The Living Airship (PFRPG) PDF

4.50/5 (based on 2 ratings)

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A stolen airship.

A Vallorian fleshcrafter.

A secluded mountain outpost.

Vallorians, a pernicious race of subterranean humanoids, forever seek to invade and subjugate the surface world with their twisted, living weapons. One enterprising enclave absconded with a gnomish airship and moored it deep within the Spellborne Peaks. Led by the ambitious Hegen diHorome, they work to fleshcraft The Zephyr into a sentient aerial dreadnought—a living airship. Can the heroes navigate through the treacherous caverns to defeat diHorome and his allies in time? Or will the Vallorians blight the skies over Questhaven with their monstrous vessel?

An adventure for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game suitable for 4–6 Player Characters of 7th to 10th level.

Includes printer-friendly version, map folio, and high-resolution map images with and without grids.

Author: Soren Keis Thustrup
Additional Design by Jonathan McAnulty
Art: Kurt A. Taylor
Cartography: Jonathan Roberts
Pages: 32 (37)

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4.50/5 (based on 2 ratings)

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A deadly, iconic dungeon run for smart-fighting PCs

5/5

This pdf is 37 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD and 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 32 pages of content for the adventure, so let's dive right in.

The living airship is an adventure for 4-6 characters levels 7-10 and comes in two versions, one printer-friendly and one full-color. That is especially important due to the STUNNINGLY awesome maps by Jonathan Roberts. It's also important due to one fact that just I personally didn't like that much - the full-color version, while adhering to the usual two-column RiP-layout standard, is actually violet/pinkish, which, at least for me, made the text-portion rather unpleasant to look at and rather prefer the b/w-version. That being said, I still think the maps should be printed in color - they are too nice to not be shown in their glory to your players.

All right, that was the spoiler-free section of the review, potential players please jump ahead to the conclusion.

Still here?
Ok, here we go!

This is a straightforward salvage/rescue mission - The PCs try to reclaim an airship that has been high jacked. The adventure kicks off when they reach the complex in the mountains where the ship was taken by the major antagonists, the Vallorians. They have goons to guard the complex, though. Deadly ones. Very deadly ones, i.e. hook- and blade-enhanced trolls, including a sorceress. The troll-cavern also feature traps and a sorceress and, to top it off, should be more or less be done stealthily or at least without alarming the Vallorians. Have I mentioned the enhanced fleshgolems? The caves get awesome maps by cartographer Jonathan Roberts and lead into the Vallorian outpost and this is where the adventure really begins to shine - the PCs, either via stealth or brute force, can explore a small Vallorian base and then, via a set of intermingled bridges, move through 3 huge pillars over a gaping hole in the ground. The pillars contain rooms with even more Vallorians and the PCs, after frenetic battles, finally reach the anchored ship for a dramatic showdown. That ship, though, has been transformed into a semi-conscious weapon of flesh and inanimate matter by the Vallorians and serves as either a grisly trophy or strange reliability. The otherwise complex setup is actually easy to run thanks to the 4 (!!!) GORGEOUS maps, totaling 5 (!!!) beautiful full-color maps of the same quality of the fantastic maps line (minus all the additional bonus stuff of that line, granted.).

We also get 5 pages of appendices that detail the Vallorians, humanoids that moved underground and developed into a new subrace as well as their trademark fleshcrafting items and rules for them.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. The purplish-pinkish color-scheme of the full-color version is too girly for me, though. I liked the b/w-artwork and the full-color maps are absolutely stunning.
This adventure feels completely different from almost all crawls I've read so far in that it more feels like a dungeon run - fast-paced, iconic and action-ladden. Yes, there is not much downtime and the dungeon does not offer many diversions, alternate routes etc. It doesn't have to. If you want to know what the closest thing to this one is, I'd reply the showdown of a James Bond movie. Alters have been sounded, tough enemies go for you, an iconic backdrop and a climatic showdown. The Vallorians are cool enemies and their fleshcrafting makes them sufficiently alien and disturbing.
I love smart investigation adventures, but this is a straight action romp you have to like - fast-paced, deadly and no adventure to turn your brain off - yeah, it's action, but if you don't fight smart, you'll be squashed. I DMed an upgraded version of this adventure recently and my players loved it as a nice change of pace from diplomacy, investigation etc. My final verdict will be 4.5 stars due to both the color-scheme and the fact that the lines of the text feel further apart than usual in RiP-books. Perhaps it's also another font, I don't know. If you want a cool, deadly, fast-paced romp - go for it! Plus: If you need your PCs to get a means of transportation they might discard again, this adventure is just about perfect.


The Living Airship

4/5

The Living Airship by Rite Publishing

This product is 37 pages long. It starts with a cover and credits, there is no ToC. I did like the dedication to his daughter. Though I am wondering if the adventure was written with her in mind or just more of a generic dedication.(2 pages)

Next is a overview of the adventure. 4-6 PC's 7-10th level. The main focus of the adventure is the PC's are trying to track down and recover a airship aka flying ship. (1 page)

First Encounter area (4 pages)
I won't mention the name of the chapter as it gives away what the encounter is with. It take place in the first part of a cave system.

The Shaper of Flesh (7 pages)
The second section of the cave system.

The Cave of Three Pillars (14 pages)
The final section of caves.

Appendix 1 (3 pages)
The Vallorian, humans that moved underground and stayed there. They evolved into this new race of humans. It has background, society etc. Everything you need to use them as new monsters or as a new PC race. Including 5 race feats.

Appendix 2 (2 pages)
Flesh Crafting. Rules for crafting things out of flesh and some sample items. Reminded me a bit of the tzimisce from White Wolf's Vampire The Masquerade.

It closes with a OGL, 1 page ad and back cover. (3 pages)

Closing thoughts. The art work is meh to fair. I thought the maps where very well done in this product. Perhaps the best maps by Rite Publishing to date. I loved the color scheme as well, the purple borders with a light pink mist like effect that fades to white, between the border and center of the page. Ok yeah maybe it is a little girly the color scheme but I loved it. The production value is top notch like what we have come to expect from Rite Publishing.

As for the adventure there is not a lot I can say that won't give to much away. It is a fairly standard dungeon crawl other than the airship part. The bad guys are interesting. The blurb gives a pretty good over view of the adventure anyways. So my rating is a 4 star, it is a nice little dungeon crawl with a nice background and villains, to give it some depth and character. But in the end it is still pretty much just a dungeon crawl and your PC's may or may not find out a lot of the more interesting aspects of the background.


Scarab Sages

And the PFRPG version of the Living Airship is up on Paizo.

I completed the adventure conversion and did the conversion and write-up of the vallorians.

The vallorians make a wonderful villianous race and they are fully written up in the module. Appendix 1 gives the racial stats and an overview of their history, society, and racial feats (a key component of their abilities). A second appendix details their "living weapons," flesh crafted weapons and armor that bond with their users granting unique powers.

The adventure itself presents a pretty thorough tactical challenge for the PCs as they must gain entrance to the vallorian outpost and fight their way to the top, where the airship is being kept.


Thanks for getting this up Vic.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Reviewed, here, at ENworld and Drivethru.

Scarab Sages

Thanks for the review DM.


Thanks for taking the time to do a review Dark Mistress. I am glad you liked the Maps Jonathan Roberts is the best Cart-o-Ghopers I knows.

Sometimes you just want a dungeon crawl.


Reviewed here and on DTRPG, also sent the review to GMS magazine. :)

Scarab Sages

Endzeitgeist wrote:
Reviewed here and on DTRPG, also sent the review to GMS magazine. :)

Thanks for the review End. :)


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber

*blinks* I just noticed this says "PFRPG" next to the title. I thought this was only available for AE. Wow, awesome (*places in cart*). Does this mean RP is planning on offering conversions for other AE-made adventures?

Dark Archive

Whoa. Haven't seen this in a while. Let me see if I can find my old review for the 3.x version....


Yeah, Jonathan did a great job on the PFRPG-conversion. :)

I hope to see even more conversions some time.


I don't know if we will do a conversion of the Rituals of Choice or not, That series is deeply embedded in the IP of the Diamond Throne which we licence from Monte.


Yeah, they indeed are and I'm not sure how they would hold up when they are converted to PFRPG.

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