Scorpions of Perdition (PFRPG)

5.00/5 (based on 2 ratings)
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What's Down in Those Mines; It Ain't of This World

A strange craft fallen from the stars, long the home of a tribe of monstrous mutants worshiping the long-forgotten technology in its ruined bowels, has birthed a new and fearsome scourge. Alien prisoners once bound in its holds have escaped from the derelict, bringing terror and death to a poor mining town while a lone android marshal wanders the wasteland seeking these escaped interplanetary convicts. The heroes find themselves stalked in turn by an unearthly abomination in a twisting catacomb of mines and must dare the precarious ruins of the dangling spacecraft embedded in the cliffs if they are to stop the conquering forerunners of an ancient empire buried centuries ago from rising again to pick up where they left off... with world domination!

"Scorpions of Perdition" is a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for 8th to 9th-level characters by Alex Riggs and Nicolas Logue that blends pulp action and tense horror with a dash of sci-fi elements throughout. Pick up this 40-page adventure today and Make Your Game Legendary!

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5.00/5 (based on 2 ratings)

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An Endzeitgeist.com review

5/5

This module clocks in at 40 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of introduction/how to use, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 31 pages of content, so let's take a look!

This module is intended for 8th and 9th level characters and can be easily inserted into Iron Gods, obviously...

...and that is pretty much as far as I can go without going into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

...

..

.

All right, only GMs left? Great! The Drifter has wandered the ominously named region of "The Dust" for as long as anyone can remember, hunting a similarly long-lived outlaw named Shadrax. The drifter was once in charge of a prison ship that crashed on Golarion - and he is basically android Clint Eastwood with a laser gun. He has spent hundreds of years hunting down the escaped convicts, but Shadrax, the engineer of the riot that caused the ship to crash, has evaded him. Since then, his programming has changed and he considers himself the law in the region of "The Dust", hunting down evildoers and seeking his nemesis. Shadrax, meanwhile, is as nasty as it gets: Infused with nanites, the xill has time galore and as such, has tried breeding out the nanites that keep it confined to the material plane over generations, but to no avail; worse, her little slave empire has fallen, the dread xill buried in a stasis pod...and now, hundreds of years later, the Drifter's fuel starts running out. When the PCs, by one of the angles, come to the region and hopefully help him taking care of some harpies, he already shows signs of decreasing efficiency.

The dialog with the drifter does feature some read-aloud text (nice!) and the drifter tries to recruit the PCs to help him acquire a means of charging him - he knows where the object is, but needs help getting it. Oh, and if you're wondering: Shadrax' spawn do get modified abilities noted in a sidebar. Arriving at Perdition (fully statted, fyi), the overseer Perdy is facing down a mob of people who want to leave; as its name points out, Perdition has seen better days...and thus, the PCs are off into the mine to deal with the issues of the town...only that this is easier said than done. You see, there is a so-called mud-spawn of shadrax stalking the mine and it is a delightfully sadistic critter with paralysis and earth glide, a perfect adversary to generate paranoia, fear and an atmosphere of frickin' HORROR. Oh, and it is glorious - you see the mud-spawn pretty much is a puzzle boss that you *can* try fighting fairly, but a massive 1-page guideline of running the critter should make sure that that doesn't happen - instead, exploring the complex and paying attention as well as clever problem solutions will be required by the PCs to defeat this adversary. And yes, there are other critters in the dungeon as well...so yeah... in the best of ways, the module rewards smart actions here.

Making their way through the mine, the PCs find a location both wondrous and frightening, a massive necropolis with a palace and an irradiated river, all under the ground and lavishly illustrated with a one-page artwork that doubles as a cool handouts. The map provided here, just fyi, is player-friendly and in the place, Shadrax awaits with its priests - the progenitor is deadly indeed: A xill gunslinger (depicted with a cigar in one of the 4 hands!) makes for a truly deadly adversary.

The second part of the module deals with the so-called "Temple of the Burning God", aka the wreckage of the ship...part of which hangs over a cliff, vertically, only attached to the remainder by a catwalk. Yep, vertical dungeon exploration. Yes, the adversaries obviously make good use of this uncommon environment. Yep, the dungeon is amazing and one of the few places where paltry CR 2 adversaries will really make the PCs sweat. As a minor complaint, the maps of the ship and the aforementioned palace do not come with player-friendly, key-less versions, so if you're like me, that may be slightly annoying.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I noticed no significant hiccups. Layout adheres to legendary Games' neat 2-column full-color standard for Iron Gods-plug-ins and the pdf sports a mix of previously used full-color artworks and amazing new pieces. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience and the cartography in full color is nice, though the lack of player-friendly maps for some of the adventuring locales does constitute a downside in my book.

Alex Riggs and Nicholas Logue deliver a wonderful lovesong to Clint Eastwood's legendary "High Plains Drifter" - I adore the dirty, grimy Westerns and, seen through the lens of science-fantasy, with ample horror spliced in, Scorpions of Perdition can be considered to be one amazing module indeed, with the Drifter making for a potentially glorious ally for the PCs. The flavor of each and every location is unique and internally consistent; the locations themselves sport details galore and represent unconventional, intriguing challenges for the PCs. In short, this module does everything right apart from the lack of player-friendly maps. That being said, this should NOT keep you from getting this inspired, amazing module - it ranks as one of the best Legendary Games modules released so far. It should also be noted that, much like the excellent Starfall, this module very much works perfectly on its own - in fact, I'd encourage getting it for a taste of the unusual in just about any context.

My final verdict will clock in at 5 stars + seal of approval.

Endzeitgeist out.


A good option for Iron Gods or other GMs wanting something in western Numeria.

5/5

The Scorpions of Perdition plug-in for Iron Gods weighs in at 40 pages, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of introduction, 1 page Table of Contents, 1 page of editorial, 1 page of SRD, 2 pages of advertisements, and 1 page back cover; this leaves 31 pages of content.

This adventure is for 8th level characters, and a party of four will gain 1.3 levels of XP on medium advancement not including possible story awards. The PDF provides a new technological artifact (the Stasis Pod). The numerous maps are in full color.

So, that's basically the gist of the basics - in order to go into more detail, I will have to, obviously, go into SPOILER-territory. Potential players should jump to the conclusion to avoid having their experience soured.

Spoiler:

Still here?

Scorpions of Perdition is a love song to Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter. The adventure includes a mysterious stranger, literally called "The Drifter," acting as a frontier lawman. After meeting with The Drifter, the heroes will travel with him to a corrupt mining town that the locals call “Perdition” (another word for “Hell” which becomes a plot point in the film).

Unlike the movie however, the heroes will take the lead to hunt down The Drifter's long time nemesis who was freed in her underground prison by the activities of the miners. The player heroes will then take the lead in exploring the mines and defeating the foes – which includes an amazingly dangerous hybrid creature in the second room.
However, Scorpions of Perdition also includes an interesting side quest for The Drifter at a completely different site.

Conclusion:
In itself, the adventure would be a "buy." It internal “lore” will take some work to integrate this side quest into Iron Gods, but for GMs wishing to shrink the second half of The Choking Tower it will be worth the effort.


Community Manager

Now available!

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games

Grab the latest venture into sheer insanity, terror, sci-fi, fantasy, and westerns from the mad minds of Nic Logue and Alex Riggs!


I don't know if this belongs here or not, but I tried to buy this PDF over at the Legendary Games webstore with the MayThe4th coupon four or five times and it just refused to go through.

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games

Weird.

Shoot me an email at makeyourgamelegendary@gmail.com and you can just do a direct pay with Paypal (with the discount of course) and I'll get the adventure to you!

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Reading through this, I have a question ...

  • Do I put comments about better meshing this with Iron Gods here, in the Iron Gods board, or somewhere else?

  • RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

    Reviewed.

    Scarab Sages Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games

    1 person marked this as a favorite.

    Thanks for the review, Lord Fyre!

    I think this is a fine place to make your notes about meshing it, but it might be of more use to other Iron Gods GMs if you post a thread in the board there as well, both so they can see what you did and have a common place to talk about it there.

    RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

    Jason Nelson wrote:

    Thanks for the review, Lord Fyre!

    I think this is a fine place to make your notes about meshing it, but it might be of more use to other Iron Gods GMs if you post a thread in the board there as well, both so they can see what you did and have a common place to talk about it there.

    I started a thread under Iron Gods, as you already know. :)

    Scarab Sages Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games

    Indeed you did. Good feedback and conversation there too!


    1 person marked this as a favorite.

    Reviewed first on endzeitgeist.com, then sumitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS, amazon, etc.

    RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

    Endzeitgeist wrote:
    Reviewed first on endzeitgeist.com, then sumitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS, amazon, etc.

    I note that we completely agree on the rating for this. :)


    1 person marked this as a favorite.

    Loved your review and only saw it when I posted mine (I try to steer clear of other folk's reviews for files I have not yet analyzed) and was happy that someone apart from me got the HPD-reference! Great job! :D

    Scarab Sages Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games

    2 people marked this as a favorite.

    Thanks for the great reviews, guys! This adventure was percolating for a LONG time, and it was a delight to finally pull it all together.

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