cure and in discovering the location of Isandrea’s Basin.
Overall, I’d rate The Pallid Plague as about
average—it’s playable, but not particularly memorable.
No comments:
Post a Comment