A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 1-5.
The Society’s excavations continue, now taking the PCs to the long-contested territory of Kharijite—Cheliax’s southernmost territory, where the great Arch of Aroden bridges the Hespereth Strait and establishes an Avistani foothold in Rahadoum’s backyard. There, an ancient Taldan ruin suggests that empire’s great Armies of Exploration traveled even farther than believed possible. Can the PCs uncover the site’s secrets—and in doing so reshape the Inner Sea region’s history?
The scenario as a whole is excellent and I would have happily given it 5 stars. There is a good mixture of intrigue, role-playing, skills, interesting combats.
Once again, we are in the Year of the Skill Monkey. But, since I like to play skill monkeys, that is a GOOD thing :-).
There is atmosphere galore and an interesting set of intermixed puzzles.
The ending, however, dropped my rating from 5 stars to 2 stars.
Do NOT read the Spoiler if you're playing this. It will ruin things
DO NOT READ if playing:
So, the entire mission of the Pathfinders is to build good relations with Cheliax. But in the final encounter there is no way to succeed except to murder hobo your way through. No diplomacy option is allowed. The characters are presented with a choice of really bad options and are supposed to realize that the best solution is to kill the lawful authorities who are quite legally arresting them.
We chose to flee which seemed like the lesser evil. Surrendering seemed a really bad idea, diplomacy wasn't an option, killing legal authorities seemed really bad.
I guess we overthought things. Clearly, one should just murder hobo anybody who looks at you askance. Killing the authorities is obviously the correct answer. Too bad if you're a Chelaxian (one character), a paladin (another character) or somebody else who wouldn't do that.
We lost close to half our loot and our secondary success condition due to not being murder hobos.
I'm convinced mr. Oikarinen must have been watching Indiana Jones when he was sketching up this scenario. It's got archeology, ancient artifacts and nazis Hellknights.
The "level" of this scenario picks up a notch from part I of the series. You really should bring a couple of skilled characters here - it is after all an archeological mission, not a "go there and kill/rescue people" mission.
The dig site is quite an interesting dungeon, with a lot of details to explore and a lot of flavour to it. A GM that does some research prior to running can fill in even more. However, there's a risk of going over time if you do that, as the scenario is quite packed.
The fights varied in difficulty; most my players had no trouble with whatsoever, although the lady on the front cover gave them a run for their money.
Some other reviews mutter darkly about the ending of the scenario. I don't quite agree. Without going into spoilers here, I advise GMs to read my comment about it in the discussion thread. I do believe there should have been more guidance in the scenario for alternate party tactics though.
All in all, my advice is to play this scenario directly after the other one (better story continuity), and enjoy it because:
- Neat dungeon
- Archeology as a cool plot element/challenge
- Interesting fights
- Interesting ongoing story
This scenario is a worth sequel to part one. It combines a lot of lore with an exploration of some ruins. However, you do need a way to have access to several kinds of knowledge and other skills to fully understand the lore and what is going on. In other words, you do need a skill-monkey in order to get the most out of it. Luckily I was fortunate to bring that to my table, and other players could help out as well.
That's basically my only complaint about this scenario. Without that skill-set, a party might struggle to complete the mission and characters who can't contribute during the exploration phase, which is by far the biggest chunk of this scenario, will feel useless. It's wise to bring a character with at least one point in a Knowledge skill just so you don't feel left out.
I liked the role-play, battles and other scenes. The fights were interesting and challenging. In particular the one near the end of the exploration was highly amusing and a great opponent in terms of flavor and uniqueness. I can see how the final encounter could be problematic for some alignments, but like my GM rightfully said: 'being taken in for questioning is something you won't return from, even if your body stays intact'.
If the third part is equally good, this might be my favorite three-parter Paizo has released to date.
I played this low tier, and the combats were unique enough to be interesting.
The first part is pure Cheliax, but it has quite a bit of "Season 7: The Year of the Skill Monkey" to it...
The second part in the archaeological dig was superb. The map was of awesome quality for a scenario (although our GM did mention there were spoilers on the same pdf layer so it would be hard to print), and the crawl had a nice twist to it.
The last part is where it fell apart for me, and I'm going to wrap part of this in spoiler... The PCs are basically presented with a scenario that has two options:
1) Do something my lawfully align character would NOT do.
2) Prepare to pay 21PP for a retrieval + raise or 5PP for retrieval, depending on what the GM decides, as the scenario seems to assume all parties would do 1).
Spoiler:
Fortunately for me, I guess, the other murder hobo's *cough* pathfinders I was with had no such morale dilemma. My PC spent the encounter taking non-lethal actions and using defensive abilities, while watching in horror as my fellow PCs committed murder to avoid being detained and questioned by the legitimate local authorities. Needless to say my PC had a long quiet trip back to Absalom, with a lot of introspective thought about the morale flexibility of the group he associates himself with these days.
So far this trilogy has not been the best to play on a lawful character. I really wish I had started it on a CG/CN... :)
Summary: In this scenario, you'll travel to an old colony to study an archeological site and report back to the VC when you're done. Along the way, you'll face many different kinds of challenges: Chelish laws, ancient mysteries, and foes who do not wish that you succeed.
Disclaimer: As a fellow author of adventures, I'll recuse myself from giving a star rating, so I'll just give an account of how it went for my PC and the party.
Warning: Spoilers!:
We played this in the lower subtier. My PC was an unchained summoner with an angel eidolon, both built for melee. The rest of the party were mostly melee types, though one of the PCs was a wizard.
After the briefing we gathered information on the place we were going to. What was great was that the skill check results included not only the information we were able to get but also some info on the NPCs who gave us the info, so it didn't feel like the information just came out of nowhere. I'd love to see more of that in future scenarios!
In the colony across the sea (technically in Rahadoum), we found out that we needed a permit to leave the city and travel to the archeological site. No surprise there, we were in a Chelish colony after all. We went to some sort of a bureaucratic office of bureaucracy, where the queue looked like it was several days long. Thankfully, a secretary or assistant we talked to happened to know that a high-ranking official was very interested in arceological studies, and we were granted a personal audience. My summoner and eidolon could only afford to buy scholar's outfits for themselves, but a few PCs went in dressed in courtier's outfits and gained a bonus on their skill checks.
This was a fun encounter: Some RP and a lot of skill checks. Unlike most social encounters in PFS (where Diplomacy rules and few other skills are used), we were allowed to use just about any skill or even attack rolls to entertain the decadent official. My falchion-wielding summoner sliced fruit like the fruit ninja, and other PCs also staged displays of combat prowess or told stories about the Pathfinder Society or the colony's history.
We got the permit and traveled to the desert. Before we reached the site, we had to outrun a sandstorm (though not quite as big as in another Season 7 scenario). This was a bit like a chase scenario but it had simplified rules and no chase cards were needed. (I'm *very* glad that PFS has phased out the original chase rules that usually involved some PCs getting stuck in the first or second square!!!) Two of the three checks involved Ride (and Handle Animal), which was tough for my summoner & eidolon, but through sheer luck we succeeded, and many enough of the other PCs did too, so we didn't take any damage.
Inside the ruins, a trio of skeletons attacked us. They were stronger than normal skeletons and had a nasty ability that caused dehydration, but the party was quite well equipped to deal with them.
After the combat, the exploration part began. This part reminded me of my own scenarios (Golden Guardian, Ancients' Anguish): Lots of skill checks that allowed the PCs to discover what had really happened in the ruins and how old the ruins really were. I really enjoy this kind of scenarios, uncovering the truth piece by piece. The skill checks mostly involved using Knowledge (history) and other Knowledges, as well as Appraise, Craft, and even Profession, I think. Including Craft (something) as an option was a good idea because it allowed attempting untrained skill checks. The prevalence of Knowledge checks meant that any dumb characters didn't have a lot to do, unfortunately. My summoner had two Knowledge skills (arcana & planes) but still felt like she wasn't able to contribute much. If I was GMing this scenario, I'd probably urge the players to choose reasonably knowledgeable characters.
We discovered that the place was actually an ancient Jistkan temple where they had worshiped devils. After studying a number of old statues and solving a puzzle, we fought an ancient guardian statue with a fiery gaze attack. At least in the lower subtier, the creature was alone, so it was pretty easy to gang up on it, though I think one of the PCs took quite heavy damage from the eye beam before the statue went down. We found more items of historical interest and returned to Corentyn.
The scenario had a nice twist ending: Instead of a debriefing, a small group of Chelish soldiers led by a witch wanted to arrest and interrogate us. We naturally didn't approve of their evil plan to suppress the truth about the ruins (and didn't like the idea of failing the mission and getting rescued for 5 PP!) and did what any good PC should do: kicked ass!
As a GM, I'd probably remind any reluctant players of the cost of getting rescued, and that the PCs should not support an evil regime through inaction (surrender).
Overall, the scenario has a nice mix of encounters and was loads of fun to play. Recommended!
I trust that the downloading process should be a lot cleaner once we wrap up our Twitch streaming event in just a little bit, though we'll still be processing Humble Bundle orders. It's really exciting for us, yet I understand that the restricted bandwidth is frustrating in the meantime. Thank you for your patience.
I trust that the downloading process should be a lot cleaner once we wrap up our Twitch streaming event in just a little bit, though we'll still be processing Humble Bundle orders. It's really exciting for us, yet I understand that the restricted bandwidth is frustrating in the meantime. Thank you for your patience.
No worries. It's for a good cause. But I reserve the right to want my cake and eat it too.
I have often wondered about that tiny little holding in Rahadoum. Intriguing to see it addressed!
Likewise! Kharijite intrigues me as an example of relatively recent (by Golarion's standards) conquest and annexation whose status is contested more on political and diplomatic grounds than it is in a strictly military sphere. It really makes a neat melting pot sub-culture that we cover in more detail in the recent Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Cheliax, The Infernal Empire.
Also, it's a great site for some pulp archaeology action! I can hardly wait to hear what people think about it.
I have often wondered about that tiny little holding in Rahadoum. Intriguing to see it addressed!
Likewise! Kharijite intrigues me as an example of relatively recent (by Golarion's standards) conquest and annexation whose status is contested more on political and diplomatic grounds than it is in a strictly military sphere. It really makes a neat melting pot sub-culture that we cover in more detail in the recent Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Cheliax, The Infernal Empire.
Also, it's a great site for some pulp archaeology action! I can hardly wait to hear what people think about it.
Look at how smoothly the cross-advertising/suggestive sales get inserted in his reply! I think I failed my Will save vs his Suggestion! I suddenly feel compelled to purchase this and the CS: Cheliax! How did that happen?!
I just played this one. I'd advise holding off on playing it. The module is obviously unfinished, leaving the conclusion for many players left up to the discretion of the GM as the module does not address the most obvious conclusion.
So, definitely years late on running this one. I love the lore and the flow of the scenario; just the layout is particularly bad for GMs.
I missed a lot bits, and running with medical fatigue doesn't help flipping back and forth to scan for lore and DCs. Which is a shame, cause it's a really neat story.
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