Pathfinder Society Scenario # 5-06: "You Have What You Hold" [RPG]

 

NO SPOILERS

I played You Have What You Hold with my Oracle of Groetus, Makras Vekker.  It features a couple of interesting story elements that don't really fit together well.  It's also not particularly challenging.  That being said, it's certainly playable, and most participants should still have an enjoyable time.

SPOILERS

You Have What You Hold ties into the Season 5 "Year of the Demon" storyline, which involves the Pathfinder Society trying to support the containment of the Worldwound.  Apparently, in earlier scenarios, the Pathfinder Society has skirmished with Razmiran, which has responded by secretly hiring bounties on all Society shipping along the Sellen River.  Several Society supply runs have been intercepted as the scenario begins, and something has to be done about it or attempts to support Mendev in containing the demons of the Worldwound will fail.  This is where the PCs come in, with a briefing by dwarf Venture-Captain Holgarin Smine in the River Kingdom's city of Tymon.  The mission is a simple but logical one: the PCs will be the bait, and when pirates attack their ship, they both repel the attack and figure out who's behind the attack and where the attacks are being launched from.  The first bit of the scenario is a (potentially) really fun and open-ended role-playing/skill exercise where the PCs try to make themselves look as inept, drunk, or otherwise harmless as possible so any lurking spies will feel encouraged to attack once the journey starts.  Best of all, the better the PCs are at looking harmless, the more they'll be underestimated and the easier it will be to survive the ambush because fewer enemy preparations and resources will be used.

The ambush encounter takes place at a bend in the river as the PCs' barge travels slowly upstream.  The pirates consist of a few CR 1/2 mooks, one or more low-level fighter/rangers, and (potentially the most dangerous threat) a druid and his alligator animal companion.  It's still a pretty easy encounter, and I think in my group the enemies were defeated before the two ships were even within "repel boarders!" range.  It's okay, but I think river piracy was handled better and more flavourfully in # 0-17: Perils of the Pirate Pact.

The location of the pirates' base can be learned through interrogation, or (conveniently) a map found aboard their ship.  The base is the manor house of an abandoned plantation in a swamp a few miles away.  I like that a variety of options and consequences are given for different ways the PCs might approach (stealth, disguise, full frontal assault, etc.).  There are several rooms in the manor house, but only a handful of occupants--more mooks plus a cleric of Besmara named Deremin.  An average group of PCs shouldn't have any troubles.  Here, they'll learn what's really going on.  Deremin is a gladiator-turned-pirate who works for one of the Blooded (elite gladiators from Tymon) named Helkit Silverbane.  Helkit has hired Deremin to target Pathfinder shipping.  Although the PCs don't yet know why Helkit is out to get them (because they don't know the connection with Razmiran), they do know something has to be done about her because she could easily hire more pirates to continue the attacks.

When the PCs get back to Tymon and discuss the matter with Venture-Captain Smine, he says there's only way one to proceed: the PCs have to publicly challenge Helkit to a gladiatorial contest in the arena and defeat her to prove to everyone that messing with the Pathfinders brings consequences.  When the PCs find Helkit, she accepts their challenge immediately and sets the terms: she and her trainees will take on the PCs as a group in the arena.  The resulting match has some potentially interesting elements (sand pits and a very stripped-down version of performance combat for small bonuses), but for the most part it plays out like any other combat wherein beating the bad guys is the only goal.

There's a lot about this "gladiator match" story element I didn't like.  First, Helkit has retired from fighting and middle-aged.  Does the law of Tymon really require her to accept a challenge from any goobers off the street no matter what?  You'd think the PCs would at least have to work their way up through the ranks to become "Blooded" themselves in order to challenge her.  Second, V-C Smine is taking a pretty huge risk in having a recently-assembled group of Pathfinders challenge what's supposed to be one of the best gladiators in all of Tymon.  It blurs the idea that Pathfinders are primarily "seekers of secrets" and not necessarily the biggest and baddest warriors around.  Third, by making victory against Helkit so likely, the aura of "The Blooded" in Tymon sort of falls apart.  If a group of random PCs with little to no teamwork can win in the gladiatorial arena, why have those schmucks been training for years?  And finally, I think if the gladiatorial nature of Tymon was going to be be a part of the scenario, it should have been the major element.  The scenario tries to mix a pirate theme with a gladiator theme, and the effect is that neither is handled well.

All in all, You Have What You Hold isn't a terrible scenario--it manages to do some interesting things.  Still, some of the storyline elements don't work and a really interesting part of the River Kingdoms (Tymon) isn't used well.  I guess I'd conclude that it's fine as long as you don't think too hard about it.