The finale of the Road to revolution Campaign Arc is 51 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page blank inside of the front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, 2 pages of advertisements, 1 page back cover, leaving 43 pages of content, so let's check out this final installment of the Road to Revolution!
This being the finale of the campaign arc, the review contains MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE ARC. If you're a player and even remotely intrigued by the setting JUMP TO THE CONCLUSION NOW.
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All right!
After having changed (or kept) the leadership of the Great City, the mysterious force behind the recent upheavals is making himself known - with all forces occupied, busy or dead, the approaching army of General Krakon is ready to take the city and start a new era - unless the PCs intervene. Prompted by a group of retired generals, they are sent off on a chase after a general's missing daughter that has been captured by the humanoid Blood Fang mercenaries of Krakon to keep his opposition quiet. It turns out that said group has holed up in a tavern while the city is under martial law - the PCs will have a hard time carving through the elite mercenaries and then, via the tunnels below the tavern, find said abducted warrior-maiden (who has gone through a horrible ordeal indeed) and finally expose a weakness in one of the city gates' mechanisms: Via this intended weakness, they can keep the gates down and the army out long enough to thwart Krakon's coup d'état.
This is not where the adventure ends, though, and thankfully so: The trial of a century is at hand and while no direct evidence links Krakon with the insurrection (That makes him the first TRULY smart über-villain I've seen in any AP) , he can be touched via his subordinates thanks to military law. If the PCs have played their cards right throughout the adventure arc, they can call up a lot of testimonies (provided they thwart the assassination of the judge!) and make the prosecution challenge the general. If your PCs did worse, they might even be on the receiving end of the trial! In the end, after a lot of social interaction, smart maneuvering and good roleplaying, they should have Krakon and his lackey Abberbaugh cornered - until they demand a trial by combat. In the arena of the Circus Maximus, they'll potentially have the final benefits of the allies they gathered and the final confrontation is going to be epic indeed, not least due to the most dread of creatures being released to support the PC's foes by their allies. Once the two revolutionaries have bitten the dust, the Road to Revolution will be at its end and a new era for the Great City will begin - potentially with the PCs among the movers and shakers, be it for a new elite or an old one, for a new god or for the old ones.
Unfortunately, it's this final fight that is too easy - with only two NPCs (and some complications, granted), none of which is a primary spellcaster and some monsters, at least my players mopped the floor with the villains. While this may be intended, I'd add some additional opposition were I to run the adventure again.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are good - while no typo impeded my ability to run the adventure, I did notice several minor typos - not enough to downgrade the adventure, but enough to make it noticeable. Layout adheres to a 2-column b/w-standard and the b/w-artworks rock. The cartography, as befitting of 0onegames, is stellar. The pdf comes with broadside and similar handouts to give to your players, which is always nice. The pdf also features extensive bookmarks.
The Sundered Legion has perhaps the hardest legacy ever to live up to - it is supposed to be the conclusion to my personal benchmark of good urban adventures. I expected the adventure to fail my expectations after "Puncture the Blackened Vein" and "The Usurpers" and it did - albeit in a more marginal way than I expected. At the finale of RtR 5, we are left with a Great City on the verge of a new era and "The Sundered Legion" somewhat fails to convey this sense of dread urgency and the first quest feels like a (very good) filler to provide the proverbial nail in the coffin for the political scheming going on. The trial herein, along its conclusion, however, will provide ample fun for PCs who went through the campaign arc. On the downside, though, the final confrontation is too easy for high-level PCs, at least it was for mine - I doubled the HP of the villains and they still walked over them. (Though I tend to double ALL Boss-HP to avoid short boss fights...)
While finally whacking the conspirators SHOULD provide satisfaction for the PCs, I'm not sure whether this relatively easy battle was intended or not. It should also be noted that this adventure practically HAS to be played as a sequel to one or more of the RtR-adventures (though not necessarily the whole arc) - as a stand-alone adventure, it loses almost all of its epic, neat appeal. Thus, I'll settle for 2 final verdicts - one for people following at least a part of the RtR-series and one for people who look for a stand-alone. The latter should pass this adventure - it loses its unique flair and suffers from the detraction of the meta-plot - for you, this is a 3-star file. For people following the RtR-campaign arc, though, this is a satisfying 4.5 stars-conclusion to the arc, which, while being the weakest of the adventures, still serves a fitting climax for the arc that cements the RtR's excellent status as a series of stellar urban adventures. For the purpose of this platform; I'll round down.
Endzeitgeist out.
