A9: Rogue Wizard (PFRPG) PDF

Opening with some background for the GM, the tale of a wizard bad to the bone, the basic premise of the adventure is presented: the characters are hired to track down and deal with this rogue wizard who has been missing for many years but has recently been sighted in the northern wilderness not too far from Rybalka, the village where the characters are based. This backstory and the wizard's tower can easily be translocated into a setting of your choice if you do not use the Adventureaweek one.

Being hired and indeed finding the wizard's tower is left to the GM to detail, the adventure proper begins once the characters are standing outside wondering how to get in. The whole edifice is clearly described, with all the usual 'GM-friendly' tools that we have come to expect from this publisher: colour-coded read-aloud text, puzzles, traps and adversaries, all with apposite die-roll details, hyperlinks to both D&D 3.x and Pathfinder SRDs (or creature stats at the back, if preferred) and everything else you need to run each encounter effectively right there where you need it. One puzzle, involving crossing water, comes complete with a scale diagram you can put before your players, a neat touch. (A solution is provided, although I can spot some alternate paths, or of course characters may turn to magical means if they are not into 'command task' style activities!) There is also a fine set of riddles, a successful solution being rewarded by magical treasure, and failure with a malign spell!

Other classic puzzle/traps follow thick and fast. Note that no die-roll alternatives are provided, players are going to have to think - generally best, but be ready to offer the odd hint if they struggle too much. Many of the traps are quite deadly. At the top of the tower lurks a strangeness beyond all imagining...

And that's it. The goal, beyond mere survival, is to capture or kill the rogue wizard, and parties which do so may with justification feel proud of themselves. Puzzle-dungeons (OK, tower...) appeal to many players but can bore others, so decide if your group would relish the challenge - for if they do, this is a fine well thought example.

This adventure is 52 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial (featuring a beautiful side-view overview map of the dungeon), 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 48 pages of content, so let's check this one out!

This being an adventure-module, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion.

Still here? All right! Setzer Salthazar, rogue Klavekian wizard and murderer has been off the radar for years - hiding in Vikmordere territory. he's not been idle. Hired by sage Yuri Stael to track down and bring the madman to justice the PCs travel from Rybalka to the jagged cliffs, where, once they've braced deadly Razorvine and undead guardian ogres, they'll enter Setzer's weird wizard tower, topped by a rather strange organic thing. The tower comes with a BEAUTIFUL full color map where they'll be attacked by a bear rug taxidermy swarm. Floating, organic eyeballs start watching the PCs and by now they should now that they're in for a disturbing experience indeed. The restless spirit of the tower's cook, the torture room and its sentinels and vrocks should further enhance the PC's sense of brute force horror and estrangement.

In the next room, we get a rather cool graphic puzzle - a vast room with pillars standing from the water. A selection of planks is provided and the PCs are supposed to create the path across the room in order to avoid the electric eels in the water below. A reason why they can't just fly over the planks would have been nice, though. In the mad wizard's cellar, the PCs can get treasures if they brave 8 riddles. In the dungeon, though, true horror awaits - a bone-grinding machine and a room covered in the new bone-dust hazard, which is essentially testament to Setzer's genocidal aspirations.

Now, if you think the upper floors are any less deadly and disturbing, you'd be dead wrong - from a gibbering mouther to a flooding room trap, Setzer has some deadly surprises in store. Especially the latter is interesting, in that it can only be disarmed by the PCs correctly deciphering the sequence of 4 Maya-style glyphs. Oh, and being wet is rather problematic in the Rybalkan climate! Worse, while they can save an Aasimar who, when provided with some levels, might be used to replace a PC who might have died, and die they might: There's e.g. a room with zero-gravity (and a battle as well as concise rules for this environment) and a deadly room in which the PCs will have to scuttle to prevent fuses from blowing up barrels of gunpowder.

And the deadly part has not yet begun: Well hidden, the highest levels are guarded by a flesh golem amalgam of tortured souls, a black pudding knight and then, the PCs enter NITNAM. The strange, heart-like, demonic flying colossus at the top of the tower, which is now fused with Setzer's lifeforce. The final battle against Setzer and NINTAM's hearts is a fittingly climactic boss battle after the weird and strange tower, though fighting while NINTAM is airborne and granting it some additional means to hinder/attack the PCs would have made it even better.

The pdf closes with 3.5 and PFRPG-stats for the adversaries herein (the fleshgolem missing its unique ability in the statblocks, though) and 2 new spells developed by Setzer, his "Storms of sculpted Flesh", and comes with a one-page handout, where you can print out the planks from aforementioned puzzle.

Conclusion:
editing and fromatting are very good, I only noticed a very minor glitch that has no central bearing on anyone's enjoyment of the pdf. Layout adheres to Adventureaweek.com's 2-column parchment-style standard and the cartography, as I've come to expect, is awesome. The artwork is ok for the price and manages to convey some of the disturbing tones of the book. The pdf comes fully bookmarked, with herolab support and also a printer-friendly version without backgrounds, but still in color.

This adventure is a straight wizard's tower crawl and PCs should expect to walk a gauntlet indeed - even Alchemist's Errand pales in comparison to what the mad mage Setzer has in store - disjointed, disturbing and deadly and the three "d"s that characterize best what to expect from this very dark module. And I LOVE it. The quicksand-style trap and the grinders. The bombs. The floating eyes and the final battle - all very cool. Though I maintain that making the final battle 0-gravity will make the module even better. With the rules provided, any DM can do so! This module provides an old-school, deadly romp including clever puzzles and traps and is spiced up with disturbing madness and biomancy and a memorable showdown indeed. All in all: A great module, the most original and coolest of the line so far, nothing to complain. Final verdict: 5 stars and Endzeitgeist seal of approval. fans of e.g. Tim Hitchcock or Nicolas Logue or e.g. "War of the Burning Sky's" biomancy might want to check this out - the module should be right up your alley. And if you want to make Setzer even more memorable, check out Rite Publishing's #30 Fleshgrafts and add them to Setzer's arsenal.

Endzeitgeist out.