Pathfinder Society Scenario #35: Voice in the Void (PFRPG) PDF

4.40/5 (based on 30 ratings)

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A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 1st to 7th level characters (Tiers: 1–2, 3–4, and 6–7).

Mystery strikes again at the problem-plagued Blackros Museum in Absalom and its curator, Nigel Aldain, needs your help. When a famed Osirian tomb raider returns to Absalom and disappears in the museum's basement, Aldain fears the worst. When strange sounds echo from below and several of the curator's night watchmen go missing, he panics and begs the Society to investigate the mystery and save his museum from the darkness that infests it.

Voice in the Void is a follow-up scenario to Pathfinder Society Scenario #5: Mists of Mwangi. When played together, the scenarios create a mini story arc in the famed Blackros Museum.

Written by Rob McCreary

This scenario is designed for play in Pathfinder Society Organized Play, but can easily be adapted for use with any world. This scenario is compliant with the Open Game License (OGL) and is suitable for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

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PZOPSS0035E


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A Solid Entry To The Blakros Museum 'Mythos'

4/5

Played, Not GM'd.

This was fun, and offered the chance for PCs who had played Mists of Mwangi to have further NPC interactions. The bulk of the adventure was an enjoyable dungeon crawl, but the BBEG was really interesting.


Best enjoyed at low tier

5/5

I recently GM'ed this for Damanta, and played it earlier with Monkhound as GM. When I played, we did so at low tier. When I ran it, high tier.

This scenario works quite differently depending on tier. Low tier, with four players, makes you apprehensive. You know your character is fragile, and there's a lot of scary things in the museum.

At high tier, with a somewhat bigger party, it's just a bit too easy. You don't play a plucky explorer, level 6-7 characters are stormtroopers used to stomping all over the monsters. It's a very different mood. And for this scenario, I like the low-tier mood better.

Adding together middle- and high-tier encounters helps to make things more interesting without going overboard on danger. It offsets the monsters' action economy problems (intended as 4-player scenario!). It's against PFS rules, but since it only makes things harder for the players without extra XP/money, and I did it with their permission, my conscience is clean.

Even at high tier I thought this was a nice scenario; it's got some fun monsters and encounters in it. And the boss fight worked better at high tier I think, because at top tier the boss gets a few nice toys to play with.

Spoiler:
A scroll of Black Tentacles, and the party was in perfect Fireball Formation and I happened to win initiative. This kept them from immediately swarming the boss. Instead, one by one they managed to fight their way out of it.

In addition, the PCs are trying to bring the boss back alive, while she's casting Vampiric Touch and Shocking Grasp on them with decent touch-to-hit, occasionally with Sneak Attack damage added. These circumstances help the boss fight from being over too soon.


High tier

4/5

We played this on high tier with a party of 5

party:
Level 7 treesinger druid with treant, level 6 hunter with mammoth companion, level 7ish? cavalier/barbarian, level 7 magus, level 6 wizard

As others have mentioned a really straight forward dungeon crawl, hindered by the fact that it's an older scenario.

I would have given it three stars if it weren't for the redeeming end fight. Our GM actually asked us if he could put in the lower tier mobs as well because we were tearing through stuff like a hot knife through butter (1 round combats), and with the additional mobs the action economy got a lot better for the GM and we had more fun.

trap:
With a swarm in a box as a trap, my hunter finally got to use her swarmbane clasp she purchased at level 4


Do Not Avoid!

5/5

Context: Player subtier 1-2, GM subtier 3-4

I read through this scenario and thought, Meh. Generic dungeon crawl.

Rob, I’m sorry I doubted you.

I had the players jumping at shadows in the upper level, freaking out in the Big Bad’s antechamber and certain they were all going to die in the final fight. (I was pretty sure they’d be fine – and they were).

The great thing was – this was the same experience I had playing Void twelve months prior to running it.

Combine this with straightforward maps, easy prep and simple yet interesting encounters, and you have the one-shot gem that is Voice in the Void. Bravo, Mr McCreary!


"In case I go nutters like the dwarf, please force-feed me this tea."

5/5

... said the alchemist to the arcanist, the skald and the ranger, while pointing at the druid and a flask of tea.

I loved GM'ing it! The scenario is a pretty straight-forward dungeon-crawl and the GM challenge in the scenario clearly lies in how to creep your players out, rather than in the combat encounters.

Combat: 4
The challenges are adequate, except maybe the first combat encounter at low tier.

Roleplay: 5
If you, as a GM, manage to spook the players, the roleplaying that may follow, is worth gold! It helps to have some preparation and knowledge of the players, though. Even a slight bit of knowledge of the Lovecraftian mythos helps a lot.

Background: 4
Mists of Mwangi sequel, Blakros Museum, Nigel, Lovecraftian mythos, Period.

Skills: 4
Some knowledges can be nice to have and can give slight advantages in what to expect, but there are no absolute must haves, which makes it a nice "Everyone can play" scenario.

General opinion: 5
A "Must Play" scenario.


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Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

I've updated the image and product description to match the finished product. Available for sale at midnight PST!

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Vic Wertz wrote:
I've updated the image and product description to match the finished product. Available for sale at midnight PST!

W00t! Mists of Mwangi sequel!

The Exchange

HEY! There weren't no basement when I ran it. Just some *really* wide sewer pipes in tha lavatory.... What gives?


It's magic!

Liberty's Edge

Man, I can't wait to run this.


Doug Doug wrote:
HEY! There weren't no basement when I ran it. Just some *really* wide sewer pipes in tha lavatory.... What gives?

Nigel obviously has gotten funding for expansion.


There might one day be a second floor. And perhaps a third floor. And then eventually a sub-basement under the basement.

Blackros Museum is amazing like that. ;-)


I downloaded this module last week to use as a one-shot between adventures in my home-brew campaign. I did a little bit of tweaking (to the names of people/places to fit the city in my campaign world) and I think it will run pretty smooth.

I am now in the process of assembling all of the 3D terrain for this adventure, including custom-made paper minis (without giving away any spoilers) and Fat Dragon tiles . If anyone has any interest in seeing it when it is complete, I'd be more than happy to post the pictures. I should be finished by the end of the week.

I, for one, would love to see a complete floor plan for the entire museum. I imagine that it would be well huge!


I'd love to see your pictures! :-)

Sovereign Court

Definitely post them! I'd love to see the pics too!

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Rob McCreary wrote:
Definitely post them! I'd love to see the pics too!

Hey Rob... It has been 3 days now since you started working over there and Gary still has not updated your title to Assistant Editor .. tell Gary I said to get on the ball!! ;)

Edit: But I see they added the Little Paizo Employee symbol.


Joshua J. Frost wrote:
I'd love to see your pictures! :-)

I've *almost* finished gluing all of the pieces together ... (I swear, every time I turned around I was ALWAYS 4 wall pieces shy of completion!!) and I have the first couple of sections latched together, so it shouldn't be too long now. :)


Joshua J. Frost wrote:

There might one day be a second floor. And perhaps a third floor. And then eventually a sub-basement under the basement.

Blackros Museum is amazing like that. ;-)

In our Runelords Campaign, the party ended up in Absalom chasing after an Artifact that ended up in Nigel's museum. The befriended him and donated many artifacts from their adventures.

In our game universe, a new 'wing' was build for all the Thalossian work collected and the party attended a privates reception with the Blackros Family.

Of course, that is when the Denizens of Leng showed up...but that is another story.


I'm finally ready to run this adventure after loads of prep! I'm hoping to run it this weekend. Pics to be posted soon, came out rather well, 'cept that Fat Dragon doesn't make the one scenery (that I can see) that I think is ESSENTIAL to any dungeon crawl -- the book case!!


CORRECTION: They make on available in the Dungeon Tiles 2 set. But I'm not going to spend $12 just for one piece of scenery ... or am I?! =P

FURTHER CORRECTION: They make an Item Set that goes for 2 bucks! SOLD!! :D

(One more round of cutting/folding/pasting!!!)

FINAL CORRECTION: Item Set is no longer available; d'oh!!

Liberty's Edge

Just ran this scenario last Tuesday. It was amazing fun. The party really enjoyed themselves and the encounters were extremely challenging. I had a few characters slide towards death. The group was on the edge of their seats throughout.

I laid the area out in tiles, which added a nice immersion quality to the dungeon. That said, I would love to see pictures of the 3-d set-up mentioned above.

One particular encounter and interesting development stood out:

Spoiler:

The encounter with the fungi in the archive was particularly fun. It quickly turned into a roleplaying encounter and I fleshed things out on the fly to make it happen. By the end, the party's paladin "befriended" the creatures and took them to the Pathfinder Society for research and to provide them with a safe home. It was a great moment.

Interestingly enough, my Cheliax players chose to open the scrolls. They were more than willing to sacrifice their PA to see what would the scrolls said. I had to think fast on my feet and I think it went very well. It certainly fulfilled one player's character motivation.

I would highly recommend this scenario if you think your group would like a bit of Lovecraft/sci-fi in their Pathfinder.

Sovereign Court

Glad your group enjoyed it!

I definitely intended to have...

Spoiler:
...the cerebric fungi...

...be an encounter that could be bypassed by roleplaying as well as combat, so I'm glad to see that someone took that route.

Thanks for the post!


Had a moment to snap pictures of the scenery/terrain today. I also made the "second map" into a scale battle mat using Capaign Cartographer, which is not included here. (I may snap pics of this when I'm running the adventure, however).

++++ NOTE ++++

*** THESE PICTURES PROBABLY CONTAIN SPOILERS IF YOU'VE NOT PLAYED THIS ADVENTURE !!!!!! ***

++++ NOTE ++++

http://s431.photobucket.com/albums/qq33/Phantom_Isle/Blackros/?albumview=sl ideshow

You will probably recognize a couple of the paper minis were created from the new bestiary ... :)


Looks nice!

Here's the link for anyone who wants a single click to view the above slideshow.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

Denim N Leather wrote:
You will probably recognize a couple of the paper minis were created from the new bestiary ... :)

Where did you get all that cool foldable terrain? Want!


Ross Byers wrote:
Denim N Leather wrote:
You will probably recognize a couple of the paper minis were created from the new bestiary ... :)
Where did you get all that cool foldable terrain? Want!

It's from Fat Dragon.


Joshua J. Frost wrote:

Looks nice!

Here's the link for anyone who wants a single click to view the above slideshow.

Thanks for that! I was wondering how to make links! :)


When you're posting, there's a button at the bottom of your post that says "BBCode tags you can use: [show]". Click that button and it will teach you all that you need to know. :-)

Liberty's Edge

I just ran the module. I loved the fun guys from Yuggoth -- er, I mean Aucturn -- and I believe there is a typo in my copy of the module. My copy says each faction is eligible for one prestige, rather than two as their missions (and the internal text) should suggest.

Sovereign Court

Glad you liked it!


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

This might have already been pointed out, but on page 13, the first two paragraphs in black font mostly say the same thing. Not sure if this post should go here or some other part of the messageboards.

Will be running this next week, and I'm looking forward to it.

Dark Archive

Rob, you did a great job on this one! We got to play this at GenghisCon XXXI this year and it was a lot of fun! I wont reveal anything from it but I must say it was a pretty tricky adventure. I really enjoyed the entire battle toward the end and I think alignments could really make the ending end up totally different than it did for us during my session. :o) I like that. Faction missions were fun too!

Sovereign Court

Thanks, Jodi! I really wanted the ending to have lots of different options, based on characters, alignments, etc. Glad you had fun!

Dark Archive

We just played through this and wow, while the flavor was awesome, it was a bit difficult! We ran Tier 1-2 (two of us played down because of APL). Our group was:

1st level rogue
2nd level fighter
3rd level wizards (specialized summoner)
4th level cleric

Our first encounter was with...

Don't read if you haven't played through:

Our first encounter was with the statue.

From what we could see, it was completely immune to magic and damaged anyone weapons when struck - if the DM overcame their weapon's hardness. On top, it had some sort of damage reduction. Now, while we made it through, the wizard and cleric were fairly useless (except for heals) and the rogue/fighter team were quickly loosing weapons. The fighter's main weapon was damaged after round two (and errata needs to be done for the adventure, as the callout the DM read for the damaged condition does NOT agree with the Core Rulebook).

Personally, I don't know how a party of 1st level pregens would make it through this. And while it's a cool story, I wouldn't run it with less than 5 on the table and a 1st/2nd level mix.

The rest of the encounters were fun, challenging. The "green room" was especially entertaining. I don't want to say too much, but our fighter simply "wasn't having it..."

The final encounter wasn't bad, but it ran long...:
Again, the wizard and cleric didn't have it too bad, but this was a pain once girl got out her wand. She could have easily TPK'd us, and while some good saves kept most of us up, our fighter sat out 8 rounds of combat (GM had good rolls, the fighter had horrible saves).

All in all, this was fun but it has the potential to be deadly to a first level party. You are forewarned.

Sovereign Court

I played this over the weekend on a Tier 1-2 and ended up with a TPK. The party was almost completely new characters.

We had:

1st Level Oracle
1st Level Magus
1st Level Wizard
1st Level Rogue

Straight off the bat it was clear that we didn't have enough healing for the fighting. The oracle was out of healing by the end of the 3rd encounter.

In the final encounter:

spoiler:

We made the mistake of attempting to sunder the tentacles in the caster. We thought this would free her but we wasted about 3 rounds of combat only to find it did nothing. By this time both our casters were down and with the rogue and oracle on 2 and 4 hp respectively. Both players soon fell to her rapier.

Liberty's Edge

alair223 wrote:

I played this over the weekend on a Tier 1-2 and ended up with a TPK. The party was almost completely new characters.

We had:

1st Level Oracle
1st Level Magus
1st Level Wizard
1st Level Rogue

Straight off the bat it was clear that we didn't have enough healing for the fighting. The oracle was out of healing by the end of the 3rd encounter.

In the final encounter: ** spoiler omitted **

From my reading

Spoiler:
when you cut the tentacles attached to the girl she should surrender and you should have to only deal with the other baddies.
Perhaps I am mistaken, however that is how I am going to run it for my group.

I'm just about to run this and I noticed an inconsistency that, hopefully, someone could clear up.

Inconsistent HP:
On page 13: "For Tier 1-2 and 3-4, the cylinder is iron (hardness 10, 30 hp). For Tier 6-7, the cylinder is mithril (hardness 15, 30 hp)."

On page 14-15: The stat blocks show the cylinder as having 10HP and 15HP respectively

I can understand if it means at half hp (15HP) the cylinder would be 'broken', but I don't understand where the 10HP comes from. Could anyone clear this up?

This question is probably too late (running in a few hours), but it will be nice to know for the future. Thank you in advance.

Grand Lodge

I am thinking that it is the Hardness you are seeing and not the HP. As it does match the hardness rating and the actual hit points for the cylinder does not change between the tiers.


Nope, hardness is listed correctly in each stat block, the HP is the issue.

Inconsistent HP:
Luckily the players just removed the cylinder so this didn't come up...

but it would be nice to get a clarification if I run this again.

Sovereign Court Developer

By the rules, iron and mithral both have 30 hp per inch. The difference is their hardness (10 for iron, 15 for mithral). So I would say 30 hp for both is correct. The hit points might have been changed in development to be a little easier, however. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter - if the PCs can get through the hardness to do 10 or 15 points of damage, they can likely do 30 as well.


Thanks for getting back to me. It sounds like "when in doubt, use the stat-block" is a the way to go.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I had a blast running this recently. Here is the battlemap I created for the museum level.

https://www.reddit.com/r/battlemaps/comments/v7prl0/museum_basement_voice_i n_the_void_300ppi/

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