Pathfinder Adventure Path: "Curse of the Crimson Throne, Chapter One: Edge of Anarchy" [RPG]

 

NO SPOILERS

Since the middle of last year, I’ve been running Curse of the Crimson Throne.  The adventure path is known as one of Paizo’s very best, and I’ve certainly had a blast with it.  Although I primarily use the hardcover edition that updates the material from D&D 3.5 to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, I still read through each of the individual issues as they often provide additional flavour, artwork, and supplementary material that helps enrich the experience.  Although my campaign is well into Chapter Four at this point, this review looks at Edge of Anarchy, the first chapter of the adventure path.  We’ll start with the non-spoilery back matter and then move on to the adventure itself in the Spoilers! Section below.

·         Harrow (4 pages): This section is a very short introduction to the Varisian fortune-telling device called the Harrow.  In a broad sense, it’s very similar to the idea of using tarot cards, with each card holding its own theme and the placement of the card in a “spread” providing additional interpretative clues to its meaning.  Paizo has produced a Harrow deck that corresponds with the attributed meanings in this guide, but there are also instructions here for GMs who want to replicate a Harrowing with an ordinary deck of playing guards or even dice.  The instructions here are essentially the bare minimum necessary to do a Harrowing, and I’ve seen more in-depth material in later books.  But like “real” fortune-telling, whether the statements offered seems meaningful and insightful really comes down to the skill of the one interpreting the cards.

·         People of the Road (8 pages): This is a beautifully-written description of the Varisian people, a loose analogue to the real-world Roma.  Varisians embrace a life of freedom and travel guided by elders skilled the Harrow—but now that long-term prophecy has failed on Golarion, their paths are even more uncertain.  The entry covers distinctive Varisian dress, tattoos, magic, caravans, and their kapenia (customary scarves that show kinship relations).  There’s also a discussion of the sczarni—clans of Varisians who have turned to criminal pursuits for profit.  There’s even a real-world recipe for a yummy-sounding classic Varisian meal (“Spicy Chickpea Simmer”) and a sample Varisian family.  It’s a fantastic entry, and I really wish I had remembered to consult it as I homebrewed a meeting with a Varisian caravan in a session a few weeks ago which would have gone even better with the material here.  I don’t believe this material has been wholly reprinted anywhere, and it’s definitely worth looking at.

·         The Burn Run (6 pages): This short story is the beginning of another serialised tale of Eando Kline, a member of the in-world Pathfinder Society.  Kline is attempting to cross the Cinderlands, a desert-like scrubland of parched earth, relentless heat, and ferocious predators.  It’s also the territory for three Shoanti quahs (clans), including the Sklar-Quah (Clan of the Sun).  Through a twist of fate, Kline gets caught up with the Sklar-Quah’s Burn Run, a ritual which involves adolescent members attempting a rite of passage: to outrace an intentionally-set wildfire!  It’s an exciting story with a ton of great information about the Cinderlands and the Clan of the Sun—if the PCs in my campaign ever go there, I’d pass out this story for background flavour.

·         Bestiary (14 pages): This section starts with an announcement that, starting with this issue, each monster in the bestiary will receive a two-page spread.  There’s also a one-page discussion of the sewers under Korvosa and a Korvosa sewers random encounter table.  Six new monsters are introduced: carrion golems (solid concept, like different diseases, artwork is too “wolfman”), devilfish (fine), dream spiders (interesting relation to the drug Shiver, and important sidebar on Shiver’s effects), soulbound dolls (a creepy idea I’ve never seen in a game), raktavarna (a sort of telepathic spy that can appear to be a normal item of equipment), and reefclaw (mean lobsters! I didn’t know they had their origin in Thassilonian flesh-warping).  Although (I’m pretty sure) all of these monsters also appear in later hardcover monster collections, the two-page spreads here really do provide some worthwhile background and flavour to help flesh (carrion golem pun!) them out.

·         Iconics (2 pages): A set of four, Level 1 pre-generated characters are here and ready for play: Ezren, Seelah, Harsk, and Lem.

It all adds up to a great collection of back matter that adds a lot to the campaign and to Pathfinder in general.

 

SPOILERS!

Okay, let’s get into the real meat of Edge of Anarchy!  A two-page forward by James Jacobs makes it clear that Curse of the Crimson Throne is primarily an urban campaign centered around the city of Korvosa.  Whereas Rise of the Runelords had a huge amount of trekking through the wilderness and surviving the dangers of forbidding mountains and dark forests, this adventure path is perfect for more urbane social characters like bards, rogues, and (though they weren’t around at the time) vigilantes.  That doesn’t mean that the PCs will never leave Korvosa during the campaign, just that there’s a different emphasis.  The foreword also explains that it’s up to the PCs (in consultation with the GM) to decide on where their residences are in the city, and that the campaign isn’t on a strict internal timeline.

The background presented for Korvosa and the events leading up to the start of the campaign is a deep, rich tale involving colonialism, dispossession of indigenous peoples, a stirring ancient evil, and regicide!  The overall plot of the adventure path is that, fuelled by a link to a once-buried malevolent entity, the Queen of Korvosa has arranged for the murder of the King and begins to reign with a cruel, capricious fist.  Over the course of the entire campaign, the PCs have to find a way to depose the Queen and restore a semblance of order to the city.  The adventure in Edge of Anarchy is divided into seven parts.

In Part 1, the PCs are assembled by a mysterious fortune-teller named Zellara.  Zellara explains that each of the people present have been wronged in some way by a notorious criminal named Gaedren Lamm, and that now is the time to bring him to justice.  After performing a Harrow reading for the PCs (which gives them some veiled insights into the chapter as well as some mechanical bonuses depending on the cards they draw), the PCs are directed to an old fishery that serves as Lamm’s base of operations.  Here, Lamm forces enslaved orphans to work for him as pickpockets (in a sort of Oliver Twist/Fagin way) and laborers.  The old fishery contains several encounters against well-written and memorable NPCs, though the structure of the building is a bit complicated to picture in a three-dimensional sense and can lead to confusion.  One of the problems with the campaign in a big picture sense is that all of the PCs are required to have a shared background with Gaedren Lamm (even selecting campaign traits for the purpose), but Gaedren is probably brought to justice within the first session or two—so why does the group want to stay together afterwards?  Players at most tables will do it just because they know they’re expected to, but it does hurt the verisimilitude of what happens next.

In Part 2, as the PCs have departed the old fishery, they realise that anarchy has broken out over Korvosa!  Word that the king is dead (and widespread loathing of Queen Ileosa) has led to rioting, arson, looting, and more.  It probably all happens too quickly (how long were the PCs in that old fishery?), but it certainly is cinematic.  This part presents five encounters that the GM can insert as desired, with some of them capable of repetition (like dealing with mobs).  One of the encounters is fairly important, as the PCs meet a drunken member of the Korvosan Guard named Grau Soldado.  Every group latches on to different things, and Grau proved an important NPC for my group in particular.  Anyway, this section is fairly open-ended for the GM (something I appreciate), and allows for easy customisation to the character backgrounds and playing styles of different groups.

The hook that starts Part 3 is a problematic one, in my opinion.  Assuming everything went as expected in the old fishery, the PCs would have come across an old broach.  Assuming they decide to sell the broach, they’ll learn that it actually belongs to Queen Ileosa (it was stolen from one of her handmaidens) and that there’s a reward for it.  Assuming they decide to return it to her (a potentially scary proposition), they’ll be invited into the throne room itself for a brief meeting.  Ileosa delivers the promised reward, says she can use brave warriors like the PCs, and arranges for them to meet another important NPC, Cressida Kroft—leader of the Korvosan Guard.  I can sort of see the value in the PCs getting to encounter Queen Ileosa early, but it all seems a bit pat and it all relies on the broach in a way that’s hard to fix if the PCs don’t do what’s expected.

In Part 4, Field Marshal Kroft offers the group a job: several deserters from the Guard have set up shop in an abandoned slaughter-house and are giving away free meat to the locals.  Kroft wants the PCs to bring in the leader of the deserters, a man named Verik Vancaskerkin (a relative of Orik from RotRL!).  Verik has a really interesting story, and isn’t really a villain per se, as he’s been manipulated by someone from House Arkona (a noble family, who we’ll see play a prominent role in Chapter Three).  Depending on what happens, there could be a great “Soylent Green is People!” revelation.

Part 5 has Kroft introduce the PCs to a well-known fencing instructor and critic of the monarchy, Vencarlo Orisini.  She then hires the group for another mission.  The ambassador to Korvosa from Cheliax is proving troublesome, and the city could use a way to discredit him.  Word has leaked that the ambassador is having an extra-marital affair, with proof contained in letters he’s written that are now in the hands of a criminal entrepreneur named Davargo Bavarsi—“King of the Spiders.”  The PCs are tasked with getting these letters, and there’s lots of ways they can go about it:  stealth, deception, and skulduggery, or through a little ultra-violence.  I have to gloss over a ton of content and description in these reviews for space purposes, but trust me that it’s all handled quite well and with a surprising depth and richness.

Part 6 is really fun, and something different.  Tired of the (completely true) gossip that she had a hand in her husband’s death, Queen Ileosa decides to frame someone to take the fall.  She chooses a pretty young artist, Trinia Sabor, who had been painting a portrait of the king before his death.  Soon, everyone in the city is after this artist and if the mob or the Hellknights get to her first, the results won’t be pretty.  Field Marshall Kroft doesn’t want a lynching, she wants justice, so she asks the PCs to see if they can find Trinia and bring her in alive.  How this plays out in the game is a special encounter using Chase rules (as later published in the GameMastery Guide).  A Chase is a sort of special skills challenge that rewards PCs who have invested in skills like Acrobatics, Climb, Escape Artist, and so forth that enable them to get around obstacles in their way.  It’s a nice change of pace from combat-focussed characters getting all the glory. 

Part 7 is a big section as it involves the AP’s first real dungeon crawl. The anarchy and mob violence have also led to race riots, and the city’s small population of Shoanti have paid the price with some getting murdered in the streets.  The PCs are tasked with recovering the body of the slain grandson of an important Shoanti shaman named Thousand Bones.  But the body has been taken and dismembered by a necromancer named Rolth Lamm, and the PCs have to fight their way through one of his many underground hiding places to find the body.  Rolth isn’t actually present, but his allies (derro) are, and the closest thing this chapter has to a “boss battle” is against a derro sorcerer named Vreeg.  It was an excellent, challenging encounter.  The sequence of finding the dismembered parts of the grandson’s body is a bit gruesome, and although I understand it from a plotting perspective (ensuring the PCs visit various chambers), I think it could be done better.

The Conclusion to the chapter isn’t a mere epilogue—it’s vitally important to the adventure.  Trinia Sabor (if she was apprehended) or a lookalike (if she wasn’t) is slated for execution, and everyone who’s anyone in Korvosa has come out to watch.  Suddenly, Blackjack, a legendary masked hero of Korvosa who hasn’t been seen for a decade appears and tries to rescue her!  This is handled as a sort of interactive scene (not an Initiative-tracked grid encounter), and what the PCs choose to do here is very important.  One of the things I love most about these early Pathfinder adventures is that the writers are willing to entertain “bad” outcomes.  Although Blackjack and Trinia might very well escape, they could also be captured and executed.  A lot of it depends on the PCs, and it all matters for future developments in the campaign.  It made a great capstone adventure for Chapter 1, and I think all of us at the table were breathless during it.

Chapter 1 is integrated into the entire adventure path is a really intelligent way, as many of the NPCs and plot developments tie into later books.  For example, Thousand Bones will reappear in a later chapter when the PCs visit the Cinderlands in Chapter 4, while Vencarlo Orisini is a major part of Chapter 3.  How the PCs handle these early encounters affects the course of the campaign.  I’m at my word limit, so I’ll wrap up by enthusiastically endorsing Edge of Anarchy.  It’s a great adventure.