Pathfinder Adventure Path #97: In Hell's Bright Shadow (Hell's Rebels 1 of 6) (PFRPG)

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Pathfinder Adventure Path #97: In Hell's Bright Shadow (Hell's Rebels 1 of 6) (PFRPG)
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The rebellion begins!

The city of Kintargo has long been a safe haven for artists, freethinkers, and those marginalized by the oppressive Chelish government, but now the city has been placed under martial law by inquisitor Barzillai Thrune. When a protest turns into a riot, a new group of heroes comes together to form an organized resistance against the devil-binding government and the church of Asmodeus—but can they survive long enough to establish allies? Or will they become the latest victims of the Thrice-Damned House of Thrune?

This volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path begins the Hell's Rebels Adventure Path and includes:

  • "In Hell's Bright Shadow," a Pathfinder adventure for 1st-level characters, by Crystal Frasier.
  • A double-sized gazetteer of the freewheeling coastal city of Kintargo, by Crystal Frasier.
  • A plague doctor from Khari searching desperately for a cure in the Pathfinder's Journal, by Stephanie Lorée.
  • A collection of monsters both dangerous and beneficial, by Crystal Frasier, Eric Hindley, and Michael McCarthy.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-768-0

Bring your campaign to life!
The In Hell's Bright Shadow SoundPack from Syrinscape is a complete audio solution when playing through the first chapter of the Hell's Rebels Adventure Path.

"In Hell's Bright Shadow" is sanctioned for use in Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure Path and Chronicle sheet are available as a free download (723 kb zip/PDF).

Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:

Hero Lab Online
Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop
SoundSet on Syrinscape
Archives of Nethys

Note: This product is part of the Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscription.

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The Revolution Begins!

5/5

After a delightfully flavorful opening scene, this book delivers on one of the central promises of this AP almost immediately by making the players take charge of creating a revolution. Every step of the way, I felt like our characters were making progress towards building our resistance in ways that made sense considering our strength and influence. The challenges are varied and good, and the characters are memorable. There's also a satisfying minor villain that is set up at the beginning and dealt with at the end, making this book have an ending that feels significant, but not too much for a book 1.

As a side note, Hell's Rebels is an AP about rebelling against repressive authority SHOULD have girl (and trans) power, so idk what the hells people were expecting. Anyone who disagrees is free to go find people that agree with them more in hell's vengeance (and is also free to stay the hells away from me).




Solid Start

4/5

This is a solid start to an adventure path. It does a good job of gathering together PCs from different backgrounds and making them invested in accomplishing the objectives of the adventure path. The villains are remember-able and easy to hate and the plot does a good job of encouraging the players to go to places and do things, but doesn’t make them feel railroaded. The only reason I am not giving this book five stars is because some of the fights were unfair for lower level PCs and because the NPC backgrounds that were provided seemed to not-sych with the main plot and sometimes directly contradict the main plot’s themes (see spoilers for more information). This adventure path will go downhill in future books (see my review of other books for more details), but this book is solid and a good start.

Fights:

There are three problematic fights in this book. The first fight in the book gets harder and harder until the PCs flee, which is an interesting idea, but since the adventure path makes it clear that running is abandoning innocent people to arrest there is a serious change of one or more PC continuing to fight until they are arrested or even killed in the first fight. Later there is a fight with a flying sorceress that can cast scorching ray, and not only is it hard for low level characters to do serious damage to a flying creature, but if one of them gets high by a scorching ray critical, they will likely die. The final boss fight has a creature that has regeneration 5 that is overcome only by holy damage. She will run if damaged enough, but it is almost impossible for low lever PCs to do holy damage which makes a hard fight almost impossible.

NPC Backgrounds:
This adventure path provides stat blocks for notable NPCs and includes character backgrounds for them. The problem is that these backgrounds feel like they were written by a completely different person. The kind Halfling baker has the background of a hedonist with a voracious sexual appetite. The everyman who was thrust into this rebellion by chance has the background of a being an absolute saint who wants to save the world and who needs regular expensive alchemical items to prevent from turning back into a woman (an obvious transsexual analogy … which doesn’t work in a world with multiple relatively cheap magic items that permanently change people’s sex). This is a problem that is going to continue and get worse in the books to come.


The best Paizo AP?

5/5

*DISCLAIMER*: This is a single review for all adventures in this AP.
Hell’s Rebels is the best Paizo Adventure Path. Of all the AP, it is the one that’s most coherent, approachable and GM-friendly. This review applies to all 6 books because their quality and style are so consistent that you don’t even notice the fact that they were written by 6 different authors.

Let me quickly list some of the most important things which Hell’s Rebels gets right:

1. It has a clear, believable and complex plot which goes from point A to point B to point C while at the same time allowing for multitude of side treks, optional quests and player-driven initiatives.
2. It goes full on Golarion. It touches upon core themes of the setting and is heavily nested in its history. It provides the much-anticipated opportunity to punch one of the biggest evils of the setting in the face. One warning: you can’t just lift HR and drop it into other settings without massive amounts of work.
3. The BBEG is front and center, introduced in adventure 1, encountered and fought against several times across the campaign. He’s evil, callous, quirky, nasty, brutal, amoral and good at being bad. He’s right up there with Ileosa from CotCT.
4. The campaign starts in one city and mostly stays there, with some small side-treks and one bigger detour which, fortunately, is also urban.
5. There is a cadre of sympathetic, recurring allied NPCs to play second fiddles to the PCs. There are also enemies whom you can interact in ways other than roll for initiative. The RP opportunities are plenty.
6. The cast of both allies and opponents is diverse in every sense of that word.
7. The players get opportunity to discover some of the setting’s secrets and, to a limited yet satisfying degree, reshape it without causing a Realm-Shattering Event.
8. The ending is epic to the core and fitting for a campaign of this scale and magnitude.
9. Episode 4 is a special issue with extra page count, longer adventure, more support material, an excellent article on Aroden and much, much more!
10. I love the blue colour theme for this AP AND Wayne Reynolds did the cover art. Double victory!


Story of Rebellion in Adventure Form

5/5

My first review on Paizo. I felt as I needed to for this path. The path is, overall, my favorite that I've read. On a personal level I classify it as the 'BEST' path for me as a DM. On to In Hell's Bright Shadow...

Points of Praise
- Interesting Villains (Use mint at your peril!)
- Interesting NPCS in General (Venseldek and Rexus are both beloved by my party)
- The confined setting (that continues throughout the path for the most part) allows the ability to give your PCs very deep story based roots.
- The sections laying out the city of Kintargo and the major players there give a lot of ground for those roots to dig into.

DM Recommendations
- The beginning can be clunky (something I didn't notice until my group started). Either find a way to get them together when the shoe drops or be sure that they know each other previously. It goes without saying but I'll stress, "Make sure they want to start a revolution!"
- The game plays out over weeks so be on the look out for players who build crafting munchkin characters and maybe try and steer them away from it.
- Stress silver weapons. The campaign trait of the Kintargo Nobility can get you a good silver 2 hander.
- Flesh out the weeks with personal story elements to give the passage of time weight.

Not my favorite book in the path but still a 5. I'm pretty sure book 3 or 4 are easily my favorites.

Enjoy!


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Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

Come to think of it -- I think those two Hellknight prestige classes get special abilities from their orders. Will there be appropriate notes for the Order of the Torrent to cover them for the existing prestige classes?

Paizo Employee Creative Director

David knott 242 wrote:

Come to think of it -- I think those two Hellknight prestige classes get special abilities from their orders. Will there be appropriate notes for the Order of the Torrent to cover them for the existing prestige classes?

For the Hellknight prestige class, yes. Nothing special for signifer.


Does anyone have the 'You bought this item on [whatever day]' message on this page? I received an email confirming the order, but cannot see the usual message on the AP page.

EDIT: Oh, it's 'pending', whatever that entails.


Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

I think nearly all of us have gotten the confirmation e-mails, but none of us have gotten the shipping e-mails that get us the PDFs. With any luck, some of us will get them as early as tomorrow (Monday).


Has anyone gotten a shipment confirmation yet, or the PDF? I was told probably this afternoon, but I haven't heard anything yet.

The Exchange

I haven't, but then, I was under the assumption that the date was an estimate and not a hardcoded answer.


Jericho Graves wrote:
I haven't, but then, I was under the assumption that the date was an estimate and not a hardcoded answer.

It is.. shipping may start today (or not), but any particular person's place in the queue is fairly random. The shipping is spread over the next couple of weeks.

The Exchange

So being a first time subscriber, I wanted to know how the PDF would show up. Will I get an email and it will just be in my downloads, or will I need to follow a link, just curious?

Contributor

Jericho Graves wrote:
So being a first time subscriber, I wanted to know how the PDF would show up. Will I get an email and it will just be in my downloads, or will I need to follow a link, just curious?

When it ships, you'll get a notification email. At that point, you'll have access to your PDF in your downloads.

The Exchange

Cool, thanks for the answer. :) I had originally subscribed for Issue 100's article, then my wife realized the next AP would be an "EEEVIL" campaign, so we're probably at least subscribing for the next year.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

Over in the August shipping thread, they posted that they had started the shipping process about 15 minutes ago.


4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

WHAT A DAY! OH WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY! I HAVE IT AND IT IS SHINY AND CHROME!

Contributor

The map for the protest is noted to have an area outlined showing where the crowd is placed. However, looking at the PDF map, it doesn't seem to have that marked. What is the approximate size of the area so I can note that for my home game?


What are the monsters in this?

Contributor

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Bestiary:

Avians CR Varies
This entry details three new birds: giant raven (CR 1), impaler shrike (CR 1), and Yolubilis heron (CR 6). Each bird has animal companion stats.

Gambling Devil CR 4
A devil that is very keen on games of chance. It is able to create coins from its seemingly gold body and has an aura that makes other creatures take more risks.

Scrivenite CR 4
An outsider made of what appears to be living paper. It generally seeks knowledge and can retract its body into the shape of a book. Creatures it deals Int damage to have part of their memories formed into a soul tome.

Slithering Pit CR 2
An ooze created when it consumes residual planar energy from a bag of holding or portable hole. Able to form itself into a hole and consume creatures.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

- Three different types of large birds: Giant Crow (Medium, CR 1), Impaler Shrike (Large, CR 3), Yolubilis Heron (Huge, CR 6). All three come with Companion Stats.
- Gambling Devil CR 4 - Able to pull coins out of its body, make other's take risks, and take penalties on d20 rolls to give it a bigger bonus on later rolls. I think this is a great candidate to make into a PC race if you are looking at a planer campaign.
- Scrivenite CR 4 Axis's literary equivalent to Axiomites. Able to drain your intelligence and manifest that as a soul tome where it can read all of your secrets. Listed as N, but I'm assuming that is a typo and should be LN.
- Slithering Pit CR 2 An ooze that can trap you in its extra dimensional hole in the ground.

All in all, lots of Planescape goodness for me!!!!

Paizo Employee Creative Director

donato wrote:
The map for the protest is noted to have an area outlined showing where the crowd is placed. However, looking at the PDF map, it doesn't seem to have that marked. What is the approximate size of the area so I can note that for my home game?

We decided to not clutter the map with additional tags, but alas, didn't adjust the text properly. The exact size of the crown can be adjusted as you wish, but I"d suggest putting in at least three dozen protestors, if not more. Fill up the plaza and the street to either side if you can, but don't use up EVERY square.


Ok, those creatures sound like fun! Especially the Pit Ooze, Gambling Devil and the book creature!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I LOVE shrikes! Now we have rules for them being animal companions?! Paizo is so wonderful!

Silver Crusade

5 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Having been thoroughly miffed by Giantslayer, I am happy to say this campaign looks freaking awesome.

Also, I am delighted by the fact that the "outlawing mint" is actually in the adventure. Well played Crystal, well played.

Dark Archive

Gorbacz wrote:
Having been thoroughly miffed by Giantslayer, I am happy to say this campaign looks freaking awesome.

Giantslayer had very few opportunities for roleplay which i did not like too, i´ll probably only GM the first two parts.

Could you outline the things the PCs can do in this first part a bit?
Thx Gorbacz.

Silver Crusade

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Well, the PCs get to

Spoiler:

take part in a riot,
contact the local dissidents,
start up a rebel operation,
engage in espionage and counter-espionage,
receive a mysterious bouquet of roses,
meet several recurring villains,
sabotage stuff,
kick some loyalist royalist diabolist booty while at all of the above.

It's a very much different AP from Giantslayer. And I love that!

Liberty's Edge Assistant Developer

12 people marked this as a favorite.
Gorbacz wrote:

Having been thoroughly miffed by Giantslayer, I am happy to say this campaign looks freaking awesome.

Also, I am delighted by the fact that the "outlawing mint" is actually in the adventure. Well played Crystal, well played.

I guess you could say Barzilai is... confection-wary

:D


6 people marked this as a favorite.
Crystal Frasier wrote:

I guess you could say Barzilai is... confection-wary

:D

Huh. I'd have thought him a big fan of devil's food cake.

I'll just show myself out.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

5 people marked this as a favorite.
quibblemuch wrote:
Crystal Frasier wrote:

I guess you could say Barzilai is... confection-wary

:D

Huh. I'd have thought him a big fan of devil's food cake.

I'll just show myself out.

He may be... it's more about denying OTHERS the luxury and comfort of mint and the like. He's not doing it out of hate. He's doing it out of spite.

I also have it on GOOD AUTHORITY that he kicked some of your pets.

Silver Crusade System Administrator

5 people marked this as a favorite.

I don't know if I'm stunned by the pun or the fact that you basically waited 8 months for that to payoff.


6 people marked this as a favorite.
James Jacobs wrote:
He's doing it out of spite.

Out of spite, or out of spice?

If only he'd tell us what he wants. What he really, really wants.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Well I'm adding an additional edict outlawing any alcohol that is not Chelaxian wine. That will get my players on his tail in a jiffy, and will ensure that the Rebel Alliance has a steady income in smuggling high voltage spirits.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
quibblemuch wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
He's doing it out of spite.

Out of spite, or out of spice?

If only he'd tell us what he wants. What he really, really wants.

I could tell you what he wants, what he really, really wants.

He really, really, really wants to Zig Zagyg.

RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32

Is anyone else having no doors to render on page 5 of the interactive maps?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I was looking at the faction list in the player's guide and one of the factions described just screams "low level mooks".

Hell's Rebels Player's Guide wrote:
Chelish Citizens’ Group: Not all of Kintargo’s citizens seethe under martial law. A small subset have formed this group to support Barzillai Thrune, and have been empowered as a militia to augment the city’s guards.

So, do you get to stomp on any of these guys?

Contributor

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Axial wrote:

I was looking at the faction list in the player's guide and one of the factions described just screams "low level mooks".

Hell's Rebels Player's Guide wrote:
Chelish Citizens’ Group: Not all of Kintargo’s citizens seethe under martial law. A small subset have formed this group to support Barzillai Thrune, and have been empowered as a militia to augment the city’s guards.
So, do you get to stomp on any of these guys?

Yes! Very early on, in fact.


donato wrote:
Axial wrote:

I was looking at the faction list in the player's guide and one of the factions described just screams "low level mooks".

Hell's Rebels Player's Guide wrote:
Chelish Citizens’ Group: Not all of Kintargo’s citizens seethe under martial law. A small subset have formed this group to support Barzillai Thrune, and have been empowered as a militia to augment the city’s guards.
So, do you get to stomp on any of these guys?
Yes! Very early on, in fact.

On that note, can someone post a timeline of recent events (i.e., martial law, arrival of Thrune poster-boy to the city, etc.)

Thanks!


2 people marked this as a favorite.
quibblemuch wrote:
Crystal Frasier wrote:

I guess you could say Barzilai is... confection-wary

:D

Huh. I'd have thought him a big fan of devil's food cake.

I'll just show myself out.

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32

1 person marked this as a favorite.

the download is not going to the correct place.

I found mine under "Paizo Inc.: Cheliax (2) "

Instead of under "Paizo Inc.: Pathfinder Adventure Path #97–102: Hell's Rebels (PFRPG) " (which is where the players guide is located).


Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber

Here are some tips for rebels against Cheliax:

If you live in Pezzack, hang in there -- you will be liberated when Kintargo is.

If you live in Isger -- grow a spine and follow the example of Kintargo. Every map of the Inner Sea region shows Isger as a separate country from Cheliax. You have the help of the Glorious Reclamation, so you should be able to win your freedom.

If you live in Nidal -- get out of there. I have nothing to say to Kuthonites.

If you live in Sargava -- Cheliax has bigger worries closer to home. They aren't going after you any time soon.

If you live in Cheliax anywhere south of the Menador Mountains -- you are probably in for a rough time, as House Thrune has seriously inhibited our intelligence gathering activities. The only hopeful bit of information we have picked up is that House Thrune is now employing openly chaotic evil agents, a move that should definitely alienate the many lawful neutral nobles who had pledged their allegiance to them.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber
Grumpus wrote:

the download is not going to the correct place.

I found mine under "Paizo Inc.: Cheliax (2) "

Instead of under "Paizo Inc.: Pathfinder Adventure Path #97–102: Hell's Rebels (PFRPG) " (which is where the players guide is located).

Ah-ha! Thanks for posting this. I thought something went wrong with my order.


Nate Z wrote:
Grumpus wrote:

the download is not going to the correct place.

I found mine under "Paizo Inc.: Cheliax (2) "

Instead of under "Paizo Inc.: Pathfinder Adventure Path #97–102: Hell's Rebels (PFRPG) " (which is where the players guide is located).

Ah-ha! Thanks for posting this. I thought something went wrong with my order.

I find it easiest to sort the list by "Date Added to My Downloads" so that new stuff is always at the top. If you want to do this, click on the titles of the columns to sort by them.


Grumpus wrote:

the download is not going to the correct place.

I found mine under "Paizo Inc.: Cheliax (2) "

Instead of under "Paizo Inc.: Pathfinder Adventure Path #97–102: Hell's Rebels (PFRPG) " (which is where the players guide is located).

Thank you! I'd received my email but couldn't find the pdf. I thought it was a mistake. I found it now thanks to you!

The Exchange

2 people marked this as a favorite.

"The proclamation the First" makes me think of Chairman Mao's crusade against sparrows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign

The rationale was that the sparrows were eating seeds and that killing them would increase crop yields. "By April 1960, Chinese leaders realized that sparrows ate a large amount of insects, as well as grains.[3][2] Rather than being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased."


Is there any mention of the state of affairs in regards to the population being armed ? Have they disarmed the common folk ?

Silver Crusade

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

THIS ADVENTURE! By gum, this is the sandboxiest city, and Crystal Frasier has done a great job here.

My alterations to this would be slight indeed, and I'm struggling because I think it would be more effective if the NPC ally's story was actually a PC's story but I really like that ally so I'm struggling to find a way to make both fit.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:


My alterations to this would be slight indeed, and I'm struggling because I think it would be more effective if the NPC ally's story was actually a PC's story but I really like that ally so I'm struggling to find a way to make both fit.

Assuming the NPC in question is Rexus, make them siblings - the NPC and a PC are brothers/brother & sister? You'd have to alter his backstory a little to account for a sibling, but maybe the PC was estranged/away at school/kidnapped as a youth/thought killed in a war/shipwreck, and has only just returned. Then it works as written.

The Child of Kintargo campaign trait fits easily with that, or even Ex-Asmodean (as a reason for estrangement - came to Asmodeus as teenager, went off to worship, disillusioned, came home to visit, oops - parents!, now you're really done with the devil).


Soon, my precious will be mine, soon!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Fourshadow wrote:
I LOVE shrikes! Now we have rules for them being animal companions?! Paizo is so wonderful!

Any chance we could get more info on the impaler shrike?! Please?!

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
coyote6 wrote:
DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:


My alterations to this would be slight indeed, and I'm struggling because I think it would be more effective if the NPC ally's story was actually a PC's story but I really like that ally so I'm struggling to find a way to make both fit.

Assuming the NPC in question is Rexus, make them siblings - the NPC and a PC are brothers/brother & sister? You'd have to alter his backstory a little to account for a sibling, but maybe the PC was estranged/away at school/kidnapped as a youth/thought killed in a war/shipwreck, and has only just returned. Then it works as written.

The Child of Kintargo campaign trait fits easily with that, or even Ex-Asmodean (as a reason for estrangement - came to Asmodeus as teenager, went off to worship, disillusioned, came home to visit, oops - parents!, now you're really done with the devil).

That's a pretty great idea.


nighttree wrote:
Is there any mention of the state of affairs in regards to the population being armed ? Have they disarmed the common folk ?

bump???

Paizo Employee Creative Director

1 person marked this as a favorite.
nighttree wrote:
nighttree wrote:
Is there any mention of the state of affairs in regards to the population being armed ? Have they disarmed the common folk ?
bump???

The common folk of Kintargo aren't really known for being "armed" to begin with. That said, the city IS under martial law now and that does affect the city's stat block. But the mass disarming of the city isn't a tactic that Barzillai takes at first.

From a game-play element, disarming the city would significantly impact a lot of the story we wanted to tell, and would negatively impact far too many character concepts, so it's not an element that I felt was beneficial to the overall storyline.

The Exchange

I don't know if this is the right place to put this, but.

Page 20 of In Hell's Bright Shadow:
If Chough hears the PCs battling the alligator, she watches from the shadows, delighted by the violence, but if they win, it takes her 2 rounds to register that Chough is dead.

Should that actually read:

Stuff:
If Chough hears the PCs battling the alligator, she watches from the shadows, delighted by the violence, but if they win, it takes her 2 rounds to register that the alligator is dead.


Could anyone give us a heads up on the location types of maps one might need (flip, map packs) and and anything one might find on a Google search as I may be running this on Roll20 as well sometime soon.

I won't get this first book til Sep 2 when it hits the hobby store so any advanced prep I can do would help me out quite a bit.

I get this is a urban city Adventure but I am betting there will be more than a few specific and not some generic (city) areas in this, LOL

Thanks

:)

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