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I usually try to save my reviews for adventures I've run, but this adventure is so disappointing I'll never run it. I have been excited about the Shory since they were mentioned in the first Inner Sea World Guide, and this adventure dedicates an entire chapter to Kho without giving us *any* interesting lore about them.

A great adventure gives you advice on what to do if the PCs go off the rails. This adventure not only lacks information on what to do if the PCs stray, it takes some amount of DM skill to even keep PCs on the path. The entire Stolen Fate AP is very heavy-handed with it's rails. By this level, PCs should be doing their own research with high level magic, not being led from random encounter to random encounter by arbitrary NPCs.

The editing is atrocious. Key sentences are sometimes incomprehensible. I had to read until the monster descriptions in the back matter to figure out what a hadi was and if it was different from a ratfolk. Large amounts of space are spent on stat blocks for monsters with minor variants while some more major enemies have default stats or completely unexplained abilities. The back material adds nothing to the world beyond the AP.

I imagine most people who like this book like it for the classes: the psychic (an Int or Cha-based occult caster that can empower cantrips) or thaumaturge (a mostly martial class that takes advantage of foe's weaknesses). The classes are interesting, and it's nice to have another occult caster, but neither really inspired me to create a new character.

The rest of the book is a confusing amalgamation of player options. There are a handful of interesting backgrounds scattered among the sporadic Incident Reports, but they aren't listed in the table of contents or index. At least the page numbers for all the items are collected in the index, but they felt somewhat repetitive. There are also 9 archetypes (some of them incredibly situational), some new spells and occult skill feats, a versatile heritage for duplicates (actually quite cool), and options for witches and oracles.

For the GM, this book doesn't offer much. There are a few NPC templates and new hazards, and some interesting ways of rewarding players. The 8 adventures are so short and mixed in with the PC sections that I'd assume any player with access to the book would accidentally read spoilers. If Paizo is going to insist on writing most of its lore and GM advice in-character now, this book does strike a good balance of actually providing content instead of ramblings. Still, there isn't really enough space to do each of the 8 topics justice.

It's sad to be giving another Pathfinder 2E product a bad review. I love the system and need to go back to write reviews for the products I did enjoy.

The highlight of this book is the archetypes and ancestry for allowing undead PCs. The handling of rejuvenation and soul cage in particular works well, and would work as good inspiration for representing other powerful monsters as PC archetypes. If that's your next campaign, this book could be worth it for the archetypes alone.

For a DM running an undead-heavy campaign, this book works well as an additional bestiary. There are 85 monster entries, as well as alternate ability options for some of the more common undead and some new haunts. None particularly stood out to me, but the sheer number is certainly helpful and in Pathfinder 2E every monster entry has something interesting going for it. The adventure is fine, but Paizo produces so many better adventures in other product lines. (I haven't run this one, so can't judge the difficulty.)

For living PCs, this book isn't worth it. The archetypes are lackluster. There's 2 pages of backgrounds and 3 pages of items, but surprisingly no new spells at all. I didn't dock the book for this. Some books simply aren't for good-aligned PCs.

Most disappointing is the lore section. The cursive font used for some of the in-world lore sections is more legible than previous books, but still difficult to read. I can't imagine trying to decipher it in the pocket edition. Luckily, these in-universe esoteric pieces aren't that interesting to me anyway. Worse is the choice to write almost all of the lore from Geb's highly-opinionated perspective. A light touch might have been entertaining, but in a few places, notably the Deities of Undeath and the shorter entries in the Lands of Undead section, the opinions are so strong that I can't actually tell what he's talking about. I love well-considered lore that inspires characters and plot hooks (Mwangi Expanse was fantastic and Guns & Gears did this well for a book in the rulebook product line), but here it feels like a lazy way to add page count.

I ran a few encounters and used the maps from the final chapter of this adventure as a single-session finale to my Kingmaker campaign for my group of 5 players (4 experienced, 1 novice). We chose to condense the adventure substantially because they were tired with high-level Pathfinder play.

The adventure absolutely oozes with flavor. The NPCs were so cool I really wished I had the time to introduce the PCs to more of them. The final adventure really does tie in to the rest of the campaign well, as long as it is properly foreshadowed. The final encounter really felt climactic.

Unfortunately, the adventure is definitely lacking in parts. Many of the encounters with lovingly-detailed backstories boil down to either a single mid- to high-level opponent (who has little chance due to the action economy) or a large number of lower level opponents (who have no chance due to the disparity in AC / attack). Several wilderness encounters are missing maps entirely. For the indoor encounters the grid on the maps is also hard to see in several places, which made copying and using the maps difficult.

The back matter is good, but nothing to write home about. The ideas for continuing the campaign were interesting but Kingmaker is so open-ended that they may not fit with your campaign. The monsters are not particularly inspiring and only 1 or 2 tie in to the adventure directly.

I ran this adventure with moderate modifications for a group of 5 players (4 experienced, 1 novice). We used the fast XP track, so I cut all of the random encounters and some of the hexploration. My players also avoided the majority of the Baron Drelev questline. What parts of the adventure we did go through took a little over 5 sessions for a total 16 hours of play.

I usually love Neil Spicer's work. My players really enjoyed Realm of the Fellnight Queen, and his perspective on fey that he's shared on the messageboards inspires great adventures. Yet, even though this is a fey-based adventure path and Spicer is brilliant with fey, the adventure has basically none.

In general, the adventure suffers from a surplus of under-leveled challenges. It's not just the random hexes with uninteresting foes either. The big boss in Part 3 is also low-level and bland. My players didn't really see a reason to dispose the villain of part 3 anyway. Since the big boss is such a coward, I felt their decision made sense and wished the adventure had addressed how Drelev responds to a diplomatic solution. Part 4 is better and has an interesting dungeon design, but uses way too many swarms. (Not text related, but the art for Santinder also makes no sense.)

As far as backing material goes, I really didn't feel the need for Ecology of the Boggard. The Spoils of Kings article served as a good reminder that a few proper nouns can make treasure feel more a part of the world, yet the item histories themselves fall flat with throwaway references to kings not mentioned anywhere else. The fiction is entertaining, at least, and I do like the calathgar and the leshy.

If you want to sub out one of the adventures in the Kingmaker adventure path, I would suggest this one. It's a pity Realm of the Fellnight Queen is too low-level to replace it.

I ran this adventure with moderate modification for a group of 5 players (4 experienced, 1 novice). We used the fast experience track, and I cut most of the random encounters and some of the hex-ploring. The adventure took about 7 sessions of 3 hours each, for at total of ~21 hours, but by this point kingdom turns and following up with other side plots makes an exact hour total difficult.

My players have disliked dungeon crawls for years. Some of this is the result of my badly designed dungeons, but they also disliked Jzadirune, City of the Spider Queen, and even the famous Maure Castle. However, they absolutely loved Vordekai's tomb. The villains were cool and creepy. The terrain was interesting and flavorful without being too complicated to run. Even having multiple encounters with exactly the same minions didn't feel repetitive, and the challenge level and size were perfect.

The rest of the adventure was a blast, too. Varnhold is a tantalizing mystery and the smaller encounter sites still have many nice little flavorful touches. These encounters can become boring if the players do things out of order, but it's easy enough to cut them if they become a drag.

The back material on Iobarria is interesting and a great resource if you later want to run Reign of Winter or other adventures there. Ed Greenwood's article on small encounter locations fell flat for me and didn't match the flavor I wanted from Kingmaker, but I'm not going to let one back article pull down the rating of a stellar adventure. The fiction is particularly funny. Among the monsters, the blodeuwedd and stygira saw use in my Kingmaker and made for interesting encounters. All around, a solid issue and a good purchase for the adventure itself, even if you don't want to run the entire Kingmaker campaign.

I ran this adventure with moderate modifications for a group of 5 players (4 experienced, 1 novice). We switched to the fast advancement track here, which meant cutting some encounters to bring the xp gain in line, and expanded Candlemere Tower slightly. With these modifications and a few kingdom turns, the adventure took 8 sessions of three or four hours each, for a total of ~30 hours. The players had a lot of fun.

The back material of the adventure is fantastic and pulls the book up to four stars. The kingdom rules are legendary, although they work best as something between sessions and are now replaced by the rules in Ultimate Campaign. I found the random event table in this version better than the one in Ultimate Campaign - it's less detailed but that makes it easier to tie in to existing plot threads. SKR's Erastil article is good, and the rorkoun from the bestiary fit in to my side quest involving Old Ones perfectly.

The adventure itself continues some of the same great trends from the first one in the series, with a rich world to explore full of fun and unique NPCs that make roleplaying a blast. Unfortunately, the bigger locations fall flat. The maps in particular are boring and often symmetrical. The last dungeon also makes no sense. A potentially awesome rush back to deal with a threat to all the PCs' hard work in front of their own walls gets turned into an 8 room dungeon with three set of monsters that logically shouldn't be living together.

If you're willing to put in the time to tailor this adventure to your group, this book is great inspiration. If you want to run an adventure as is, it's still good but could be better.

I ran this adventure mostly as-is for a group of 5 players (4 veterans and 1 new player). We used the medium experience track. It took about 24 hours of play, not including leveling, over 6 4-hour sessions. They really enjoyed it. The only complaint was that the XP gain was slow. The encounter locations are loaded with intriguing details and creative connections between them. The terrain for the battles is varied and tactically complex. Almost every encounter has tips for how it could be handled in an unconventional way, but there's plenty of fights if that's what the group is in the mood for. It was a blast to GM.

Why only 4 stars? The adventure relies a little too heavily on random encounters to fill out its experience count, and some of the most plot-relevant and interesting details are difficult to convey to the players, especially the BBEG's origin story.

The back material is a basic explanation of hex exploration (which is basically a reminder of how long it takes to travel, plus an xp award), and a gazetteer on Brevoy. The latter is a good place to start for anyone who wants to take the AP in a political direction. The fiction is entertaining and the monsters are solid and useful. The carbuncle is so entertaining, I wish I had remembered to include it when it was CR appropriate.

If your players are self-starters with a drive to investigate and you want an AP that you and your players can develop into your own story, this is a great AP for you.

I ran this adventure for a group of 5 new players. I cut some encounters and used the fast advancement track due to time constraints. Including building and leveling PCs, the adventure took 20 hours to run.

Richard Pett provides great information to build on here, with 8 fully detailed NPCs (friend and foe) and over a dozen more with enough information to inspire the GM. Even the mundane treasure is interesting. As a GM, though, you'll need to figure out how to introduce a number of the NPCs on your own. Instead of using space to provide advice in this area, the adventure has rules for daily job roles that can quickly get tedious.

The supplementary material for the adventure is solid, although one of the magic items is a bit expensive for the level range. The Life of a Pirate article contains more campaign-specific rules that I found confusing and hard to convey to the players. SKR's article on Besmara is up to his usual high standard, and the fiction should inspire a magic item or 2. The monsters compliment the adventure well, but the pirate familiars are missing any mention of bonuses (or lack thereof) for those who choose them.

Summary: Can be a blast to play, but only if the GM puts in the prep time. Most of the back matter is good quality.

This is the first third-party Pathfinder product I purchased. I used it to give the PCs some more XP in my Skulls & Shackles campaign, where it filled one session nicely. The players had a good time.

The greatest gift of Goodall's writing is this adventure is his skill with building character stats. All of the NPCs make good use of their feats, and they aren't restricted to just the feats in the Core Rulebook either. The main characters are interesting, especially Alsindra Devrol, who manages to avoid the most common appearance and temperament of a character in her role. The adventure is short, but still manages to cover all the likely avenues the PCs could take.

I was a little wary of the treasure at the end having minor artifact status, but the abilities are unique while remaining low-powered enough to not disrupt the campaign. Nice tie in to the goddess of piracy.

Why only four stars? The adventure is fantastic and solid, but the hook doesn't grab me enough to want to run it outside of Skulls & Shackles or another larger pirate campaign. If you are running such a campaign, though, it's a nice short addition.

Just ran this (in much shortened form) as a one-shot for my regular group. The various NPCs that the PCs interact with were a blast to read about and play. Both the villains and the people who needed help felt unique. Most of the roleplaying encounters are concentrated in the first half of the adventure, though. Since we were playing as a one-shot, I had to cut or modify most of the fights, but the outdoor terrain was a nice change of pace and the fight that started the adventure had some great tactical elements.

I had to make Lumi more head-strong on the fly - my players were insistent that she had to be more than a damsel in distress. This was mostly my fault, though, since I focused on her as the hook for the start of the adventure. Most importantly, the players had fun and are looking forward to a sequel. A solid adventure.