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I've run this three times, and it's been a blast each time; interesting NPCs to give voice to, genuinely challenging combat, and a good smattering of (but not over-reliance on) skill challenges.

Despite the mediocre ratings on this product, my group had a blast playing this last night: everything fell into place in a very satisfying way that made it one of the better 1-shot scenarios I’ve played. I’ve enjoyed running Sundered Waves, Head Shot the Rot, Band on the Run, and The Great Grav Train Robbery, but this was the best of the lot for my group so far.

One of my four players was unable to play this week, so I ran this as a fill-in game. I wasn’t able to find another player in time to fill the open seat, so I ran the unchosen character (Jaithe) as an NPC. Taking heed of the criticisms in the other reviews here I did alter some aspects of the adventure, which I’ll list below. Dice luck certainly played a role in how well this played for us.

I ran this on Foundry, using the map and images downloaded along with the PDF, as well as the pre-existing assets available in the PF2 setup within Foundry itself (PCs, villains, and one of the traps are already there in the compendiums; just drag them in). I did need to make my own tokens for everything. It took us about 5:15 hours to play through to the end.

How it went:
All three of the characters poisoned by the meal succeeded at their Fortitude saves right off the bat. They performed admirably during the lead-in to dinner, and managed to impress Dorlivin, which in many ways saved them throughout the rest of the adventure. I have a growing reputation amongst my players for rolling lots of natural 20’s whenever we play PF2e, and that certainly continued tonight. Fortunately for them that included rolling for Dorlivin, who would have taken home the Al Capone Untouchable Swing of Excellence Award—if such a thing existed—as he began his night of smack downs.

Dorlivin was able to fill in some backstory and other details, as well as warn them of the trap to area 6 as they explored the lodge. I kept the stone lions around the cage, but the PCs didn’t see a need to go down there. In area A9 I reduced the encounter to only one imp, although they really could have handled two. It was Kellsti with some ranged support against the imp, who ended up breaking out his Infernal Temptation when he was near dead. Kellsti’s player actually took the deal, which could have gone really poorly for them as the only place left to explore on the map was the workroom and its TPK-ing guardian. They did manage to get through that, aided greatly by Dorlivin’s drawing some of the attacks and getting in another crit or two.

I set out at the beginning (via Dorlivin, again) that Auldegrund and the cultists weren’t likely to be back before morning, so they had time for some sleep and to set up an ambush in the dining hall with several placed snares and the overturned dining table for cover. The cultists came in first, managed to step on most of the waiting snares (to little effect), and despite critting several times with their bows, were soon vanquished.

A round or so later Auldegrund was at the door, and a tense combat shifted outside. The dwarf’s past failures certainly came back to haunt him, as Dorlivin—free-willed from the villain’s botched ritual—continued his string of near-max damage crits.

Soon enough our villain was calling on Alocer for aid, morphing into Stage-2 Endboss. Rising into the air on wings of fire, he struck fear into the party! Fortune turned against him, though. His first round was spent missing all of his attacks. I had my players make the flat check to see if Alocer withdrew his favor, and sure enough at the end of the first round of uber-Auldegrund: natural “1” on the flat check. (Not knowing what he was rolling for, I needed to stop my player from using his hero point to re-roll the result. :D ) Auldegrund plummets to the ground, near dead from the revoking of his HP and the fall, prone, frightened 3. The players continue to swing and miss, or chip away for just a bit of damage. It circles around until the only one left to go before Auldegrung acts again is….Dorlivin, with his chance at revenge and a wild hot streak: 2 misses! Auldegrun stands and starts swinging at the Very Injured PCs: miss, critical miss!!

And….Zerrryd steps in and manages to land the killing blow. It’s over, everyone survived, and we can all go to sleep after playing an hour past our usual quitting time. As for the future, Dorlivin weighs his previous plan of throwing himself off a cliff to end his unwanted existence versus the opportunity of teaming up with the one adventuring group of freaks and outcasts on Golarion that could develop into his friends and family. Somewhere deep beneath the earth infernal horns sound as Alocer hunts those that have failed him…

So, with a little tweaking of the adventure and some crazy die rolls on all sides, it all worked out to be a great and suspenseful tale that we will all hopefully look fondly back upon.

Things I changed in the adventure:

• Upgraded all the PCs primary weapons from +1 to +1 Striking

• Swapped out Magic Weapon on Kellsti’s spell list to Bless
• Reduced the imps in A9 from 2 to 1, although 2 would have been OK, in hindsight
• Gave the PCs time to rest before the end encounter
• In the heat of the moment I wasn’t sure how “repairing” Dorlivin really would have worked in 2e, so I just ruled that they could use crafting as medicine to treat injury, as they had all the tools and the magical freezer that built at their disposal, so he was healed up going into the end fights.

Was fun: would recommend. Four Stars.

Well, I'm late to the party with this review, but having read or played many of the season 1 adventures that set this up, I found it to be great fun. YMMV if you haven't had a chance to build some of those earlier connections, but even without that it still presents a creepy and impactful time.

This ran right in that sweet spot for me—like a blend of Cowboy Beebop and James Bond—which is just about perfect for what I'm looking for in Starfinder. I like the other tones you'll see in SFS too, but something quick and fun like this to break up the more serious story arcs is perfect. Great time.

This was a great scenario, and really painted a wonderful picture of the setting. The other reviews before me stated it all quite well already, but I'll join in the praise.

Just finished this, and it was a great time. Without getting too spoilery, I had played an associated adventure from an earlier season just days before this, so seeing things circle round to tie into the overall plot was awesome. I also had the good fortune of playing the Raia pregen, whose computer skills were very much required.

While there is certainly combat here, having a technologically savvy character along is going to be pretty key to succeeding at this scenario. It ties very heavily into the overall metaplot of the Data Scourge, and as I hinted earlier, players that have been around for a while (or who have played the older seasons) may also be in for an interesting revelation.

So, I’m more than a little bit behind in my Starfinder reading, but I’m just going through Merchants of the Void (Leo Glass) and it’s great. Wonderfully fun, funny, clever, and I’m looking forward to running it.

Special shout out to Owen KC Stephens; I read his section on side jobs and loved it so much I went back and checked out who wrote it, which I think I can honestly say has never happened before.

Great adventure!!

I'm neither one to enjoy dungeon crawls nor write reviews, but the quality of this adventure has me putting in my 2 cents. This is an exemplary adventure: from the use of entertainingly malicious traps, puzzles for the players, and role-playing opportunities mixed throughout the combat encounters, Curse of the Lady's Light finds my dungeon crawl sweet spot and dances on it for the length of the adventure. Mike Shel has created what is, for me, the perfect synthesis of modern game adventure and old-school module. It feels like what my best friend in junior high would have written if he had been a professional game designer. Good show Paizo!

I randomly ran across this at GenCon and was shocked that it even existed. A great surprise for a new Eberron DM! An absolutely beautiful map: rich color and durable vinyl. I don't really do much more than just lay it out for my players to plot their Korvaire-spanning adventures, but it's a beautiful prop for that.