Leon Aquilla's page

I disagree with demlin's review posted earlier -- and I'm curious why if it had enough content to keep him busy for months, it took him less than a month to finish the AP.

Anyways -- there are some issues with this that keep it from being a stand-out AP. To summarize: Continuity issues, too much stuff spread out over too many encounters, editing issues in the AP, and a possible sequence break that could lead to you fighting the final encounter way earlier than the AP expects you to.

In detail:

Continuity issues - Ivarsa's motivation for hunting the Broken Tusk in book 1 was to find the Frozen Flame. But Venexus has had possession of the Frozen Flame for at least 100 years, and Ivarsa has personally treated with Venexus in Lost Mammoth Valley, trying to recruit her into her service (this is, I presume, to explain why she can teleport two camps of Burning Mammoths into the valley ahead of her main host to cause trouble). So the entire pursuit of book 1 seems to have been mostly a waste if that was true, since she already knew where Broken Tusk valley was.

Too much stuff - The hexmap is filled with activities, every single hex. Some of them are waymarkers, but almost every hex has at least one combat encounter. Quite frankly, it's exhausting to have to keep wiping and re-marking up flipmats for use in the various biomes for each encounter. The enjoyable parts of the AP were ironically the ones where they had to stay in a single location for more than a day, so they could actually stop and take things in -- otherwise you're just going from encounter to encounter, hex to hex, with not a whole lot of opportunities for much besides fighting things that want to kill you in between.

Also the group was level 7 by the time they hit areas B41-B50. Neither I nor the group had the stomach for a lot of the fetch-quest stuff that is on the eastern side of the map by that point. We were ready for the finale, and so I wound up allowing them to sequence-break (more on that later) since it was a relief to both me and them.

I would have liked for an encounter rate more in tune with the first book -- rather than the densely packed one that was in this. As it stands some of the later stuff in Lyuba and its surrounding hexes wound up "cut for time". In general the stuff on the west side of the map was more interesting, especially the stuff surrounding the crusaders.

It seemed like a lot of the reputation point-building opportunities were on the eastern side of the map as well, and should have been spread out more through the AP.

Don't care about the Sutaki - A lot of text is spilled on encounters with the Sutaki, but as a society I don't really get a lot of info about them. I was made to care about the Broken Tusk through glimpses into their society. I care about the Iomedaen Crusaders because I know what they went through at the Worldwound. But I don't really care about the Sutaki.

Editing Issues - There were a few statblocks that were frustrating to read and wound up with me realizing after the fact "Oh, that encounter was too easy". The Abyss-warped trees on page 13 looks like a complete stat block, but if you go to page 14 you realize that the other half of it is on that page and if you didn't bother looking at page 14 (because all you needed for the encounter SEEMED like it was on page 13 ) you never would realize it was there. I think maybe the art placement could have been moved. Similarly there's a statblock link on page 41 that says to use a "human tiefling adept" that had me fumbling through pages for awhile before I realized they wanted me to use the tiefling adept, but the character was HUMAN, not a human-ancestry tiefling adept monk.

Sequence Break - on page 41 there's an encounter which, if your party completes it, it LITERALLY SAYS that the white dragon boss of the AP shows up and starts raging about you destroying her statue. Well, my group simply looked at me and said "....so could we get her attention and kill her now?", and I had no good answer for them. So they wound up slaying the boss outside her lair, all because the AP said she was supposed to show up and get bent out of shape that they smashed her statue. It was a tough, but fair fight, but I believe the encounter at the very end of the AP was designed to be slightly harder. I had no good reason to tell them no other than "Because I said so", and by that point I was eager to take any quick exit out of the AP I could.

Finally - I think my players felt that chapter 3 was rather anticlimactic. You've been building yourself a practical army as you migrate eastwards across the valley -- and you don't get an opportunity to use it. I believe my group really wanted to use the Iomedaen Crusaders to attack Lyuba (with help from the Sutaki who disliked the regime) and capture it. But the AP seems to think you're out there on your own and can't show up with a huge army in two weeks.

Things I liked about the AP:

The Ashen Tower, the Crusader encampment and the encounters in the western portion of the map were all great. My players all felt really good about helping the halfling avenge her brother, and killing Tatzlwyrms. The Glacial Palace, and the four little wyrmlings were all great. Fezerod was fantastic, my players love talking to dragons, and Fezerod is the perfect schemer -- so he was great to interact with. The write-up on the Primordial Flame is fantastic, and it was a pleasure to put that artifact into the hands of a level 8 character.

This was an okay AP, but I thought a few things brought it down -

- a massive XP dump at the beginning from non-combat encounters can mean they level up without a lot of credits/gear given to them.

- The players will deduce that something is going wrong with the Nuar long before the bomb is planted. Also the Founding Day default holiday can be months away depending on how long your players have been operating in game time -- so players can be confused why the urgency to solve the missing sugar problem.

- The final encounter is easy to be over-levelled for by events and random encounters. The Asp in particular seemed like it was underwhelming.

Paizo's website ate my review with the Backtrack bug so I'm just going to spit out bullet points here, might edit them later:

Good:

- An under-appreciated unique part of the Inner Sea gets its time in the spotlight

- A satisfying finale towards the end. Chapters 2 and 3 are really good.

- The art style is fantastic. I really like the surreal painting-like quality to the Burning Mammoth opponents. Makes an otherwise mundane enemy kind of surreal and otherworldly in appearance.

- A hex map with a pursuing enemy provides a sense of pressure to keep the party moving and a sense of scale and time. (Note however this is NOT a "hexploration" AP -- the route is pretty linear and funnels you)

Bad:

- Chapter 1 has no real failure conditions other than death. You can blunder through all of it and the NPC's are expected to just pat you on the back and say "That's okay, we all make mistakes". With no consequences, it's completely skippable. Consider rewriting it to the tastes of your group.

- The Broken Tusk are a bit of a noble savage cliche. I appreciate that they needed to be the most cosmopolitan of the tribes to accomodate players who don't want to buy into the tribes, but still seem like they're the "made for TV ratings" tribe.

- There is no spelled out place/person to trade for items with. I get that this is supposed to be an AP about a nomadic society, but this is still Pathfinder 2e and equipment is still a part of character growth. The AP would have benefitted from a merchant sailing up the river or something from Varisia/Belkzen/Irrisen in part 3 to trade with the tribe. As it stands currently your group will be sitting on 60-80g (not loot, GOLD) with nothing to spend it on by the end of the AP.

- Pakano, other than being a bit of a jerk, doesn't give you much motivation to hate him by the end of Chapter 1. I moved his foreseeable but inevitable betrayal to the end of Chapter 2 instead to give it a bit more weight.

I thought this was a pretty decent AP - not mind-blowing but some good interesting stuff in there. Part 2 is really where it gets to be the most open-ended and interesting with a lot of cyberpunk-y mini encounters scattered about.

The jarring part of this AP is the map design - you see this in two parts:

In part 1 you infiltrate a facility which has a Terminator-class Security Robot patrolling the C-suite section of the hallways. The problem is the Terminator is a LARGE construct and the hallways he's designated to patrol are 5 feet wide. This pretty clearly does not make sense.

In the final facility you go through the corridors are VERY tight -- Like 1-grid square corridors in a lot of places. Power armor is out of the question. And the final fight takes place in a 3x3 grid which is like a knife fight in a phone booth.

Just very poorly linear-designed encounters. Signal of Screams 1 had this in a few instances but not to this degree.

Also there are very few encounters in the finale - after you wreck the 1st floor you can basically stomp your way around it without encountering much resistance until the very last encounter.

The new class, gear, and class feature options are all fantastic. I have no issue with any of those. But both backstory and art have taken a nose dive and if this is the direction the IP is heading I'm not sure if it's worth supporting.

This book could have really used some FOCUS, but it was like everyone and their mother wanted to throw in the minor God of niche causes, resulting in a watered down product.

- Shelyn is mentioned on one page and only to mention that she had a relationship with Desna and Sarenrae and never again. How incredibly insulting to her legacy that she's basically a cheesecake footnote to titillate readers. (I'm aware she's involved in some scenario in SF Society play but since I DON'T play Society I'm not sure why I should care.)

- Art is terrible in some places. Abadar and Weydan look like a generic NPC you'd create as a player character from a bunch of defaults. Pharasma looks like a crazy catlady in a hoverchair and is missing her color scheme. Iomedae looks like she needs a haircut and her color scheme is also wack. Sarenrae needs to eat a hamburger. Why is Urgathoa wearing half a space suit complete with helmet?

- Nothing about the planes, but we got 8 pages on a bunch of magical schools and factions that nobody will ever use aside from the Wardens and the Order of the Gate, and a bunch of deities you will never even remember.

Crystal Frasier unfortunately made such a caricature stand-in for her own opinions out of Eutropia Stavian that my group still refers to her as "Princess Highground". God bless the authors that tried to salvage this, but the developer kept trying to smother them.

There are also some odd anachronistic elements in the writing that jumped out at me. "Peace-bonding" weapons in the Senate. Service animals allowed....an editor probably should have caught these.

Not really enjoying Paizos' whiggish take on the inexorable march of history throughout Golarion.

-- if you want to make any of your own NPC's/monsters.

This splat definitely reflects Joe Pasini's philosophy of "Something for everyone". I especially appreciated the NPC blocks for various soldiers and other factional members, very useful. Wish Near Space had the same!

The only hang-up I have is that there is implied tension in the Pact Worlds, say , between the Hellknights and Iomedaens/Knights of Golarion but it's never really explained how this conflict might play out given that The Stewards enforce a NO FIGHTING rule.

EDIT 6/25/2022:

Okay, that's not the only critique I have. There are a couple other issues with the Hellknights.

First is rather pedantic - the Hellknight armor list should read:

Armiger (Level 2)
Paralictor (Level 5)
Maralictor (Level 9)
Lictor (Level 14)

Because that's the traditional Hellknight hierarchy as shown in Path of the Hellknight. Instead it reads

Armiger (Level 2)
Paralictor (Level 9)
Maralictor (Level 14)
Lictor (Level 5)

Sad!

The other thing is this -- the star Knight (Hell Knight) feat grants you heavy armor proficiency at level 2. But every single Hellknight NPC in this book uses D-Suit III's. Light armor! Whyyyyy? I can understand the Signifers, but why would the Hellknight Commander or the Armigers not use the Hellknight Plate?!

I nearly killed everyone at the beginning with the troop rules. Oops.

Everything else was pretty enjoyable - good pacing, nothing super broken, except maybe the troop encounter at the beginning but that was my fault as I overtuned it for 6 people.

5 stars for the Wayne Reynolds art on the cover.

This book is of limited utility. If you run grandiose plots and schemes, nation-changing events, and the like -- you may want this book in order to better get a feel for the personalities of some of the dramatis personae. If your adventures focus more on the rank and file of the world, or plunging into the depths of tombs and dungeons, it's of little use.

However they have no stats, which seems like a missed opportunity. Why go to the trouble of outlining the (mortal) dramatis personae of the Inner Sea and not statblock them?

It took about 600 pages to cover both the major and minor deities of the Inner sea in Pathfinder 1e. This book tries to accomplish that in 135. Needless to say, it did not do so.

I think a lot of people felt like they had to say something nice about this splat. But I'm under no such pressure.

What I liked:

- Elves and Dwarves. They've been criminally under-written by Paizo the past 10 years. So it was good to get some new elven/dwarven stuff in.

- Orcs. Kinda? In trying to placate fans and write "Orcs aren't bad, really" they've overcompensated and now Orcs are practically venerated across the Mwangi Expanse. Yeesh. Also -- demon-fighting Orcs? Where have I heard that before. Oh yeah, Eberron.

What I disliked:

- Human nations are pretty forgettable and worse, mostly peaceful. It was clear someone wanted to write Wakanda here. But peaceful, prosperous societies do not make for good settings for stories of adventure and conflict. However the noteworthy good settlements are Bloodcove, Kibwe, Jaha, and Vidrian.

- Pantheon bloat. Gods are quickly becoming a checklist item for Paizo/Pathfinder and I don't like it.

If you're new to the setting I wouldn't get this book. This is a "Previously, in Pathfinder..." book for those who didn't devour every single AP and weren't up to date on all the changes that occurred during its 10 year history. But as a newcomer guide to the various countries of the setting, the Inner Sea world Guide is much more useful.

Which brings me to my main complaint, which is the general direction the setting appears to be going in, which is peace suddenly breaking out across the Inner Sea.

- The Belkzen Orcs are being retconned from a warlike threat to misunderstood greenskins, because of community discourse around Drow/Orcs/other traditional "different-skinned" races.

- Irrisen is also peaceful now with Anastasia's assumption

- New Thassilon is half peaceful/half violent. We can all guess how that's going to play out.

- Cheliax is neutered after losing yet another province

- The Worldwound is closed

The world appears to be rapidly running out of interesting threats to deal with besides Tar-Baphon, and so far they really haven't had any interesting meta threats to take their place, or AP's that deal with world-changing events. Tar-Baphon is a Saturday morning cartoon villain, and has already had 2 AP's about him. Something new, please.

The nature of the world is conflict. And peace is not interesting for the purposes of fiction. As Matt Colville said in one of his worldbuilding videos
"If your countries aren't at war, you should be ready to explain why."

Rather than reviewing this I'll just leave you with a line of dialogue from Part 2, Event 6 of The Chimera Mystery:

Space Goblin: "We know there's something valuable here!!! You can't talk us out of it!"

Party: "How do you know?"

Space Goblin: "Because she gave us......" (pause for dramatic reveal) "....a PILLOWCASE!" (shows pillowcase with crudely drawn map on it)

I really liked this AP, though I felt that the tie-ins to Breachhill were a bit odd, never really felt compelled to go back to the town once we started clearing the castle.

It is definitely highly lethal as written - consider reducing some of the encounters to weak status from their normal stats.

This AP specifically gave me a lot of fond memories and forged some great character bonds:

1. The airheaded Mystic Xenowarden deciding to sleep in a trap, then smiling somewhat obliviously at her lover from inside as they tried to smash it open knowing full well they'd save them before they asphyxiated.

2. The explosive trap placed by a spec-ops soldier that blew a hole in a platform and dropped a Soldier 20 feet, leaving her pissed and claiming vendetta against him for LIFE.

3. The ending -- which I supercharged with a cheap shot that reduced everyone to 1 HP and destroyed their ship on the landing pad, just before the reveal. Everyone was shocked and stunned and ready to beat me to death with dice bags -- and then they were blown away at what happened.

This AP continues the points I made earlier about being a good intro AP for those new to Starfinder. Limited merchant selection and lack of options keep the group from getting into decision paralysis.

My only complaint is that there is a chokepoint in area B8 of the prison where your choices are boxed in. One of them involves a fake prisoner, but if your party didn't think of that already they're screwed. The other is "cause a major distraction" which raises the alert level -- which up until this point it has been stressed was a bad thing for the players. So you're left with only one alternative and that's "Blast your way through" at that point. Perhaps with the new demolitions rules from Tech Revolution this is less of a problem than it was before (good idea on the writers part to future-proof this AP by noting how strong the outside walls are!).

Ultimately my group was able to pull it out of the fire, but they had to kill 3/4ths of the security in that wing to do it. There's also some issues with the fact that if you want to extract via an airlock, you're on an airless moon which invites radiation exposure even if you have life bubble.

Again, people complain about a "railroad" as if AP's are supposed to anticipate all solutions, which they aren't. But if you think this adventure is a railroad you are suffering under a misunderstanding of what the word means. AP's are not a West Marches campaign. Click here for a more elaborate discussion of the concept.

The backmatter in the latter half of the book is probably the best 8 page write-up of an interstellar autocratic empire I've ever read. I was immediately drawn into it and could immediately picture New Thespera, the Aeon throne, and the politics of the Aeon worlds. The fact they gave it such verisimilitude with so few pages is nothing short of amazing.

I think this 3 part AP has everything you want in an intro AP to Starfinder -

1. Star Warsy plot, you against the Empire, a roguish ragtag band of miscreants

2. Limited access to items. Useful to prevent decision paralysis among new players overwhelmed with choice.

3. A straight forward uncomplicated BAD guy to work against.

The backmatter was also useful, moreso the 2nd AP but the 1st was also of great utility.

A serviceable ending that is of suitable spectacle for the AP.

I added some flourishes to it here and there (a rag-tag coalition of Hellknights, Iomedaens, and Diaspora pirates came to help engage the Corpse Fleet) but ran it mostly as written. With the Starship Operations Manual I might even consider replacing parts 1-2 with an armada battle if that's what your players are into, with a boarding action at the end to reconnect parts 3-4 into it.

I really don't understand the issue of a party wanting to go towards the superweapon and being denied and feeling railroaded. Just throw several Barrow Reaper cruisers at them. If they smash those, throw five at them. Eventually they'll get the message that they can't approach the superweapon. I explained that the superdreadnought was almost completely exposed save for a small picket escort because its ships were busy subduing the anti-capital ship weapons & securing the macguffin and that seemed to do the trick for my players.

If all else fails, it's not really a huge annoyance to run the entirety of the AP on board the Steller Degenerator using the maps for the Empire of Bones.

And by the way - this isn't railroading. Railroading is ignoring good ideas by your players, not preventing bad ideas from coming to fruition.

Part 3 and part 4 were especially memorable for my group -- the enemies were challenging, but at a higher level the group had lots of ways to deal with those encounters.

I felt like the beginning and middle of this AP was better than the ending -- several major personalities are basically chewed through like meat in a meat grinder in the final area of the core facility without much of an opportunity to explore them. I know that a hostile NPC's life can be measured in rounds in d20 games but I would have liked for them to have made an appearance earlier (perhaps in book 3 or 4).

I enjoyed the new gear, new class options, and mechs, but came away unsatisfied from some of the write-ups of various sectors of the economy.

I did glean a few facts which are useful for constructing a coherent worldview but felt like there was still a lot missing. The write-ups address things from a "common citizen" point of view but fail to address macro issues like:

- Why do people trade in credsticks instead of UPB's if the latter is less traceable?

- Similarly why do people prefer credsticks to UPB's?

- Is it a fabrication economy or is it heavily reliant on shipping? Are there agri-worlds? How do the Pact Worlds stay fed?

- How does environmental support work on armors that aren't sealed against vacuum?

- Are robotic enemies hackable and if so do they behave just like drones or is there something that prevents them from being hacked?

etc.

Mandatory purchase for any GM that's going to go off the reservation of AP's. The random encounter tables alone are worth the purchase. If it's one thing PF/SF needs more of, it's random tables.

I felt this AP started and ended nicely, but the bit in the middle needed some work. Without any Swarm to work with I felt like the pieces that were offered up were too generic to really be memorable.