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I ran Assault on the Kingdom of the Impossible
via play-by-post at Subtier 1-2. It’s
not a standout scenario, but it’s not bad either. The plot has a couple of interesting wrinkles
and there’s a good mix of role-playing and combat. On the other hand, it doesn’t do a lot with a
potentially fascinating setting or develop any memorable NPCs or lore. To my mind, it sits right in the “average”
category: perfectly playable, but not something you’ll rave to your friends
about.
SPOILERS!
As the title might clue you in, Assault on the Kingdom
of the Impossible is the first (I think) PFS scenario to be set in the
Indian-themed setting of Jalmeray, the so-called Impossible Kingdom. But that being said, there’s very little
setting flavour that makes having the adventure set here any different then if
the adventure was set in any other place with a bit of jungle or
wilderness. The story concerns an agent
of the Aspis Consortium named Zamir.
Zamir is a druid with mercenary tendencies, and has started a profitable
venture that involves waylaying Pathfinder and government caravans to steal
their magical items, using enslaved wizards to break the magical items down
into raw materials (a possibility not really recognised in other Pathfinder
rules or adventures), and then shipping those raw materials to Cheliax for
profit. Zamir has a remote jungle base
in an abandoned monastery and doesn’t participate in the caravan raids himself;
he has a group of semi-loyal bandits do it for him. In a real blow to the Society, Zamir’s
bandits raided a PFS safehouse to steal magical items and murdered the longtime
(canon-wise) venture-captain Aamina Shahrazad.
However, the new venture-captain in Jalmeray’s port city of Padiskar (a
man named Vasuman Mihir) has figured out how Zahir has such suspiciously good
information on the Society: he has a spy on the inside! Mihir has figured out that a caravan water
bearer named Waman has been feeding info to Zahir, and thus hatches a plan to
use the spy against his master.
The PCs learn all of this at a briefing with Mihir and are
filled in on his plan. Mihir has leaked
that the Society has come into possession of a legendary artifact called the scepter
of the arclords and that it’ll be transported by caravan from Padiskar to
Niswan along with some other crates of magical items. In fact, the scepter is a fake and Mihir
has magically attuned a wayfinder to always point to it. The plan is for the PCs to be part of the
caravan, wait for the ambush and theft of the (fake) scepter, and then
use the wayfinder to follow the bandits back to Zahir’s
headquarters. There, they’re instructed
to see if Zahir can be recruited to the Pathfinder Society or, if he won’t
join, permanently stopped. It’s actually
a really solid plan, and it’s nice to see a Venture-Captain come up with
something so cunning and feasible! As
for the spy Waman, Mihir says he’ll take care of that problem—probably by
selling the lad into slavery! Paizo’s
early years of the Pathfinder Society had a very different take on the organisation’s
moral bent.
The journey with the caravan hits a snag on the second day
of travel. At a campsite where it
planned to stop, four men are there, having set up a camp. The PCs probably suspect these are Zahir’s
bandits, but they’re actually agents of the Thakur (ruler) of Jalmeray, sent on
their own mission to find the bandit leader!
It’s actually a really interesting role-playing situation, as the PCs
probably don’t want to reveal who they are and the Thakur’s men are undercover
as well. I could see it turning out a lot
of different ways. The players I ran it
for decided just to set up a separate camp and keep an eye on them, which fit
pretty well into the scenario’s expectation because it scripts the actual
bandits to raid the caravan in the middle of the night. The result is a fun and potentially chaotic
melee between the PCs, the bandits, and the Thakur’s men. I like how the adventure abstracts any combat
between the bandits and Thakur’s men (but in a plausible progression) so the GM
can focus on the players.
The Venture-Captain’s plan, of course, was that the Pathfinders
would put up just enough of a fight to keep the bandits from being suspicious
as they find and make off with the fake scepter. My players, of course, got into “encounter
mode” and put up way too good of a fight and the fake scepter never got
stolen. The scenario is prescient in
envisioning this possibility and providing skill checks the PCs can use to
interrogate any prisoners for the route to the bandit fortress. However, my players failed all these checks
too! They (and secretly, me) were at a
bit of a loose end on how to proceed, but they decided to deliver the cargo to the
warehouse in Niswan and hope the bandits would try to steal it again. It seemed like a plausible outcome, so that’s
what I had happen and the adventure got back on track. The concept of PCs having to intentionally
lose a fight is a fun element of the adventure, and a hard one for players to
pull off (apparently).
The rest of the scenario involves an assault on the Tiger’s
Eye Monastery. It’s actually a pretty
small and simple structure. There are archers
on the walls who did some pretty good damage to the PCs, even though they don’t
open fire until the enemy is within 30’.
Once the walls are breached, the PCs will fight some monks (disguised as
statues!) before finding a staircase below.
Again, my PCs took an interesting tack by deciding to try to smoke out
the bandits below by throwing flaming bundles of plant matter down the
stairs. This had both the intended
effect (two bandits rushed out, coughing, and surrendered immediately) and the
unintended effect of risking the death by smoke inhalation of the prisoner wizards
chained to the tables in the workshop below!
The PCs didn’t know there were prisoners, so they had to rush down into
the smoke to try to put out their own fire!
As for Zamir, he’s guarded by his tiger animal
companion. My PCs managed to persuade
him to join the Pathfinder Society. If
the route of persuasion fails and combat ensues, I like how Zamir tries to use
the (fake) scepter of the arclords on the first round of combat; you
have to commit to the bit! The Chronicle
has two boons, one for either way he can be dealt with. And that’s the end of the scenario. I don’t think we ever hear of Zamir again, and
nor (at least according to the Wiki) do we ever see Venture-Captain Mihir in another
scenario.
