Plight of the Tuatha, Vol. 2: Vasily's Woe (PFRPG) PDF

My group finally finished this after 4 sessions - that's a lot of gaming! Overall, this is absolutely a 5-star adventure, improving on what was already an impressive start in Part 1, The Feasthall of Ash. You’re better off starting with the first module, but you can easily jump straight into this one (although this module is like The Empire Strikes Back, the adventure clearly doesn’t end with this module, so you really can’t call it a stand-alone adventure). This review does include spoilers.

The atmosphere has a creepy, haunted, Eastern European vibe, which works extremely well. The fog, the plague-stricken villagers all with chicken claw amulets around their necks, the welcoming and grandmotherly but slightly creepy innkeeper, the little ghost girl and her references to witches, the abandoned temple, the creepy marionettes attacking from darkness – it all worked extremely well. My players were on edge from the start. They have already deduced that all the weird stuff going on stems from a feud between two bitter women – one who lost her husband to a younger, prettier interloper, and one who in turn lost her husband, her child, and eventually her own humanity to the jealousy and vengeance of her husband’s “ex”. It’s very personal, and all the more impactful.

The amount of detail and background are a godsend, and to do the adventure justice you will need to commit to some preparation time, it’s not something that all fits together after a quick readthrough or on the fly. There’s plenty of info on key NPCs and other background info, which my players unfortunately missed out on as they went directly to the temple and broke in, which turned the villagers against them. But the adventure is also fairly “sand-boxy”, if you will, as things can unfold logically no matter which direction the players take once they reach the village, and the adventure also provides some guidance on how to do so.

For all the time and attention to detail in the development of the plot, there are a few omissions/inconsistencies that bother me:

- Page 26 states the temple’s guardian statues will animate and attack the party if they try to breach the main entrance, although no combat stats are provided other than hardness and HP. Later on, the same page seems to imply that anyone breaching the main entrance is cursed by the statues, not attacked.

- Vasily’s note that the party finds in the temple (p. 30) states that the planar bleed now works autonomously, allowing him to retreat to Petrov Manor and have his servants bring him the Antecedent of Easement. If that’s the case, why isn’t it working when the party encounters it (other than the fact that this would make for a very short adventure)? Also, Elena’s spirit, when she relives her death, begs Yaga not to kill her as she has already handed over “Papa’s magic potion” (p. 50). If the planar bleed is working autonomously, Yaga simply could have gotten the elixir from the temple.

- The Antecdent of Easement is apparently inside the Flesh Within that has occupied Yaga’s body (p. 62)? Um, why? This is the “Holy Grail” of the adventure and there’s only one small reference to this in the conclusion, with no explanation of why or how. Did she drink it? Before or after the Flesh Within took over her body? How many years ago- presumably decades? And it's still within her body? And why is the Flesh Within even inside her? I assume she did so willingly when learning how to tap the power of the Plague Demon, but in an adventure fully brimming with information, this sort of thing shouldn’t go unanswered.

I’m being pretty picky here, because there’s not much else to complain about. It’s a great plot in a great setting. I’ll adjust this review as we get further into the adventure, but it has met and exceeded all expectations.

***** FEBRUARY 2018 UPDATE *****

After four lengthy gaming sessions, my players finally brought the adventure to a close. I love how the pieces of this adventure have slowly fallen into place, with a full understanding not coming until the final session. Layer by layer, each part of this drama has slowly revealed itself. Through their prior exploration of the village and Petrov Manor, and the confrontation with Yaga’s cultists in the gardens outside, they now understand the role that each of the tortured souls in this petty but deadly drama has played.

After freeing Elena’s spirit and discovering the slumbering plague demon entombed beneath the garden’s of Petrov Manor, the Party finally confronted Yaga in her hut. Wary of her power, they spent a considerable amount of time going back and forth, bargaining over the Antecedent of Easement. After failing to reach a bargain they eventually attacked. Due to the size of the Party I buffed her power, and gave her a couple of ensorcelled guards. It was a pretty intense battle and a fitting conclusion.

Despite a few minor oversights, this is clearly a five-star adventure and highly recommended. Can't wait to get them started on the next adventure in the series!

The second installment in Mór Games' epic saga clocks in at a massive 101 pages, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of editorial, 1 page ToC,1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with a massive 94 (!!!) pages of content, so let's take a look, shall we?

This being and adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players may wish to jump to the conclusion.

All right, still here?

After triumphing in the former module, Philiandrius the mage contacts the PCs again to travel to the town Innskittering to reclaim the so-called "Antecedent of Easement" as a first step towards foiling the invasions of the Fomoire and their dread deity. Providing them with a means of contacting him and some scrolls, the PCs are sent on their way toward the town of Safeharbor - provided they can prevent their ship from being sunk by magma elementals. In Safeharbor, the PCs may unwittingly gain the attention of the Sect "The Culling" - people that hunt good clerics and wizards because they want the peace bought from the evil gods to remain intact. Morally interesting, this fascinating nod towards the structure of deities and belief in the Imperiums Campaign Setting makes for a compelling set-up that adds a unique dimension to the setting, but one you can easily ignore or reappropriate. Which also brings me to a point - in case you have not played Plight of the Tuath's first module, you are not left alone - the module offers ample advice on running this as a stand-alone, though it mho loses some of its glorious fluff if you do so. Advice on additional tricks to challenge exceptionally capable parties also can be found throughout the module, which renders running it for pros (like my players) easier.

Now back to the plot - I mentioned the Culling already, and know what - the first killer of them the PCs may encounter actually gets a massive, concisely-written background story and actually is a well rounded character. Now Innskittering, guarded by magical mists, hits a soft spot with me - the sinister village, with its old hagish barkeeper, the module's eponymous creepy rhyme-song "Vasily's Woe" and the subtle sense of decreptitude and death, the town and its non-too-friendly inhabitants may well end up as troop-style mobs out for the PC's blood - after all, the temple the PCs will have to enter is taboo ground for strangers. In the exceeding, cool flavor of the module, the very guardian statues of the temple receive their own legends. Unbeknownst to the PCs, the recent outbreaks of plagues (which, as a backdrop of looming despair, is also reflected in tinctures and long-nosed plague masks as available items to purchase - including a stunning artwork for the mask) has had the despairing villagers transform people into soul-bound marionettes -and the path of breadcrumbs leads to Petrov Manor.

In the dark manor, the PCs may save a gnome as they explore the place - now if you're like me, here's one final example why this module is such a great read: A small box fills us in on a gnomish custom - the small folk have been hunted by doppelgangers for generations and thus tend to show their "colors" by picking their skin and bleeding, believing doppelganger blood to be of a different color than red. This also influences jewelry, which often comes with a means to picking one's skin. Now mind you, small cultural tidbits that make sense on a very fundamental logic level within the context of a setting might seem paltry to you, but you *notice* these things on a subconscious level and they all come together.

Now, beyond the investigation of the manor, which in its dressing and challenges, remains distinctly medieval (and unlike most haunted manor scenarios ), the PCs can also explore the manor grounds, where a dread cult taken root -or go directly to the witch Yaga Petrov, who makes for essentially the boos of this module - if they manage to survive her unique spells, the demonic infestation and oh so much more.

The module also comes with a full-page hand-out of stats for a certain gnome, information on the 4 exceedingly cool emergences the PCs may receive during this module (think of trait-like/spell-like rewards for actions that may be lost...or further explored...), fully detailed and statted villages with legends, properly narrated and phrased galore, 10 magic items with EXCESSIVE background information, 6 original monsters, optional rules for minor and major divine rituals, write-ups for the religions of 4 deities (including rituals, SAMPLE BLESSINGS and subdomains...) and finally, 4 pregens, all with their own full-color artworks.

Easy to print-out b/w-cheat cards for DMs to show or have ready for key-NPCs and player-friendly versions of 6 of the maps (all they could conceivably research in the module) are provided.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch - while e.g. one of the statblocks has a "1" missing before the 6 in the AC-entry, the modifiers remain and that was the most grievous glitch I noticed - for a module of this length, quite impressive. Layout adheres to a 2-column full-color standard that is easy to read...and makes me weep that I don't have this in print...yet. Seriously, the first "Plight of the Tuath"-module was beautiful, this perhaps is even more so. The artworks are, no hyperbole, on Paizo-level, depending on your tastes, perhaps even beyond it. It should also be noted that the module is internally hyperlinked and excessively bookmarked for your convenience. The cartography is line-drawn and nice - and plentiful.

"Vasily's Woe" is an exercise is great story-telling that even has some sand-boxy, non-linear qualities to it. While, in its heart, a relatively simple investigation/explore spooky places-module, this adventure actually made it hard for me to put it aside. I'm not kidding. I do not often come across a module I want to read to the end, taking my laptop to bed with me after staring all day long at text. William Moomaw's "Vasily's Woe" did just that. Where the first module by Mór Games had some slight issues with a potentially overshadowing NPC, some non-standard rules in the climax etc., this one also provides unique rules - but ones that actually make sense within the context of the module, and sans contradicting existing ones. But you don't necessarily will want to buy this for the crunch.

You want to buy this for the atmosphere, the ingenuity of the writing, the mastery of the little cultural tidbits that make a world come alive. The atmosphere can be perhaps described as a captivating blend of Russian and Gaelic myth, dosed with a nice sprinkle of danse macabre, an a coherent world-building that may be based on systems and creatures we know, but gives them a whole new dimension. This is more "The Witcher" than Golarion - grittier, but not necessarily darker. The amount of detail provided for...well, EVERYTHING, steeps everything in a sense of antiquity that utilizes subtle techniques of myth-weaving to create a beautiful tapestry of interconnecting dots PCs and players alike may explore at the same time, generating an (Almost always optional) level of detail scarcely seen in modules. Better yet, the overall panorama drawn here is one I really, really love - while managing to generate a sense of antiquity, of an old and ancient world, at the same time, this module succeeds in being FRESH.

This module and its setting, from what I could glean of that, manages to be at once defiantly old-school and suffused with a sense of the ancient and mythological (in the proper academic term's various notions), while at the same time carving its own identity and making a defiant stand against settings that have bloated themselves with races, thinking that by adding a race with x modifiers, they can create a richer backdrop of cultures, when they can't even get proper human cultures right. This module has more awareness of what makes a world believable than the vast majority of settings I've read (and enjoyed). It boils down to the attention of detail and the proper THINKING THROUGH of its components, which come together as something greater than the sum of its parts.

You may have noticed that I have remained relatively opaque throughout the review - this is not due to an inability to describe the plot, but rather from my desire to not spoil this one and the reading experience, this offers.

William Moomaw and Mór Games deliver a module, which, while not flawless, makes for a superb reading, a compelling adventure and top-notch production values. Add to that the fact that this is only the second product of Mór Games and I'm really stoked to see where the company and its Imperiums-campaign setting will go in the future. I remain with a final verdict of 5 stars + seal of approval and a nomination as a Candidate for my Top Ten of 2014.

Endzeitgeist out.

The introduction and background set the scene - and the mood. For this is intended as a 'dark' chapter in the adventure path and ought to be presented in quite a creepy way, with footsteps heard in empty rooms and candles which blow out when there is no draft.

Working for an elven wizard, the party is sent to find components and information required for his work, sent to an isolated and insular area under the thumb of a less than savory cult. They do not care for visitors, or wizards, or people who worship strange gods... and it's foggy and the locals are coming down with a strange disease. All the elements are in place for a claustrophobic and scary time.

This adventure works best if you are following the Plight of the Tuatha adventure path and have already played part 1, Feast Hall of Ash. If you do not wish to do this, provision is made for the hiring wizard to explain more background to ensure that the party know the importance of the quest on which they are being sent - if they have played it, they already know him. However, as matters are so entwined in the background of the world in which the whole adventure path is set - a mature world in which the author has been running his own games for years - it's recommended that you go and run Feast Hall of Ash first, then play this adventure. It can be run as a plain creepy quest on its own, and will make a good adventure on that level, but you'll be missing out on the depth of background that's here.

The adventure itself begins with the journey to the target area, arriving at a nearby harbour before travelling overland. Things have been pretty quiet up until now since they left their wizard employer (although a few events are provided should you wish to have at least something happen on the way) but this is soon to change! Whatever does go on, you are provided with a variety of options - including all necessary game mechanics - which the party may use to resolve the situation, and there are usually helpful NPCs to make suggestions should the characters not think of the right things to do.

Whatever the party decides to do - even within the constraints of a mission that's basically "Go there and fetch this" - there's plenty to keep them occupied, opportunities for both interactions and combat being provided. Each person or creature met comes with complete stat block and plenty of notes to aid you in running them to effect, whether in negotiation or combat. Background notes expand on this, giving motivations and overall depth, often linking back to the overall background of the rich tapestry of the setting. Whilst it's all there at your fingertips, reading it through thoroughly in advance of play will repay the effort as you will understand the why of their behaviour and attitudes as well as the what.

Throughout, ominous little orange boxes entitled 'Up the Ante' provide details of how you can make the adventure harder. It may be that your players are particularly competent, or that you are running the adventure for more than the four characters it is written for... or you may just be feeling a bit mean!

There is plenty to investigate and find out - characters who meet everything with a drawn sword and offensive spell will be at a disadvantage. By exploring the village and finding out what is going on, the characters will be able to help them as well as recover the item they have been sent to find. The village is mapped out and just about anywhere the party chooses to go there are people to talk to and things to find out. If you run the adventure from the PDF on a computer, the map locations are hyperlinked to the apposite notes (and backlinked so you can flip straight to the map again), a very nice touch.

And, well, we have been talking about 'spooky' right? What better climax than a spooky manor house to investigate... and yes, there is one. Cue up your creepy music and lower the lights. There is plenty of scope to scare the players, never mind their characters, here. However, this is not actually the climax, there is more...

Appendices cover notable NPCs and additional rules and mechanics including that of Emergence. This is an effect somewhere between a feat and an item that you can acquire as a result of your actions, actions that reveal the nature of your soul. Instances where you can gain one are highlighted in the adventure text, and here the rules covering them are explained. Some of them are beneficial, others are not. Each also has conditions under which they are lost - so if you do gain an unpleasant Emergence there is a chance that you can get rid of it (although this may be at a cost). This is a neat addition to the rules, provided it is used sparingly. Lore, items of note and a bestiary of new creatures encountered during the adventure are also included along with full details of the religions practised in this isolated area and some pre-generated characters (developed from the ones presented in the first part) should you need them.

An excellent creepy and claustrophobic adventure in its own right, this fits well with its predecessor and promises much for future episodes.