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.
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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I played Voice in the Void with my Oracle of Groetus in a live tabletop game. He got killed and the rest of the party sensibly ran away! In other words, it's a tough scenario. I will say, however, that it contains an excellent backstory and makes great use of setting lore. It's also a scenario that continues and furthers the excellent Pathfinder Society plot thread involving the Blakros Museum. I'd recommend people play it, but with PCs leaning into the combat-capable side of things.
SPOILERS!:
The scenario starts with a briefing by Venture-Captain Adril Hestram at the Grand Lodge in Absalom. It seems the curator of the Blakros Museum, Nigel Aldain, has reported that Imrizade Blakros (daughter of the patron family) disappeared while doing work in the museum's basement. Since several watchmen sent to find her have also disappeared, it seems like a job for Pathfinders to find her! Hestram explains that the Society is willing to take the job because Imrizade's a successful fortune-hunter who had just returned from Osirion carrying a mysterious artifact: an odd metal cylinder covered in hieroglyphs. So, the field agents are being sent to find Imrizade not out of the goodness of the PFS' heart, but so they can either get the artifact or some information about it. All in all, a solid story hook.
After the briefing, the PCs presumably travel to the museum, where they're met by Nigel Aldain. He shows them the secret ramp down into the basement, and that's where the rest of the scenario takes place. So, in one sense, this is a classic dungeon crawl. But as I said above, there's a ton of careful setting lore, atmosphere, and backstory integrated into each room and encounter to make for a compelling adventure (i.e., this is *not* a "one orc stands in a 10x10 room guarding a treasure chest" style of dungeon crawl). Dangers include caryatid columns, animated dinosaur skeletons, oozes, fungal molds, and (in their first Pathfinder appearance), cerebric fungi. It all builds up to a really cool finale, where the PCs discover Imrizade standing in front of the Gate of Beyond, a portal to the Dark Tapestry, with fleshy fungoid umbilicals attaching the Gate to her body!
The backstory lore is extensive and interesting. Before being turned into a museum, the building was originally the manor of Ralzeros the Overwatched, a mad astrologer and wizard obsessed with the distant worlds beyond Golarion's skies, who built on the site because he had discovered the Gate of Beyond buried there. Thousands of years later, Imrizade Blakros had discovered the gate while playing in the basement archives as a child, and later ("recently") as an adult adventurer, discovered a strange metal cylinder in Osirion that turned out to contain the ghostly consciousness of an aberrant sorcerer named Kubburum Ishmedagan that took over Imrizade's body. Returning to the museum, the possessed Imrizade is working to reactivate the Gate of Beyond and open a portal to the Dark Tapestry--thus attracting all sorts of bizarre and dangerous creatures from Aucturn and beyond. For those keeping track, we also get a reference to the Aucurn Enigma!
My description and summary probably hasn't done the scenario justice, but those interested in the lore of Golarion and the excellent interweaving of Blakros family drama into PFS scenarios should definitely experience Voice in the Void. It may kill you, but that's what Prestige Points are for!
The Voice in the Void is a scenario that’s considered to be a must-play as it’s fleshes out one of the more famous location on Golarion. As such I’m a little embarrassed to say it took me this long to finally play it. I ended up picking my gnome oracle of the Dark Tapestries and in hindsight I couldn’t have picked a better character for this scenario. It was a perfect fit. If you got a similar character and haven’t played this scenario yet, I highly advise you consider to do so.
As a season 1 scenario, there’s always a chance that time hasn’t been favourable to it. To some extend this is true, but overall I’d say it’s weathered the passing of the years okay enough. Some of the combats can still provide a nice challenge and there’s a nice diversity to it as well. I rather liked the statues and the final combat. The whole idea behind the final boss is one I really like and that is really evocative. While it still works as written, I’d like to see it get updated to current standards and make it just that little bit more memorable in terms of mechanics though.
If I were to pinpoint some things I didn’t like that much, I’d say that the scenario can be over rather quickly. It doesn’t have the same length other scenarios have, which is a shame as it leaves you wanting for more. There’s also little to no opportunity to role-play with NPCs. It’s just a short dungeon-crawl with a wide variety of opponents.
Voice in the Void has its flaws. That doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable though. The storyline could have been a little more prominent in relation to the encounters and certain parts could use an update, but the scenario aged rather well all things considering. I can see why a fair amount of people say that everyone should play this one. While I wouldn’t go that far myself, I can still see myself recommending this scenario to others.
Back to Absalom for this adventure, with a backstory concerning a centuries-old tale of a wizard/astronomer and his observatory, the site of which was later built over to form a palatial villa and museum for antiquities - the Blakros Museum (encountered before in Pathfinder Society Scenario #5: Mists of Mwangi. A child of the house who enjoyed exploring the remote reaches of the house developed a taste for adventure and became an artefact-hunter in her own right... and found something in an Osirian tomb that brought her back home. Only she's vanished somewhere in the bowels of the museum and the curator has asked the Pathfinders for help. The backstory explains, for the GM, what's actually going on, of course.
After a synopsis of what ought to happen, the adventure itself begins with the party getting their briefing from Venture-Captain Adril Hestram in the Grand Lodge and being sent round to the museum to start their investigations - although it's worth taking the time to do a bit of research before they go. The rest of the module describes the basement (and points below) in plenty of detail... pick up a copy of Mists of Mwangi if you want to know what is above-ground. Once down in the basement, there's plenty to keep the party busy with the emphasis on fighting... pity any poor docents who venture down there to catalogue the reserve stock! There is little scope for role-playing or interaction, the only way to deal with what's down there is to attempt to kill them.
However, despite the lack of anything other than fighting, it's very atmospheric, indeed quite creepy - an excellent dungeon crawl with some unusual opposition. What is going on down there is very interesting, and it's almost disappointing that destruction of the core artefact is inevitable and expected. Come to fight and you can have an enjoyable game.
(I both GMed this and played this under Ascalaphus.)
Wow, there's a lot of bang for your buck in this scenario. It isn't very long (both times we finished early, I recall), but it's certainly a great experience. Encounters hit fast and hard, and there's a good variety of enemies to fight. The party I GMed wasn't exactly prepared for some of these encounters, and that made it all the more exciting. It's a shame I consistently roll crap as a GM, as it took away some of the challenge for these encounters, but some of these encounters can be downright unfair (in the good sense).
The only downside I see is that it's a relatively short scenario with not that much roleplay, but it's a darn good dungeon crawl, with a pretty unique final boss. It's aged quite a bit, but not as much as some other scenarios from earlier seasons. Big recommendation.
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!
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.
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. :)
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!!
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.
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 !!!!!! ***
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. :-)
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.
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, 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.
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!
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.