Chapter 2: "Seven Days to the Grave"
by F. Wesley Schneider
The civil unrest in Korvosa has been dealt with, only to be replaced by a far more deadly and insidious threat. A horrific disease that leaves its dead deformed and faceless sweeps through the streets of Korvosa, death borne on the wind and steeped in the stones. Mass graves crowd the outer walls and plague doctors stalk the streets in a desperate attempt to prevent the sickness from spreading, yet is there something more to the plague than meets the eye?
This volume contains supplementary rules for handling large-scale urban disasters such as plagues and famines, and also presents a detailed exploration of Abadar, the god of cities and wealth. Several new monsters associated with sickness and disease round out the bestiary.
For characters of 4th to 7th level.
Pathfinder is Paizo Publishing's 96-page, perfect-bound, full-color softcover Adventure Path book printed on high-quality paper that releases in a monthly volume. Each volume is brought to you by the same staff which brought you Dragon and Dungeon magazines for over five years. It contains an in-depth Adventure Path scenario, stats for about a half-dozen new monsters, and several support articles meant to give Game Masters additional material to expand their campaign. Because Pathfinder uses the Open Game License, it is 100% compatible with the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game.
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I had a blast running "Seven Days to the Grave." It's a well-written, memorable adventure that is definitely something different from the norm. It does an excellent job continuing the overall AP storyline while simultaneously giving the PCs the chance to see how their efforts are making a difference. I'll have a lot more to say below, but for now, we'll just cover the non-spoilerly back matter.
The back matter consists of five parts:
* "Plague and Pestilence: Diseases of Fantasy and Reality" (6 pages): This section contains a discussion of how diseases operate in Golarion and similar quasi-medieval fantasy worlds. Much of it is fairly general, but it's well-written and interesting. On the crunchier side of things, there are rules for how common "plague doctor" equipment functions and descriptions & stats for several diseases (both real ones and completely fictional ones).
* "Abadar: Master of the First Vault" (8 pages): We get a thorough overview here of the Church of Abadar--including its tenets, temples, myths, holidays, the role of clerics and paladins, and even a sample temple layout. I like the idea of the First Vault (it reminds me of the concept of Platonic forms). A new prestige class is introduced, the Justiciar, but, oddly, it only has three levels to it (some cool features though!) Although I'm sure a lot of material in this entry makes its ways to books like Inner Sea Faiths, there would be some parts that doesn't for space reasons--so these original overviews are still valuable.
* "Pathfinder's Journal: The Bloodworks Incident" (6 pages): Pathfinder Eando Kline's quest to see where his mysterious magical compass is leading him continues. In this installment, Eando finds himself in the anarchic orc city of Urglin because he wants to find a guide to help him safely traverse the Hold of Belkzen. The story features the Bloodworks arena and is really exciting, as the action scenes come alive and are suitably brutal. Beyond that, the story does a great job describing Urglin and providing a feel for the city--a valuable resource for a GM.
* "Bestiary" (12 pages): This issue's bestiary starts with a random encounter table for Korvosa's crypts. It then introduces five new monsters, each of which receives a two-page spread. The first (and my favourite) is the leukodaemon, a daemonic harbinger of disease. The artwork is awesome, and the creature serves a clear role in the setting and has some cool abilities (like the "breath of flies"). Next up is the Daughter of Urgathoa--a solid concept, but the anime-style artwork lets it down. Third, we have Giant Flies & Giant Maggots; pretty simplistic, but I'd guess they'd be useful for something like a visit to the Worldwound or Abaddon. Fourth, we meet the Herald of Abadar, the Lawgiver; Golarion doesn't seem to do much with heralds compared to the Forgotten Realms, so this is of limited usefulness. Last, we get nosferatu--ancient, less "civilized" vampires--a good addition to the game.
* "Characters" (2 pages): Here we see Level 4 versions of the four Iconics in CotCT: Ezren, Seelah, Lem, and Harsk.
It's a strong collection of back matter, with a lot that's useful in and beyond the adventure itself.
SPOILERS!:
Did you know the entire genesis of Curse of the Crimson Throne started with a pitch about doing a module centered around disease? I had no idea until I read James Jacobs' fascinating foreword. He writes about how disease often isn't a major factor in D&D stories because of how slow it spreads and the presence of magic that can easily cure it. So the challenge facing Wes Schneider was how to make a disease-themed adventure viable, and that then inspired everything else around it.
The in-game background to "Seven Days to the Grave" involves Vorel's Phage--the supernatural toxin that plays a minor part in Chapter Two of Rise of the Runelords (I love subtle interconnections like this). It turns out that after buying the poison that killed her husband from the Red Mantis, Ileosa has hired them again to help "cleanse the city of undesirables". The Red Mantis have had one of their disease specialists, Reinder Davaulus, work with the Cult of Urgathoa (the deity of pestilence) to modify Vorel's Phage into a virulent disease called "blood veil." In this chapter of the adventure, blood veil is released in Korvosa, and it's up to the PCs to try to discover a cure as more and more bodies rack up every day around them. Was it a bit weird to run this adventure in the midst of a real-life pandemic? Honestly, I never really thought about it at the time . . .
In Part One ("Infection"), the PCs are expected to enjoy some downtime after the events of Chapter One and continue to build their own connections with residents--a great idea to help make them care about Korvosa. The adventure proper starts with a ship being sunk in the harbor because it arrived at night and ignored signals to stop. Soon after, the PCs are contacted by Grau Soldado with an urgent request for help because his niece has become sick with a mysterious disease and the family can't afford to buy a magical cure. Assuming they're willing to try to help, they'll meet a cleric of Abadar who has become worried because additional cases of the same illness are popping up around the city.
Part Two ("A Damsel in Distress") has Vencarlo Orisini contact the PCs for help in smuggling Trinia Sabor out of Korvosa. I guess the idea here is to keep Vencarlo in the group's mind, but there's no real risk or drama with smuggling her to safety, so it's a relatively minor part of the adventure.
Part Three ("Outbreak") shows blood veil becoming a major threat across the city. There are crazy rumors about how the disease spreads and how it started, people turning on each other, quarantines, quack cures, doctors getting sick themselves, hospitals overrun, supplies exhausted--oh, and all that happens in the adventure, too! The PCs meet, for the first time, the "Queen's Physicians" (suitably creepy in proboscis-like plague masks) and Ileosa's personal army, the Gray Maidens. It should be noted that the risk of the PCs themselves catching blood veil is very real, and this isn't a disease that's easy to cure.
Part Four ("Pestilence") has the disease intensifying. This section is my favourite because it contains five different encounters that can be run in whatever order the GM wishes, and with hooks that are easy to personalise to the group. There's an encounter against vampires taking advantage of all the bodies in the streets to mask their own feeding, a perfumery selling fake cures, wererats planning reprisals after being blamed for the plague, a fun little "zombie movie" set piece in a fancy manor, and an underwater exploration of the sunken ship (I'm still a bit fuzzy about the bad guys' plan here, but it made for an interesting challenge for the PCs). Having multiple potential adventure hooks active in a dynamic environment around them means there's absolutely no concern about "railroading" while still giving the GM some structure to work with.
Part Five ("Epidemic") contains the big climax of the chapter. The PCs will have suspected that the Queen's Physicians are actually spreading the disease, not trying to contain it, and will have learned their headquarters is the "Hospice of the Blessed Maiden". But they have a lot more than fake doctors to contend with, as underneath the building, a Temple to Urgathoa has been secretly constructed! This is definitely one of those situations where, if the PCs just kinda bust in, they'll alert various scattered defenders and turn a series of small encounters into a few very large and more dangerous ones. One encounter I particularly liked was with a nosferatu who isn't actually interested in fighting, and very willing to make a deal with the PCs to leave peacefully--but if the PCs insist on fighting him, they'll be very unpleasantly surprised by how tough he is; it's a good reminder that sometimes non-violent ways to resolve encounters are smart. The big boss battle, against the head priestess of the temple, has one of those sequences common in video games but very rare in tabletop RPGs: when the priestess is killed, she's reborn, a round later, as a "Daughter of Urgathoa" that's even more dangerous! It's not a trope I would want to see often, but it was a fun surprise here. Interestingly, Rolth (the necromancer) is present here, but this is before the hardcover collected edition turned him into "Rolth Lamm" and gave him a link to Gaedren Lamm.
The Conclusion gauges how many citizens the PCs saved by their efforts through a sort of success chart, and provides them with rewards accordingly.
All in all, an excellent adventure that feeds organically into Chapter Three.
Warning: This review contains spoilers
Written from a GMs perspective
I ran this for 6 PCs
I ran the Pathfinder re-released version
Curse of the Crimson Throne is an adventure path that is mostly advertised as an urban adventure filled with political intrigue. Seven Days to the Grave is a clear case where the adventure path effectively achieves exactly what it set out to do. Korvosa is beginning to fall apart and everywhere something seems to be going wrong. Still, the adventure does a great job of giving the PCs plenty to do and not instilling the sense of hopelessness that can sometimes infect this type of game.
Pros:
The first major positive is the plague theme. The plague offers a bleak backdrop that makes the adventure unique, as well as offering RP opportunities with new and old NPCs. It also offers a mystery that simultaneously keeps the PCs distracted from immediately discovering the truth about Korvosa's new leader, while ultimately leading them closer to discovering the truth.
In my review of Edge of Anarchy, I remarked that the book did not entirely stand up on its own, but did a great job of setting up the setting and characters. Seven Days to the Grave is where that choice starts to pay off. Cressida's fears start to become a reality as she sees her budget and authority consistently diminished by the new Grey Maidens. The Queen's initial set up will keep the players wondering for a while if many of her choices are caused by true malice or whether she is merely having her inexperience exploited by other corrupt individuals. Any friendship forged between the party and Vencarlo becomes interesting when all every bridge, but one, is destroyed between the main city and Vencarlo's home in Old Korvosa. Also, much like the previous book, Seven Days to the Grave does a great job setting up intrigue for the next chapter. However, I believe it does a much better job of remaining a memorable adventure in its own right.
Ultimately though, the best thing about Seven Days to the Grave is that it is political intrigue done right. After the attempted execution of a framed assassin in the last book, it is pretty obvious that there is corruption in Korvosa. It is also clear, between the riots and the spread of the plague, that the city is being thoroughly mismanaged. However, what is not immediately clear to the players is who is responsible and what their intentions are. Even when the players were given solid evidence that Dr. Davalus was colluding with the cult of Urgathoa to worsen the plague, the players still argued amongst themselves about whether or not to confront the Gray Maidens who were guarding the hospice. Ultimately they realized that, while they had strong suspicions that the Grey Maidens and the Queen knew what was happening, they couldn't prove it. As a GM it was very refreshing to not have the players immediately pinpoint the main villain within five seconds of meeting them.
Cons:
The only weakness I saw in this chapter was that, similar to Edge of Anarchy, some of the missions did still feel a bit random and disjointed. I know my players were very curious to investigate Old Korvosa, but instead kept getting approached by random people to do random missions. However, I did not deem this flaw worth of knocking of a star, since while these missions seem random, the story still is advancing. Even more importantly, the missions were well written and enjoyable, even if a bit random.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this adventure to anyone who enjoys political intrigue and I am excited to see where the game goes in the next few parts.
The foreword of this module talks about how the 'Curse of the Crimson Throne' adventure path was MADE around this module, and while it absolutely digs right into the 'plague outbreak in D&D' aspect, on the whole I found it a bit disappointing on the heels of Edge of Anarchy.
The beginning goes from uplifting (upon saving cute-little Brienna Soldado) to downright macabre (with the plague outbreak running rampant through the city). The thought that many of the NPCs that the group meets in Edge of Anarchy suddenly contracting plague and dying is upsetting to me (but I'm kind of a softie).
From there it sets up a series of missions that somehow relate to the PCs combating the plague. The PCs go through this weird arc of feeling empowered to feeling useless to feeling empowered again after a while.
About the missions. I didn't like the lack of choices in the were-rat mission. Most other missions in Curse of the Crimson Throne can be dealt with in many different ways. Not the were-rat one though. The sunken ship investigation was fine, but, again, not a lot of interesting choices for players to make. The mission where they investigate the corpse dumping has a good (if macabre) start, but the fact that it ends up with fighting vampires is just... weird to me.
Like, you've got this plague going on in the background, and there could've been some really great mission about a family member trying to get medicine for their family who is badly infected and sacrificing themselves. Or maybe an infected who is desperate to get back home. Or maybe a fire breaks out as someone decides to 'purge' part of the city. They could've put in these gut-wrenching moral decisions for the players, but instead I'm fighting vampires and were-rats. That's really where this adventure went from 5-stars to 4-stars for me.
Back on track about the missions. Dealing with the snake-oil saleswoman, on the other hand, was great, but the STAR of the missions is where you have to investigate this noble's mansion.
Oh-man...! I have to stop and dedicate a paragraph to the bit of the adventure where you investigate the mansion where there's an evil elf. When I read the setup for this mission, I KNEW it was going to be a blast, an it totally was. The part of the adventure about the Carowyn Manor? Just... AWESOME. So much fun!
The finale of the adventure, the Hospice of the Blessed Maiden, does require some creative thinking to deal with. This is mostly because players are tasked with interfering with the Queen's Physicians, a crime punishable by death. So, for them, finding a way to not become outlaws was crucial.
Finally, they go to the evil temple, which I thought was fine. Unlike Edge of Anarchy there isn't some huge cliffhanger ending, but coming out as the heroes who 'cured' the plague still was pretty great.
In conclusion, I don't know if it's a 5-star adventure, but it's pretty good. It does include a lot of interesting information on how to handle a plague in a Pathfinder world. Maybe I had my expectations set to high? But, I will say, the module is worth it for the Carowyn Manor mission alone. SO MUCH FUN!
This AP volume is a jewel. You will find everything in it : deep NPCs, complex gray clergy (Abadar), corrupted authorities, mad evil cultists, fight against time, rich story with plot twists, epic final battle... Everything, really, is highly enjoyable. I don't see a major negative point here and I'm usually not a crazy paizo fan boy.
Why wasn't cover the posted on the pathfinder blog like all the rest. Not fair.
Because the blog is now handled by the marketing department and they're running on a different schedule than we were when the blog was the editing department's responsibility.
I got to agree with Pen_Dragon that the wallpapers are great. The one for pathfinder 3 spent weeks as my background and it would be a shame to see them go. I personally think it's a pretty cool way to advertise as it really shoes off Pathfinders amazing art. Like I said hope we see more cover art in the blogs as this one just seems to have snuck by without anyone noticing which can't be good.
My Rise of the Runelords game was scheduled on saturday, and I was excited because we don't get to play very often because players live across the country. Then I managed to catch some annoying flu and had to spend my weekend in bed, coughing in fever. Now the fever isn't gone, but I feel a bit better, not so weak anymore. First thing I do when I open my computer, I check Paizo blog, of course. And what do my eyes see, the Doctor is in! "Why I'd love to taste some of your funky looking medicine mr. Doctor, but why oh why didn't you come on friday?"
It says "ready to ship". So when is it shipping? (And of course by this I mean "shipping to me"!) This sounds really, REALLY cool. I'm chomping at the proverbial bit. The supplemental stuff sounds really interesting, too.
I've already downloaded my PDFs and have been joyously looking through them for the last 15 minutes.
This is a good one. I love the nosferatu - classic in every way. The Leukodaemon is awesome as well, especially with the hints of the 4 Horsemen. I can't wait to read throught the adventure.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Society Subscriber
another addition to the many kudos you have recieved . with one exception: the BODY COUNT section ;if the party completes every one of the scenarios the BODY COUNT only adds up to 2800 ( A=200, B=700, C=400, D=00, E=500, F-G = 1000) these add up to 2800 exactly so how does the party get as high as 3600 ?
Did I miss something or was a very large award omitted?
if you could send me an E-mail reply that would be nice.
another addition to the many kudos you have recieved . with one exception: the BODY COUNT section ;if the party completes every one of the scenarios the BODY COUNT only adds up to 2800 ( A=200, B=700, C=400, D=00, E=500, F-G = 1000) these add up to 2800 exactly so how does the party get as high as 3600 ?
Did I miss something or was a very large award omitted?
if you could send me an E-mail reply that would be nice.
If I recall there was a description somewhere that indicated the very same thing, and suggested the DM award more "body counts" saved for other actions the PC's may do. I can't find that reference currently -- although I did find the side bar "Other Plague Events" (pg 44) which you could use to add some more saved souls to the count.
(The description on page 20 under body count does indicate that up to 5000 lives could be saved by the pc's actions).
another addition to the many kudos you have recieved . with one exception: the BODY COUNT section ;if the party completes every one of the scenarios the BODY COUNT only adds up to 2800 ( A=200, B=700, C=400, D=00, E=500, F-G = 1000) these add up to 2800 exactly so how does the party get as high as 3600 ?
Did I miss something or was a very large award omitted?
if you could send me an E-mail reply that would be nice.
Yup, James Jacobs said in a thread somewhere (I can't be bothered digging it out, it's probably linked in the DM reference thread if nothing else) that it's expected that most groups will hit the local heroes level on that table. It goes up to 3600 to account for groups going above and beyond. F'rinstance my group saved Brienna and everyone they could manage in the hospice, the favoured soul ran himself ragged with heal skill uses and remove disease (once he finally had it), they paid for several remove diseases for various key people from the Temple of Abadar, they successfully eradicated the disease completely at Trail's End/Thieves' Camp, they worked out the disease vector very early on, so they were posting announcements all over town advising wearing gloves, particularly when handling low-denomination currency, and when they found the notes they basically turned the hospice into a giant lab, personally financing and overseing a team of every willing alchemist and healer they could find in the city for discovering, fabricating and distributing the cure. That plus my running the sidebar encounters meant they were pretty much in the 3600 region :).
(The description on page 20 under body count does indicate that up to 5000 lives could be saved by the pc's actions).
I figured the figure of 3600 was intended as a realistic upper limit for how much the PCs can do. 5000 people will die if the PCs do nothing at all, the PCs can reduce it down to 1400, but there are always going to be a fair few deaths unless they somehow come up with a cure within the first few days and managed to get it out to the general populace immediately (which probably wouldn't be possible even if they raided the hospice immediately, what with the cure being the product of cross-referencing notes about experiments on plague victims, plus there's all the people stuck behind the quarantine in Old Korvosa that they can't get to immediately).
Anyone know why all of the other curse of the crimson throne books are on sale for the great golem sale but not this one?
Because it's been sold out for the longest time. I'm surprised they found more copies. If you look at the CCT forums, people are complaining that they couldn't find this book for months... period. I think it's great they found more copies but I'm sure they are extremely limited, so I'd get mine now.
As far as we know there aren't any plans. The reprint of RotR was a anniversary thing. They also don't want to invalidate buying seperate volumes if people know there will be a collected hardcover out later on.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
jimibones83 wrote:
are there plans to print another run of these? if so, is there any possibility of the AP being updated?
They will not reprint this directly. Paizo don't do that outside their hardcovers and a copule of other books.
There is a tiny chance of a compilation, but almost certainly not for several years. Even then, it's not certain they'd choose Throne for the treatment (although it'd certainly be on their shortlist).
That sux. I've never played it and I'd like to purchase the AP but this ones not available. Checked eBay and amazon but all I found was an old one and being a softcover there's really no telling how long it would hold up
Yeah I know. PDF is a pain though. If they were only a few dollars I'd prolly buy them but not for what they are asking
$14 bucks is actually not a bad price to pay for a 100-ish page book including an adventure (which could be reduced into a stand alone module if you tried), an appendix of supplemental rules/ideas to flesh this or other stories out, and a mini bestiary.
I'll never understand why some folks aren't willing to pay other folks for their time and work, but demand higher wages for their own time and work.
Yeah I know. PDF is a pain though. If they were only a few dollars I'd prolly buy them but not for what they are asking
If you have a FLGS that deals in second hand books, you might be able to find one there. I lucked out myself, and was able to get all six books in this AP plus the Map Folio as a bundle for 100$ at my FLGS. And, it completed my AP collection too.
