Leon Aquilla's page

Starts out with a starship combat that can be entirely skipped without consequence.

- chapter 1 is busywork, almost all of the combat encounters are underpowered and will not challenge any halfway competent group

- chapter 2 -- oh look, it's a ysoki racetrack. AGAIN. This is the 4th Ysoki racetrack scenario I've encountered. I'm so tired of them.

Chapter 3 -- skeletons, driftdead, and animated armor. boring, boring, boring. And incredibly unchallenging.

Good contributions to the system overall. I think the marketing department seriously embarassed themselves calling this a "ship combat overhaul" -- we already had chase rules in Starship Operations Manual and these are just the same thing with a different skin.

Some of the other stuff is reprints from AP's and other sources (like Kitsune, Kayal, and Grippli) so not going to call this a 'must have'.

When you take away someone's toy, they want it back as soon as possible. But a lot of this AP is spent on busywork that really doesn't contribute anything towards that goal. I find that a bit frustrating.

Also -- the scheme in part 3 to hijack a Golden League ship to get into the asteroid hideout seems a bit overdeveloped. Why not just do that to begin with instead of flying a rustbucket if you're just gonna ditch the rustbucket?

This is not an AP or a series of AP. It is a series of short adventures which barely have any connective tissue between them. There's no separate map file for the PDF (because it uses maps 90% pulled from flipmats you can buy separately). It even shows its age by showing Izalguun as new, exotic species despite the fact they've been represented in SF since Alien Archive 3. Adventure #12 has a "paratrooper strike" and says that the characters just get parachutes. I guess nobody told them that they've had drop pods as an item since Starship Operations Manual.

Quite frankly, Society scenarios are skeletons, frameworks that the GM is responsible for adding detail into, and these bare bones adventures do not dissuade me of that opinion.

If you play Society and missed this or are nostalgic about having played it, then buy it. If you're not a Society player, there are much better options available from Paizo than this compilation. Given the assurances we were given that this would not simply be a reprint compilation, I feel bait & switched.

The print version of the AP went out with a MASSIVE screwup for Chapter 2. If you're a PDF owner, lucky you. If you're a print owner, well then you're a sucker for overpaying because this is a waste of your money.

The AP also insults your intelligence as an adult capable of dealing with complex historical issues, despite the author's comments that he wanted "you to decide", before stacking the deck with the most childish description of a major historical event I've ever had the displeasure of having to read. Fine, whatever, dwarves are evil stand-ins for colonizers But I'm not going to waste my time having my players do history homework in a library in this polemic masquerading as an adventure. Half the content in this AP is skippable, as either side-questing that doesn't drive the story forward (basically the entirety of chapter 1) and the Festival and Library (which are really just massive exposition dumps). That leaves chapter 2 and the tail end encounter. Not a lot of meat on these bones.

(One of my players actually said in character "Oh thank the gods, something I can shoot" when the statues come to life in Chapter 3, signaling just how bored she was by the entire Ancestors Walk section)

This isn't a knee-jerk reaction to "woke content" or some schtick like that. I like grey areas in my AP's, but Compton is not up to the task of trying to set up a scenario like that. It's simply said that Dwarves committed warcrimes and were in the wrong motivated by religious zealotry and covered it up. Despite claiming on the forums that he wanted "the audience to decide for themselves", he simply says dwarves are at fault, and leaves you to either accept or decline the premise rather than deciding for yourself. He might as well have started the AP with "The AP starts out with the players having just decided to stop committing spousal abuse" for how rigged it is.

I've gotten a good nose for predicting future Paizo behavior (they keep living down to my expectations) -- if the AP continues in this track, I suspect it is going to start insulting people with a condescending message of "Faith is bad". I don't even think this AP can be rehabilitated with rewriting certain parts.

Avoid.

A hilarious old and out of date Starfinder module. If this is your first time in Starfinder get something more interesting and engaging that's been made in the last six years like Junker's Delight or Against the Aeon Throne.

To make this AP fit the page count they had to strip out the adventure toolboxes, Alien Archives, and Codex of Worlds entries. I would rather pay a custom bookbinder to rip out the paperback 1-6 AP's and bind them together in an omnibus with a nice cover with faux-metallic lettering than this.

Just writing this review because I still see people playing Dead Suns a lot as their 'first' Starfinder AP:

Folks - Dead Suns is not the best AP for Starfinder. It's a decent AP, but especially with the first 3 books there's still too much Pathfinder 1e DNA in it because people were still getting used to the system. Book 2 in particular is utterly skippable drek (see my review of Temple of the Twelve for details).

My recommendation? Try a 3-parter first like Drift Crashers, Against the Aeon Throne, or two of the standalone's like Junker's Delight and Liberation of Locus-1 --- and then transition to Dead Suns starting with book 4, where things start to gel and the space opera themes of Starfinder actually get explored.

You are missing literally nothing by skipping books 1-3 except getting the map pieces that allow you to actually get where you're going. TRUST ME.

I have in several previous Starfinder AP's critiqued people who use the word railroad too lightly and liberally when the GM won't let them 'live their truth' or whatever the heck players are mad about this decade.

This AP however, is a railroad.

A railroad in this instance is defined as a situation where no matter whether you turn left, turn right, go straight ahead, or go back, all roads lead to the same event occurring. You cannot escape it. The writers want their scene to happen. This AP is the very definition of a railroad.

And that's part 4 of Fly Free or Die. A massive railroad.

Key points:

-- The encounters in this AP are laughably easy. You are not going to get challenged by a single fight except the Shantaks and so all they do is slow things down.

-- Some of the rivals were interesting, but others (like Kantir Sursa) really were just mind-boggingly dumb and just slowed things down. If your encounter is not even going to reasonably risk knocking the characters out of stamina points, why bother?

-- The AP's plot is poorly set up due to the bait and switch at the beginning. You think you're hijacking a ship, but then in part 2 you're thrust into a Thomas Crown Affair/Ocean's Eleven scheme where you have to do a lot of legwork to pull things off. It can be jarring because your 'face' will have to pretend to be someone they've only met for like 4 minutes and when you step onto the station you have no idea you're even there to hijack a treasure barge to begin with! And all the events that take place in part 2 are tied to Estriar's calendar, so if you try and go "nuts to this" then the GM is going to have to come up with convenient reasons you wind up at these social functions. All your pre-op planning goes to nothing and the player-characters are left trying to figure out what they're supposed to do with the help of Miss Exposition. It's very forced.

-- The AP assumes you're going to impersonate Estriar, either by agreement or after cold blooded murder. Almost zero text is devoted to outlining an alternate scenario where you have to blast your way through except to say "that's beyond the scope of this AP". If describing the hangar where the treasure barge is located in and the defenses surrounding it is beyond the scope of this AP, then it needs a wider scope because it's too narrow to accomplish its plot, sorry.

-- No matter what, you are expected to get "caught" at the end of this. If you have a Reptoid or an Astrazoan or an Endiffian in your party, you'll have to think on your feet to explain how they got caught. The writers relying on the holoskin gambit seems incredibly presumptous. Again, that's the definition of a railroad.

-- I don't know why they added side jobs in this AP. It says "maybe your characters skipped part of the content". How? You're stranded on a station and your only way off is to win the treasure barge at an auction. If you skip some content in this AP, you skip the whole thing.

-- This whole AP takes place in the Drift. Not Drift Crisis-compatible.

White Glove Affair is an interesting premise hampered by the bait-and-switch in the beginning and the singular focus on getting the characters, without much in the way of preliminary nudging, to follow the rails the writers have set out for you. Part 1 is so disconnected from Parts 2-3 you could skip it entirely and just start at the beginning of part 2 and you would have missed absolutely nothing. "You step off the shuttle and are met by Estriar" - boom, part 1 gone.

Starfinder's Ports of Call simultaneously shows off the innovative and creative spark that has pushed Starfinder beyond simply being a between-editions flash in the pan idea at Paizo while also highlighting some of its frustrating editorial choices and its struggle to present an AAA product on a reduced budget because of the obvious favoritism for Pathfinder 2e by its corporate owners.

Before I start, I would like to also note that the PDF version of this has had some of the worst typographical errors I've ever seen, with whole chunks of words ripped out. Probably some formatting issue from a copy and paste that never got corrected.

Anyways --
Let's break it down.

Chapter 1 - Traveling the Galaxy

The Galaxy - Some interesting high level stellar cartography about some of the major areas of the Pathfinder/Starfinder galaxy. Nothing that really jumps out, a lot of very vague 'hooks' that could afford to expanded on.

The Map - Ugh. More on this later.

Drift Lanes - Two steps forward. One step back. The idea of Drift Lanes is great, but it is ridiculously undercut (and the Drift Crisis itself sabotaged) by the very first paragraph in this section: We're back to 1d6 days to Absalom, 3d6 to Near Space, and 5d6 to the Vast. So regardless of where you are in the galaxy, it's still 1-6 days to get back to Absalom, rendering Drift Lanes near-irrelevant. At least you tried!

The Conqueror's Path drift lane doesn't actually seem to cross Kehtaria's path?

Galactic Adventuring - If you're new to Starfinder, the GMG probably explains the various adventures you can have in Starfinder better than this section.

New races
Giants - Nice! I especially love the Fire Giant - armor penalty reduced, fire resistance, AND a 10 foot reach!

Selamids - Weren't these guys in Dead Suns? I"Ve been playing this game too long.

Thry - cool I guess

Xulgath - Huh, interesting Darklands race to choose to bring into SF.

Expanded Downtime - There are some good choices here. I was especially happy with Divinity, which allows a mechanical method by which to bestow blessings on pious characters. Cook Feast and Mech Systems Diagnostics are both good. And Starship System Diagnostics. Can it wait for a bit, Shepherd? I'm in the middle of some calibrations.

Ship Systems - What's an Arcane Rail? Seems like they just out and out didn't bother describing it. Is it like an arcane railgun? What's a Hawser?

Chapter 2 - Ports

Anduwar - Love it. Great addition to the galaxy. Glad to have the Giants decide on a place to call home.

Giant Feats - Definitely focused on combat maneuevers and STR but since I play a lot of those characters I didn't mind. Situational as always.

Atuity - What the Hell's going on here? Azlanti don't treat with the Vesk. They blew away the last colony they ever put up near them and asked questions later. What's with the kinder, gentler non-racist Azzies? Yeesh. Boring. I guess if you wanted Cold War Berlin/Denver in Shadowrun spy intrigues it makes an interesting locale. Otherwise forgettable.

Drifter's End - There is a vocal minority of Starfinder players who just don't want to leave Absalom Station, and this is the place for them.

Golarion World - Did I catch some of the in-character dialogue referring to theme park employee as "cast members"? Someone at Paizo is in love with The Mouse™. Yeccchh. If you've got theatre kids who love to pretend to have enough money to go to the Galactic Starcruiser at Disney World, this is the place for you. Or alternately if you have Pathfinder players who constantly remind you about how Pathfinder 2e has a three action economy. Imagine the hilarity at the table of Starfinder characters breaking the 4th wall and grumbling about how they miss Golarion World's 3-action-economy and ORC licensing! Wackiness ensues!

Izadamar - If you care about the Scoured Stars, great. If you're not into Starfinder Society drama and history, skip.

Jhavam - One of two university locations, and the more original of the two.

Outpost Zed - an oldie from Against the Aeon Throne. I'm okay with this legacy content (especially because it has a couple of new pieces of art). Definitely a section to read if you haven't played Against the Aeon Throne and want to. Though apparently its maximum item level went way up?

Precipice - One of the glaring examples of the creative bankruptcy that is rampant in Paizo's writing staff of late. Paizo staff LOVE to take an existing location that is held by an oppressive, evil race, liberate it between splats with no thought about the geopolitical repercussions involved, and then brag about how they've "fixed" a problematic aspect of Golarion on Twitter instead of coming up with something uniquely theirs.

Oh, an apartheid city held by an evil, oppressive snobby group that's now a freeport pirate town? Yeah I think I remember seeing that in Pathfinder 2e recently. What the Hell is this even doing here? Can we please leave the Pact Worlds and go elsewhere? And even if you needed two major ports to be in the Pact Worlds, why this one? What is the Diaspora asteroid belt? Chopped liver? You could've done a nine page spread on Broken Rock instead. Snazzy art though.

Deep Delver archetype - Niche content at best.

Shulgi Station - A gateway to the Astral Plane. If you don't know what that is it's because Paizo has not spared more than a dozen words on describing it in Starfinder. Loved the art of the Embri Hellknight. A few good spells though. Theatre kids LOVE Capricious Cats!

Uzodia - The other of the two university locations, and the unoriginal of the two. It's just the Magaambya, in space. Right down to the aesthetics! Way to step out of Pathfinder's shadow on this one. Paizo also LOVES to take one 'good progressive allyship' idea and just run with it, shoving it into a setting whose lead designers have constantly insisted don't want to be in Pathfinder's shadow. Lazy and pandering. Pf2e fans are STILL not gonna play SF, sorry.

Other Ports - Hit or miss. Mostly meh. Some of the better ones are below.

Bulwark - Now here's the kind of sci-fi content I'm here for. It only gets two pages, but that's okay because I have a sneaking suspicion it'll play a part in the new AP coming after Scoured Stars. Still, it could've gotten a 6 page spread with the potential here.

Skydock, Locus-1, Gaskari - Playing the greatest hits. Don't really think they warranted their own write-ups. Locus-1 is NOT that interesting.

Ternia - Oh that's really cool Glabrezu art...waitaminute, Starfinder doesn't even HAVE statted Glabrezu, and never will thanks to the OGL controversy!!! What kind of a tease is that?!

Accord/Magic/Religion/Tech ports - Paragraph-sized hooks for dial-a-space-station. This could have been done using the GMG.

Chapter 3 - Travelers Toolbox

Cargo Subsystem - This was meh in FFoD and it's meh here, because it's just been copy/pasted and hasn't been overhauled since Jason Tondro's initial pass. Sad.

Trader NPC's - Cool if you need them I guess

Jobs - Interesting, but with Drift Crisis there's PLENTY of adventure hooks swimming around out there, so I'm not sure these were needed. Would have liked more focus on the books itself.

THE MAP

Okay, let's talk about the Map. This will probably be the only starmap that will ever be released for Starfinder, so it's sad that it's so underwhelming and stuck mainly to places listed in the book, with a few exceptions. I bought Embers of the Imperium for Genesys this same month and the galaxy map in that book is CRAMMED with locations, every single inch.

Would it really have been so hard to pick some random spots in the empty spaces to place some of the famous locations from the various AP's that have been released? Suskillon? Weydana? The GATE OF THE TWELVE SUNS of Dead Suns, maybe?! Nope. Nope. Nope. All they had to do was throw darts at a sketch on a map or something and couldn't be bothered. What a huge middle finger.

There was a recent 5e meme going around about how the FR was being filled with so many do-gooder organizations that it was leaving little room for real heroes. And as usual, Paizo is chasing their coattails like they dragged a 20$ bill through the suburbs of the Seattle metro area. You've heard of Lawful Stupid Paladins? Meet Chaotic Obnoxious Firebrands.

Lost Omens: Firebrands, the official splat of "I'm a theatre kid who's only played 5e, where's the book for characters who chew the scenery, behave anachronistically, and are genre-savvy! JAZZ HANDS!"

If you want to read about all the cool things -other- (obnoxious, show-offy, in-it-for-the-clout) people are doing, this is the book for you. Seriously, my wife, who is much more laid back than me flipped through it and was just like "I get it, I get it, can you please show me something other than OTHER peoples characters biographies?". Only 11 pages of player-interfacing content!!!

Lost Omens: Firebrands, the official splat of "I'm Just Playing My Character and Doing Praxis by Killing NPC's" CN murderhobos.

Do we really need 20 pages on Gods in every single org-splat???

Lost Omens: Firebrands. Golarion doesn't have a god of premature you-know-what, but I hear he's coming soon! (ba-dum-tssshhhh!)

And again Paizo's treatment of its stentorian choice to ban slavery is being handled with all the subtlety of a brick being thrown through a window with a note wrapped around it. Are you at all curious why the Pactmasters of Katapesh would choose to ban slavery when that's kind of what their city-state's all about? Me too! Sounds like there might be some fun conflict to be had there. Sadly you'll have to settle for "Suddenly, slavery was banned". JJ Abrams was more subtle in Rise of Skywalker.

Lost Omens: Firebrands - Bellflower Network?! Never heard of them. (literally get about 250 words)

If you were planning on using an Experimental Vehicle Mechanic or some other vehicle-focused character for this AP, wad that up and throw it in the trash.

Most of the skill checks are obscenely easy. There will be no tension in the 'racing' part of this race. An Operative taking 10 will leave everyone else in the dust. Possibly to make it so vehicle-focused characters didn't faceroll over everything, there are only 2 planetary races in this AP. The others are all starship runs and you get the starship provided to you. It pretty much flies itself with a bit of input from someone with a high piloting check.

The meat of the adventure besides the races comes from the intrigue aboard the racing mothership itself, but the cast list is so bloated you'll need a notebook to keep everything straight.

A must-have at any table.

The thumbnail art doesn't do this justice.

One mat can best be described as "basic Terran terrain with a stream or marsh in it" and the other can be described as "A poorly maintained asphalt parking lot" on one end and "Sterile 70's smoker nicotine-brown stained tile" on the other.

All very useful for a new Starfinder or Pathfinder player. If you have someone who plays both, consider getting them this.

Gonna be honest, I think I stopped this one just before the finale because it was just sorta like "you know what? who cares. You go through a linear set of encounters, kill everything, then kill the last boss. The end".

We got through parts 1 and 2. Part 1 was the strongest. Hanging out on Shadow Verces, going up a shadow space elevator, etc.

But then things sorta just went downhill from there. The last area is just...not thematically appropriate. Like it's gory and grisly but I feel like there's no techno-horror in it. It's just like a bad Hellraiser sequel.

And while that's the point of the Shadow Realm, there has to be some sort of Starfinder edge to it, otherwise you're just playing a reskinned Pathfinder module.

In general the entire module was pretty underbalanced. By this point you have several PC's in power armor and they just chew up enemies and spit them out. The knife-fight-in-phone-booth encounter maps don't help either because there's no room to maneuver -- just you kick them, they kick you.

The ending is pretty underwhelming too. Cover-up isn't even the appropriate word, just...nobody reacts to it. A huge tragedy, a massacre of people, etc. and you either get asked by a corp to shut up about it or the Stewards suggest you go get therapy.

Let's take it piece by piece.

Intro/Dreamgate

- A nice intro. Someone (presumably working on your castle) goes missing, there's a little bit of a scrap. I thought it was interesting because the antagonist knows next to nothing about you, and you know very little about him. HOWEVER....

....the first thing I have to bring up here is: NOWHERE is it explained that the Dreamgate links to Ravounel. I ctrl+f'd all three PDF's and it is not explained anywhere. The party is just supposed to somehow intuit that they can just stargate their way over to Ravounel instead of hoofing it across Isger and Cheliax. How is the party supposed to know? Because they used Eclipse on the Dreamgate beforehand? Okay, but then you would already have dealt with the hags in there and cleaned them out....so yeah. I had some peasant come by and say he noticed while cleaning up their basement gate-room that the carvings on the Dreamgate matched those of a cave he wandered into in Ravounel as a lad.

The Hags/Dreamgate - Oh boy. Be prepared for campaign derailment if you crit-fail that Level 8 Baleful Polymorph! If your party places the dreamstone back in the tree I might have an Azata come by as a reward and un-polymorph anyone who gets stuck that way. Otherwise better pray that your level 5 dispel magic crits because that's the only way you're turning the Cleric back from a bull (true story).

That being said, the Bone Devil lend his services to the highest bidder was a fun little complication and led to some haggling over whether the Witch told him to kill ALL the hags or just TWO. Hilarious and on point for a Devil....though what does a Bone Devil need with gold?

Cypress Point - Save the burning town! Excitement! Tension! Innocents to save! Demons to kill!

All great stuff. The only thing I'd suggest tossing is the boathouse as that encounter is a red herring (the Krooths already killed them!) and the loot is not worth it (a greater thunderstone)

It was nice for my Swashbuckler to claim the ship as a prize, even though that's not in the AP. IT is very odd that the AP doesn't say "oh by the way you can steal the slavers' ship and sail it to Kintargo rather than take a 3 day trip by land".

Thugs & Bruisers become a bit repetitive throughout the rest of the AP -- and right here they struggled to be much of a threat. Same thing with the mercenary sailors, who could barely hit my highest characters AC's.

Kintargo -

The Nidal thing is a whole nothingburger, sadly. I think it was just too much on top of the main plot already. So is the ghosts of Barzhai, which, while a nice callback to the original Hell's Rebels, doesn't really amount to much here. Honestly gives it a kind of Scooby Doo-esque thing going on that I didn't like.

A nice starting encounter at Sunset Imports. Ugh, I hate golems. They never are a threat, just an HP sink. At least it made sense. Most of the warehouse is not worth perusing, just go straight for the prisoner at the very end. The Kalavakas and the ST Bruiser aren't really a threat either. I had the last guy surrender rather than drag things out.

Kite Hill - THIS PLACE WILL KILL YOU. Woooow. Level 13 encounter out of nowhere, holy crap. This thing mauled a party of five with Wall of Ice and Cones of Cold like crazy, and that frost slow effect on top of that? Woof. Very tough fight. Nonny (the NPC) having Inspiring Presence on everyone is almost mandatory if you don't want to be attending a funeral.

Coffeehouse - Mehhhh, the ghost haunting thing didn't really click for me. The haunts were not a threat to a level 10 party and neither were the ghosts. The Rakshasas could've been -- I liked getting the jump on them while they're sipping tea and debating what murder tea goes best with.

The Docur School for Girls - skippable if you were doing things in sequence, but I still enjoyed interacting with Lady Docur!

Tanessen Tower -

6th floor is a speedbump. 7th floor is a grind with TWO alchemical golems (consider reducing it to 1) -- I think this was the wrong place to put this fight as it just draws things out unnecessarily. 8th floor - woof. Knife fight with a caster in a phonebooth. Caster loses. Those Velstracs and thugs can't help him. Sure he can summon fiends but by that point he was already nearly dead. (Alchemical Golems might have made the fight more interesting...should've swapped 'em!)

Summershade Granite Quarry - no notes. A nice finale, it's nice and big, I like the situation with the potential drowning of the captives at the end, etc.

All in all, it's a shame that Paizo has opted to go for a 'noblebright' setting where the S-word is banned, because killing Kalavakas-demons is fun, beating the crap out of slavers is fun, for a GM playing them is fun because they're SO unlikeable, and everyone loves you afterwards. A good AP for feeling like big damn heroes. Your group will be so busy wiping out these unlikeable bastards that you'll forget what the whole metaplot was!

Editor's Note: This was personally a 4/5 for me, but that was because we had a Dragon Instinct Barbarian with the group that really sank her teeth into the dragon-related stuff. I think if you're not really into the premise, the hexploration slog and overtuned meat-grinder encounters make it a 3/5.

Age of Ashes part 2 has some weird narrative quirks in the first portion that remind me of how Rise of the Runelords has some parts that people view as cringeworthy today. Only this time it was done in the name of 'allyship' instead of to take a 'dark and mature' tone to distinguish it from D&D.

Chapter 1 - So Dahak is advertised early on, that was a nice intro, going through the tunnel tube and AHHHHHHHH TRAP THAT BURNS YOU TO DEATH.

Everything in this AP is overtuned and insta-kill traps are common. It's so ubiquitous I'm not even going to call it out. There are CR 8 enemies written for this AP that have a +19 fort save you can meet as soon as you step out of Akrivel when your skills can only give you a spell DC of 23. THAT'S FREAKING CRAZY! You mean I have maybe a 15% chance for my spell to work? The GM might as well just say "Don't even bother, it's not going to work". The whole thing is overtuned - learn to ignore set DC's and/or fudge them or else you're going to have a PC graveyard. Another example - why is ingesting PURE arsenic a DC 19 fort save to not get poisoning from, but ingesting arsenic from gold ore that just rubbed off in this AP is a DC 22 check to avoid poisoning ? Into the trash it goes. I swear I saw more crit fails from the group on this AP than I have ever seen in anything other than maybe Hellknight Hill.

So you go to Akrivel and it's a perfect society of Mwangi elves who live in harmony and just need foreigners to stay out, blah blah blah, yay noble savages. I'm not sure where a previous reviewer got the idea that the Ekujae are strong, independent proud Mwangi elves that don't need no adventurers, because they are instantly blinded if they get within 50 miles of the Fortress of Sorrow as long as these dragon totems are up.

I appreciated that Eleanor Ferron just said "roleplay through this stuff if you want, it's not that important" because man there is a lot of social stuff here.

The highlights -

The Leopard twins
Harriet
The Storyteller's Circle (one of my players got up and basically summarized the tale of the Frozen Flame because she was a barbarian from the Realm of the Mammoth Lords)
The Pepper-Eating Contest

The ugh stuff -

Akosa - This guy is a psychopath who just can't stop talking about all the Avistanis he's scalped. I get that we're supposed to be respectful and appreciative of other worldviews and he was an escaped slave and all, but both the Paladin and the LG Cleric were both creeped out by him.

Matchmaking - Okay, so...you want to match your dad, who was married to your mom, and has not shown any interest in being hooked up, with a guy whose hobbies involve scalping and race war, even though they have shown zero interest in each other so far. And her rationale is incredibly stupid. "The elder elves say I should mind my own business, but I'm a half-elf so who cares!?" What's Elven for 'barge right in, the door's wide open'? Both my Paladin and my LG Cleric said No thanks, highly unethical. Is this the minority representation that people are so proud of? Skip.

Just throw the Ekujae influence wheel in the trash. Some of the things in it don't make sense. Didn't know that temple was super important when a crazed explorer blew it up? Lose karma. Didn't know the alligator that tried to eat you was important to them? Lose karma. Dying of Dysentery because of some bad rolls and need to take some time, so you don't hack down a totem in time? Lose karma.

Into the trash it goes!

Chapter 2 - TOO MANY TOTEMS!

"Dear President of Paizo, there are too many totems in Cult of Cinders. Please eliminate 3. I am NOT a crackpot."

Rolling for dysentery like it's the Oregon Trail gets old after about a week of in-game time.

Soooo many friggin' tooootems. And there's only 4 that are interesting encounters: Red, Blue, Indigo, and Black. (Purple I'm not including because it's at the mine). Skip the others if you value your sanity.

The other encounters (A6, A10) are cool. I don't get why people were mad about Gerhard Pendergrast. I played him like Lord Roderick Ponce Von Fontlebottom (the Magnificent Bastard) from Jade Empire for laughs. Just an incredibly condescending foreigner out of his element. Maybe they got mad because his 'twin' appears to force the encounter at A10 or A7 depending upon what you did. First of all, he's pretty frickin' tough as nails, he SHOULD have a chance to run away, but second, who cares. That's actually pretty funny, and this guy is a caricature, not worth being taken seriously as a villain.

A4 is a red herring that just pulls you off the path for no real good reason. Thanks Nketiah!

Point of order - do you have to "destroy" the totems to bring down the Dahak's Shell, or just disable them? Handwave the destruction of the totems, except with the Griplis because that's the only part where it becomes concerning.

Chapter 3 - The Mine - - What a meatgrinder if you're not careful. It's possible for the group to stumble on this place without being level 7 yet, and if they do, Sarenrae help them because they're going to get MAULED. Luckily my group had a Witch with a Raven familiar so it went and reconned the entire mine. Otherwise this has the potential to turn into a TPK. Make sure you emphasize to the group three things: That the miners are scared of the Vrock, that they should unleash the Plesiosaur in the beast pen, and to befriend Hezle.

Even then, there's a lot of killing involved here. The CR 1 and CR 3 enemies are no big deal, and the Butchers (separately) aren't a huge issue. I PERSONALLY ruled that the purple totem was not a threat because it was 50 feet in a hole and there was no way it could have line of sight on the group as long as they fought around the pit mine. But that might trip up a novice GM. If your rolls go poorly this chapter could take an entire session of ONE BATTLE. I started having some of the CR 1 guys (who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn anyways) just take off after awhile, demoralized at seeing 20 of their pals get chewed up.

Speaking of which, screw the voidworms and screw the Naunets in the settling pool. By the point you deal with them you will be so tired of this and just want it to be OVER already.

Hezle deserved an extra page of exposition/text block/questions and responses. It seemed like she should have known more than the brief summary of what she's able to deliver to the group.

On that subject, it's never made clear in the text: So the Scarlet Triad just want GOLD? Mwangi gold? Or is it the arsenic-tainted gold specifically that the Scarlet Triad needs? Is the arsenic the corruption of Dahak? Or is it just coincidental? How is Hezle "testing" the gold for the qualities that the Scarlet Triad want in the gold as an alchemist? I have to assume she knows what arsenic is, what it's doing to the miners, but that they want the arsenic tainted gold for some reason. Anyways, more context needed! Maybe could have been taken from the wordcount devoted to all the fancy schmancy elves in their tree-city!

Chapter 4 - Fortress of Despair

Now we're talking. A good storm-the-fortress scene! Other than the crocodile you can't kill at the beginning, this is pretty fun. I think the DC's on the hazards are still overtuned, and I think that there should have been a bit more explanation about who's liable to mob you if you assault the front gates indiscreetly, but other than that it's just...okay. Again, watch the hazard DC's.

Sidenote: Elokos using Size Alteration in these TINY TINY rooms is a recipe for hilarity.

A word on Loot - This AP really can be hit or miss with loot. There's almost none until you reach the Mine (And then it showers you in +1 tridents). I basically gave the group all the nice Ekujae tschotchkes (including the Ring of Elemental Resistance that is a top tier reward for maxing out rep with the Ekujae) up front. Granted, we also roleplayed most of the interactions with the Ekujae. And you can miss the Bag of Holding if you don't encounter Gerhard Pendegrast and defeat him, which is not necessary for the plot at all!

Going to break this down scene by scene:

Parade/Audience - Loved this. Put on the FF8 Edea's Parade theme and chewed the scenery on it. Really good intro. Free tschotchkes is always nice.

Kortash is kind of a hit-or-miss thing. You only really need to talk to him 3-4 times total. But I didn't find him a grating NPC.

The Mortician's Suite - Starting us off with a fossil golem right after the group had to fight one at the end of book 3 seems like an odd stylistic choice. Your average group is going to nuke it from orbit.

The Gliminals are a BRUTAL fight if you heal by negative energy and are at all undead. The Gliminals can spread damage among themselves by daisy chaining bond in light. Be very careful with this fight.

Xharduun's Secret - This one can be hard for people to figure out as Secret Page has no other savings throws other than "Choose to Disbelieve" (and unless you know something is up with the books, you won't) and you wouldn't know to say a password unless you already knew they were Secret Page'd.

The Houseguests - Loved this part. The Research task right after was great as well as it was perfectly timed when the group immediately learns to HATE these guys.

Tower of Gnawed Bones - FUN. Love this place. Multiple methods of insertion, multiple paths. Not being stealthy invites a huge fight at the entrance (though can make the latter a cake-walk), and you can convince a Qlippoth to do your dirty work. Fun!

The Waterfront/Cerulean Glade - Dread Wraiths can't harm people who have negative healing, so this is a bit of a drag. The Rotbombers are pretty easy, the main thing is trying to save the dockworkers (if you care).

The chase of the final wraith is pretty exciting, but it has a very low threshold for failure (6 rounds, 6 events, no margin for error).

Cerulean Glade - Solar Golems were cool, I liked their beam of light attack. It was satisfying to crush that smuggler (the two vampires swore they'd feast on his heartblood, couldn't interrogate him). An aside about what Talking Corpse does might have been helpful. Again, a Dread Wraith at the final encounter adds nothing to an all negative-healing party.

Second Research Activity -

This was the only part of the AP I skipped, as it seemed like it broke the pacing. Your characters are falsely accused of something, and they have to spend days figuring out the next move. But there's no real pressure on them other than a -4 penalty to interactions with the public. So really you're just waiting around for them to succeed. I restructured this as a limited research goal to discover Bremeteria Veng, who then delivered a bunch of exposition linking the shadow ash and the Yearning Sanctum/Empty Chorus together.

Yearning Sanctum - - Again, more fun. Fun ways to bypass encounters. My wizard was so proud she brought along Disintegrate to nail that Force Wall, bypassing an area completely once the group climbed the balcony! Rinnella Brennon is a great NPC. It was fun to use her and I had her interact with the party Urgathoan at a banquet earlier in the adventure.

The Deathless Arena - - Boy did my Tyrant enjoy crit-succeeding on the challenge task. I appreciated that having hard evidence made the check of choice easier. And having a Thunderdome with the guy who's been making your life miserable was great.

The only part that's shakey is that Cawadok is a frickin' MURDERER and the part about him taking a dive is pretty shaky. My group focused on him first and made the mistake of engaging him in melee and he nearly killed them, which is odd for a character whose mistress specifically told him to take a dive. I think giving him a flat-footed penalty for the engagement or some other debuff might have been appropriate if the group agrees with Brennon's plan. The Plague Giants can be pretty brutal if they catch you in a pincer.

Regarding allegations of this part being a 'railroad':

I don't understand why PC's wouldn't want to do the Thunderdome, unless they're goody-goods and playing the wrong AP. If you hate it or feel like it's forced, I guess you could bypass it and go straight to the next part without much fuss*, but Hyrune's gotta die eventually so there is no 'non violent' solution to this.

* If a group were to do this, I might actually have Hyrune call THEM out to the Thunderdome.

The Hanging Castle - - I really liked the concept for this, but the map we're given on the last page of the AP wasn't quite able to do it justice and my player-group struggled with the idea of a 3D space. That being said it does certainly encourage alternative solutions (be sure to emphasize to them before they go down that this is definitely a giant dwarf fortress-esque cavern and they need to be prepared to move 3D).

I think Weeping Jack and Harmony in Agony should've been a combo encounter, preferably in the center chamber. The spacing is in general too tight (knife fights in phone booths mostly) and they can both be bypassed if your group doesn't zig instead of zag. My group went E2->E9->E10->E3 (but only because they heard harp music) -> E8 -> E11 -> E12. Adding things like the Tolokand were interesting but ultimately a little too much padding at the very end. There are a LOT of fights in here when all you're really craving is going down and killing Hyrune.

Also, my summoner pointed this out to me later, but you can just scry his position and teleport down there at this point.

Fight with Hyrune - Suitably adequate. Him having a possible escape route gives you incentive to play competently. The Unrisen were kind of average (at this point all your characters have fire). I appreciated that he lines them up in front of them to block the group's path so he can monologue. Rare foresight on the part of a villain! More should think about positioning beforehand.

Unanswered Questions

Did Kortash know what was going to happen at the docks? Was he trying to help you? What was his angle?

Why are the Urgathoans and Kabrirites feuding? I looked at Kabriri's entry in the adventure toolbox, Urgathoa's entry in Gods and Magic, and several other places and all over the AP and couldn't figure out what Brenon's motivation was.

Berline Haldoli Rating: 0/10

Berline is one of the most amusing NPC's to come out of Paizo's Pathfinder in a couple years. Her absence is notable!

"We're sorry (Party), but your Hag-Vampire is in Another Castle, the AP"

This AP will wear you out. By the time you get to the final stop your party of evil or neutral-self-interested characters will be ready to just murder everything in sight to get it over with instead of having to stop and help yet another person with their little problems.

The Return to the Cottage - Oh hey, more Shadows, which do negative damage, that thing that doesn't hurt us! And a Div that doesn't want to fight. Skip!

Thornhearth - A series of haunts that will annoy more than threaten you. WE GET IT, HE GOT MURKED IN HIS TOWER. Bonus for the investigation of the townspeople as a time waster when you can figure out what's going on in the town in about 30 seconds.

Hollow Market - One encounter, one which is skippable if you pass your thievery check (I liked that, good to use stealth/thievery!). Then the most tedious fight with two vampires in a maze ever. Fast Healing 10 + Resist 5 Physical = I hope you bought cold iron swords or this is going to be tedious as Hell. I wanted to scream at my group "Please just use your SPELLS you're sitting on so we can MOVE ON"

Then....

Everything comes to a screeching, grinding halt for the middle of the AP.

Field of Maidens-

Medusa shows up. "Hey, I'll give you important plot info if you make these two groups go away. I don't care how." (POOF)

The connection of the Medusa to the statues is never underlined. And the Medusa-girl buzzes off before you can even ask. This is HUGE as it should underlie your entire motivations to get the two camps of Holomog armies to get out of the Field! But it's never explained to the characters!

At best you have to beg and plead with one group of...who are these people? There's barely any info about them in the book. Why do they dislike each other? Barely explained. What are they doing here? Barely explained. What are their motivations? Again, barely explained. I don't CARE about these people FFS, we're never going to see them again! Why are we having to spend literal in-game DAYS trying to be their friend or doing their chores?!

It's just hilarious how fast you go from 0 to BFF's. In 3 days it's possible with good rolls for the leader of the Greenblades to be giving you Victory Plate and +2 runes. This is the kind of crap that Tumblr D&D 5e stories are made of. "I rolled a 20 and they appointed me General! Hu hu hu hu! 5e is so fun, you roll a 20 and anything can happen! Wackiness!"

God forbid you're a Tyrant who is oathbound not to put up with this "Do me a favor and I'll do you a favor" crap or you'll TPK yourself into oblivion.

There is no way, as far as I can tell, to bypass this. You -have- to make them go away somehow. Whether by killing them all, assassinating their leaders (a tall order), or kissing butt with either side until they go away.

Perhaps aware that these are not really a riveting encounter, if you decide to suck up to the faction leaders, they will give you boring little chores to do involving small random encounters to pass the time. More busywork that doesn't get you closer to your goal!

This feels like someone who was really into Holomog inserted a different adventure halfway through this one, for the area of the Field of Maidens. Just, again, very bizarre and jarring how it brings things to a grinding halt. So many boring, boring encounters that don't really have any impact on things. Ugh.

This AP could have really benefitted from a third solution involving the ghouls at the Dead Tree. Instead they're a side-scene for the Zuntishan path. But a third path where you use the Ghouls to drive off both the Zuntishans and the Nwanyians would have probably salvaged this, and been more thematically appropriate for a bunch of evil Gebbites.

As it stands, this is yet another "Author did not understand the themes and tone of this AP and it shows" situation.

Shadow Manse - Straight and to the point. No complaints. Other than the fact that you can't 'discover' this house without completing the prior mentioned thing, which seems like a glaring oversight. What if we just decide "Nuts to this, we'll find the Medusa ourselves"?

Gristlehall - Not bad. I think the connection to Kenmimbi could be better. Again, you're just so exhausted by the time you reach it that you just want the thing to be over with.

The Holomog adventure toolbox --- whatever, it's Themyscira. Yay, feminism, I guess. Another matriarchical progressive society that can do no wrong and has no conflict or societal issues! 3 whole pages of it. Borrrrring.

The Rhino was an interesting NPC and I liked the idea of the Greenblades, but sadly this was just not the AP for it.

I'm actually really puzzled as when Jenny J. has written for Starfinder she's been very respectful of the GM/Player's time and kept things tightly paced. Drift Crashers 2 was a bit self-indulgent, but nothing on this scale of tedium.

I got no notes. A place that has long been deserving of its own splat finally got one.

The only thing I really found grating was yet another new pantheon introduced of gods NOBODY cares about.

It's a rulebook splat. More content = better thing in general. Nothing too controversial jumped out at me, lots of good stuff all over, like the feats (especially the kobold/dragonkin ones), and while the species descriptions were way too fluffy and boringly cute/optimistic that was a small quibble.

I think the Evolutionist class does exactly what it's advertised and my wife liked the playtest.

"Downtown City Streets" might have been a better description

Highly recommend for generic urban encounters

Good dungeon crawl. Straight and to the point. I liked the dimensional maze in part 2.

A few criticisms -

- The Tesseract is designed to be Escherseque in its layout but the maps weren't able to communicate this very well. Some of the rooms were basically MMO "I kick you, you kick me" battles because they were fought in rooms that were 3x3 or 4x4 squares. With 4 party members, plus the tag-along drone, PLUS the enemies it can get cramped and limit your options.

- At level 5-6, a Kathrepi's Shade's Telekinetic Projectile has about a 1 in 4 chance to hit a properly armored opponent. Making them more nuisance than threat.

- A map for me to borrow for the final ship battle would have been nice. I improvised by googling a stock image of what the inside of a sphere would look like and used that, along with some lighting effects in Foundry for a miniature sun (and my players seemed to like it).

- Also the statblock for the Heart of the Tesseract is confusing. The text says that it can't maneuever so you have to choose somewhere for it to "face". Okay, well why does it have speed 4, turn 4 then?

- Malacantha's motivations seem like they got twisted between Book 1 and Book 3. Apparently if you fail she gets 'supercharged' by the Tesseract and goes tear-assing through Heaven and Hell. Interesting? But strange, because clearly Malacanta's motivation initially was both revenge and keeping you from causing a galaxy-destroying cataclysm, which is actually pretty noble for a Devil!

Probably should have been mentioned somewhere earlier in the text as a secondary motivation.

- The leaps of logic were convuluted and reminded me of Trek technobabble. The GM has to explain to the players "I can't explain why in layman's terms but your character gets the sense that this is a bad thing" to explain how they connect the professor's work with the Heart to the apocalyptic event they're trying to avert. Same with the "Well logically we have to jump the ship into the Heart Chamber" thing in part 3.

- the final ship battle is just a nickel and dime fest. Ugh, so boring. The Heart has too much HP.