Hero's Blood (PFRPG) PDF

This adventure clocks in at 57 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of introduction, 1 page ToC, 1 1/3 pages of SRD, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 46 2/3 pages of content – all of which sport a surprising amount of material, as Legendary Games books have a pretty high word-per-page-density.

Okay, first things first: This adventure is intended for characters of 10th level and can thus fit pretty easily behind the 3rd adventure in the Curse of the Crimson Throne module, and before the 5th – the module provides a thematic continuation of the leitmotifs of colonial corruption that the first 3 modules sported, which are curiously absent from the otherwise intriguing and evocative 4th adventure. As such, theme-wise, this indeed enhances the AP. It should also be noted that this supplement includes a new corruption, making use of Horror Adventures’ rules. However, you do not necessarily need to have the Horror Adventure supplement to use this adventure.

Really cool: There are two new, properly codified occult rituals that feature in the plot of the adventure, both of which employ the themes and leitmotifs established in the adventure path. As always for supplements in the series, we have an adventure that seamlessly integrate with the AP, employing filed off serial numbers that still allow you to easily note what is going on. A huge plus would btw. be that the amazing full-color maps do come with player-friendly versions for your convenience. Big comfort-plus here! Inexperienced GMs will enjoy the fact that we have extensive read-aloud texts accompanying the module.

All right, as always, the following discussion contains SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

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All right, only GMs around? Great! So, the chaos in Korvosa has generated opportunity: The Shoanti (Sklar-Quah), have attacked a remote fort: Fort Hiraksos. When the PCs venture towards the fort, they find a massacre – the battlefield is littered with fallen Shoanti and members of the erstwhile garrison. All of the corpses show a specific pattern: Gaping chest-wounds. As the PCs explore the remnants of the fortress, they will have to contend with lethal undead, ranging from wights to callers in darkness and juvenile rukhs; there are deadly corpse flies and Hiraksos itself is a rather grim – the exploration of the grim keep is fantastic – even beyond the confines of the AP, the depiction of a haunted place of a true massacre is intriguing and flavorful, in both diverse enemy selection: We get unique haunts that add to the sense of decrepitude and metaphysical corruption – and the them of blood/flesh engendering fear is reinforced via, for example, ectoplasmic hungry flesh or a particularly nasty, unique wight.

Speaking of which: Said sub-boss ties in with the Onochtu, the ravenous ones, deadly and vile spirits of shoanti myth, adding some intriguing myth-weaving to the proceedings; said spirits and their dark powers are what fuels the corruption of the culprit and the potent powers of foes faced here. The sub-boss can inflict the corruption of these spirits on victims…

You see, Austan Mileswood, decorated Korvosan hero, driven insane, is working on a ritual to transcend his form, as an invisible timer is ticking away in the background, and dawdling may see him improve his darkened powers – and we btw. get a CR 10 and CR 11 statblock for this big boss as well as an extensive and well-written background story for this rather tragically flawed individual, who exemplifies so well that one people’s hero may be another people’s villain. Anyways, he has learned from the darksome shoanti spirits – that there lies strength in the hearts of the living, stealing the courage, metaphysically seated in the heart, from his victims. An addiction had formed, and what the PCs now witness, is the sad culmination of, what could be considered to be a fantastic take on a form of PTSD.

Thus, in order to truly “win” in this adventure, the PCs will have to venture down into the ancient Well of Bloody Hearts, sanctified to the wicked cannibal spirits of old, where mummified clerics and warriors loom…but beyond these, brimstone oozes and a unique creature dubbed “The Tongue” await – the latter btw. is a unique aberration with a twisted artwork, and a cool, superbly depicted athach is here as well – and stopping Austan’s ritual is NO trifle. With aether elementals and his own, significant combat prowess, the charismatic “hero” makes for a formidable foe – and yes, he is multiclass’d and has a cool mechanical angle. Here, I should definitely mention that the timeline noted before is not just cosmetic: throughout the adventure, the time elapsed always matters. Kudos for being consequent!

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I noticed no serious guffaws on either a formal or rules-language level. Layout adheres to the “Curse of the Crimson Throne”-plugins series’ elegant 2-column full-color standard. Huge plus: We get quite a lot fantastic full-color artworks that I haven’t seen before, and the cartography is similarly impressive and full-color. As noted before, getting player-friendly maps is a big plus. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Tom Phillips does horror and dark fantasy really well; if you’ve been following his works, this will be no surprise to you. He is one of the authors whose adventures tend to offer meaningful challenges for the PCs, while still retaining a dense and evocative atmosphere. “Hero’s Blood” exemplifies these virtues. The adventure manages a feat that is impressive indeed: On one hand, it actually manages to carry a leitmotif that isn’t present in the otherwise fun “A History of Ashes” and thus strengthen the overall plot of Curse of the Crimson Throne – the emphasis on Korvosa affecting these lands adds to the plot.

In addition to that, though, this adventure manages to transcend the status as an adventure path plug-in: Its plot and ideas are sufficiently distinct to carry the adventure as a stand-alone supplement – if you like horror or dark fantasy, particularly themes that feature blood/vampiric elements in a cultural context that is a breath of fresh air, then consider this to be a success and well worth getting beyond the confines of the AP.

So yeah, regardless of within or without the associated AP, this is a success, no matter how you look at it. 5 stars + seal of approval – excellent job!

Endzeitgeist out.

O.k., bad pun aside, shall we get to the actual review? ;)

First off, I was not paid in any shape or form, nor rewarded with a free copy or anything of that nature in exchange for this review. Basically, I was not bribed into gushing (get it?) about this little gem.

I like to be as objective as possible with regards to reviews so here is my break-down of how I generally rate adventures, out of Paizo's five stars rating system.

One star is for how easy it is to run or adapt the adventure to different gaming styles and different campaigns (such as incorporating it into other adventure paths).

A second star is for editing/layout overall (is there a lot of typos or inconsistencies? Does the layout bleed your eyes [I cannot promise this will be the last of the "bloody" puns]? Etc., etc.).

Two stars are for the crunch, the content, and the want-to-play factor (basically, as a GM, do I want to run this? As a player, do I want this adventure to be one of my character's memorable experiences?).

And the last star is art. That is right, art, my friends. Not just cartography, but I also care about how the bad guys look because I suck at describing monsters.

Having said all that, let us examine each in turn.

Seriously, I was stoked at how easy it is to adapt this adventure for a large number of campaigns/adventure paths. Sure, it is ideal for the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path (if I recall correctly), but honestly, I am implementing it for my mythic Kingmaker adventure path (inserting it directly into Blood for Blood - the irony is thick here). I can easily see how it would fit Rise of the Runelords, Carrion Crown, Legacy of Fire, Serpent's Skull, Skull and Shackles, Wrath of the Righteous, Giantslayer, Hell's Rebels, and even Strange Aeons. It could also work in Second Darkness and Hell's Vengeance with some further tinkering of the backstory.

Heck, I could even drop this in older adventure paths like Age of Worms and Savage Tides with minimal changes. Not running an adventure path? Drop this adventure almost literally anywhere in your campaign. All you need are a wilderness area where a fort would make sense, and a group of barbarians or tribal warriors who want to raze the fort.

As for actually running it, most of it is straightforward. I recommend running this in two sessions, possibly three sessions for a slower group. You should definitely take the time to read it carefully though; it is not a rules-heavy or extremely complicated adventure, but some of the challenges (creatures, traps, etc.) are unusual or quite narrow in focus.

For example, one of the unique creatures' primary method of attacking is nasty use of the Grab and Constrict universal monster abilities so I recommend boning up your knowledge on that if you struggle sometimes like me in running monsters whose specialty is grappling.

The good news is that the team who gave us this adventure went above the standards in providing us with detailed information about locations, creatures, and traps (oh man, the traps are mouth-watering. If your pcs are not careful, someone is bound to get mulched to a bloody pulp!). I like having as much information as possible, whether it be fluff or crunch-based information, because quite frankly, players will do anything and everything you did not expect. The tactics descriptions for combat encounters are solid - a welcome sight for me because my players are also ridiculously tactical. I also liked that things like Escape Artist DCs for squeezing through the arrows slits in the towers were included - it is the little details like this that makes my job as a GM easier.

There is a simple timer on this adventure (trust me, it is nowhere near complicated like the timer in the final adventure of the Second Darkness adventure path). Depending on how many days the pcs spend exploring, the creepiness factor and difficulty level will progress at specific locations (the add-on challenges are often a single line of adjustments to stat blocks or a single saving throw against a harmful effect upon entering the affected area).

Overall, the editing is great (I love those hyperlinks). The stat blocks for the generic monsters are reprinted here, despite the hyperlinks, and I believe it to be because the team decided not to assume the GM would have an available online access at all times. In such cases, having the actual stat block helps. As far as I can tell, reprinting those stat blocks did not seem to cause the adventure to suffer from a lack of content that was otherwise be required to run the adventure.

There were a few unusual editing spots for me. I did not notice typos per se but I was confused as to why the stat blocks for one of the undead monsters was reprinted twice (not in the same place, but rather they are encountered in two different locations).

In addition, page 11 has a tiny chronological inconsistency in the first paragraph in regards to the timeline of the fort's construction but that is easily remedied. The last error that I saw was in a few areas they make a reference to Area C2 for description of the condition of the dead soldiers, but Area C2 does not actually have dead soldiers; Area C3 does contain the initial description of the condition of the dead soldiers' corpses. It is an error that is easily fixed as well.

Now, to the crunch. I cannot do justice to how much fun this adventure can be for those who like a bit of shock value (as a GM, you can easily tone down or ramp up the description of the carnage/gory bits). I liked the story and, although I am not overly familiar with the horror style of story-telling, I thought the mixture of undead, aberrations, and haunts were well-placed.

Interestingly enough, a few of the creatures here are from the Bestiary 4, and they are definitely weird, presenting different kinds of challenges, like the Ectoplasmic ooze. My favourite creature though has to be The Tongue. It is a one-trick pony, but it is horrifically good at it.

The traps here are fun (for the GM), reminding me of The Tomb of Horrors and The Temple of Elemental Evil. Although one or two of the traps can be extremely lethal for the foolish, a diverse range of options are given for how to beat the traps so unless your players are all playing martials, chances are your players are going to eventually overcome the traps. Basically, the traps are tough but fair (fair as in they make absolute sense, thematically-appropriate, and actually requires the players to use resources or cunning to overcome them).

To be fair though, while having access to the Horror Adventures sourcebook is not a requirement, I recommend having it because it does talk about the rituals mechanics in whole. The adventure has enough details for you to simply run it but the sourcebook itself can help you if you want to add more to the rituals or ramp up the horror factor.

Oh, did I not mention it before? Yes, the cornerstone of the story and the reason for all the horror in the adventure is due to the npc end-boss attempting to complete a ritual. I will not give it away here but let me just say that even if the pcs defeat the final boss (who has a great backstory), the secrets of the ritual does not necessarily end with his defeat. Why, the pcs could attempt the ritual themselves... :D

Finally, the art. The cartography was good (solid grid lines) with decent resolution overall. Although I wish the resolutions on the encounter areas were a bit higher. The tags (area labels) are a bit hard to read without zooming. The art of the unique monsters (and the end boss) are great - I really like the art of the guardian. Mucho bad-ass.

However, there are two artwork that is confusing the heck out of me as to why they are there. On page 17 and page 18 are two artworks that, as far as I can tell, does not actually depict anything that is directly from the adventure. Do not get me wrong, they are still nice artwork, but other than helping serve as filler, I do not understand why else they were included in this product. *shrugs* Like I said earlier, I have not noticed a lack of required content to effectively run this enjoyable adventure so the inclusion of these specific artwork is not hurting the usefulness of this product.

Whew! Having said all that, what is my final verdict? One full star for ease of play and required effort to adapt it, one full star for the editing/layout, two full stars for the crunch/content (so juicy!), and half a star for the art. (Honestly, I wish Paizo's rating system was more than a mere five stars. Even six stars would allow for a more robust and fair review). That gives us a grand total of 4.5 stars, rounding up to 5 stars (because I like the fluff and crunch that much)!

Cheers!

CB.

EDIT: I corrected a few grammar and punctuation errors above.