Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Darklands Revisited (PFRPG)

I’m not saying I’m preparing to run a major new campaign that will feature a descent below Golarion’s surface, but if I were, I’d find Darklands Revisited very useful. This book, a 64-page full-color softcover in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting line, features a series of entries on ten different monsters that one is likely to encounter there. Each of the six-page-long entries starts with a bit of in-game flavour text from Pathfinder Society explorer Koriah Azmeren before discussing the monster’s ecology, society, campaign role, treasure, and Golarion-specific themes. Each entry also features a full-page stat block and artwork for a single named NPC of that race. I particularly like the little sidebars like “Five Facts about . . .” The monsters covered in the book are drow, duergar, gugs, intellect devourers, morlocks, munavri, neothelid, troglodytes, urdefhans, and vegepygmies.

The strong cover art is reproduced as the inside back cover sans text. The inside front cover has a quick one-sentence summary of each of the ten monsters. There’s also a two-page-long introduction that does pretty much the same thing but while talking more about their mythic or literary inspirations, though it also includes a paragraph on each of the three distinct layers of the Darklands (I’d suggest getting Into the Darklands for substantive overviews of them). I’d label the interior art fairly weak.

Okay, on to the monsters!

• The drow entry is solid. It’s hard to see much if any difference between drow on Golarion and drow in the Forgotten Realms. I liked the suggestions for the role they could play in different campaigns, and there’s a sidebar (and alternate racial trait) on half-drow. The custom NPC is a mysterious drow slave-trader named The Surface Caller. A multiclass sorcerer/swashbuckler, she could be a good hook if the PCs are trying to rescue a slave (or get captured and sold themselves).

• I really learned a lot from the entry on duergar. The entry emphasises their slaving culture, and makes a persuasive connection between their racial abilities and ancestral devotion to Droskar. The Pathfinder novel Forge of Ashes is good on this topic as well, and features some of the locations discussed in this entry, like The Long Walk. The custom NPC is a duergar warpriest named Almara Kazaar; she’s fine but doesn’t really stand out as particularly interesting.

• Despite their amazingly scary appearance, gugs are a monster type I’ve hardly ever used and never really thought of as more than mindless killers. The entry is really interesting, though little of it could really be discoverable or impactful on PCs encountering them. The custom NPC is Uchurah, a gug cult leader with a couple of barbarian levels. He’d be good as a boss figure if the GM wanted to introduce gugs.

• Intellect devourers fill some of the void left by the inability of Paizo to use illithids. They’re creepy as heck, as they crawl through your mouth while you’re asleep and eat your brain! The entry showcases an interesting extraterrestial origin for them and the original premise that they take over humanoid bodies so that they can experience emotions that are otherwise foreign to them. A pirate captain for a custom intellect devourer NPC is a crazy idea, but it works—and that’s one pirate ship I wouldn’t want to encounter on the high seas.

• For morlocks, I think it’d be really interesting to play up the theme of them being the devolved remnants of destroyed civilizations. There’s some real pathos there. They also don’t need to necessarily be hostile, though if the GM is looking for real hordes of enemies, morlocks can come out in the hundreds and hundreds. The custom NPC is Eudranis, a cleric of Lamashtu, and he’d work well as a boss figure.

• I have to confess I’ve never heard of munavris before. They’re unique as a generally good-aligned Darklands race. An island-dwelling culture in the Sightless Sea, munavris could be a welcome refuge for PCs lost deep underground. They’re really interesting, and I’d certainly like to learn more about them. The custom NPC is a psychic swashbuckler named Captain Ignisco.

• Neothelids make for good villainous masterminds in a campaign, deviously moving pawns around in tangled plots that the PCs have to unravel. Gigantic worms, they spawn other creatures called seugathi that travel to the surface on bizarre, sometimes inexplicable missions—which can be great adventure hooks to lure PCs into the Darklands to discover what’s going on. The custom NPC is Thath-Malal, a young neothelid under Tian Xia.

• Troglodytes stink! The entry has good detail on them, and it’s interesting that they can be bargained with for safe passage or even hired as bodyguards in the Darklands. Although found in all three layers of the Darklands, they apparently only have one real city (far below the Mierani forest). The custom NPC operates on the surface, however, and has 7 levels of the hunter class.

• I personally think urdefhans are by far the creepiest monster in the book. Bred from the depravity of daemonic minds, they seek out other species to end their lives in as painful a manner as possible. The custom NPC leads a rare cult that raids surface cities.

• Vegepygmies (plants with humanoid-like shells) are kind of goofy in my opinion, but they do constitute useful low-danger threats for PCs venturing into the uppermost layer of the Darklands. I think the real danger is russet mold, and the entry has a nice sidebar on its variations. I appreciated the little reference to The Tangle in Xin-Shalast—-that was something I could have integrated into a certain AP. The custom NPC is actually a new monster variant called a “Thorny”—a type of vegepygmy hound.

And that’s the book. Overall, it’s certainly fit for purpose for readers interested in learning more about the dangers of the deep dark.

Another entry in the "Revisited" series, "Darklands Revisited" deals with all the dark, scary things that live underground in the depths. "Revisited" gives a nice sampling of each race, but doesn't go as in depth as the ecology articles. The series is a great read for players and GMs, giving a nice intro to the featured entries especially for new players. There are entries for a number of humanoids, and some creatures less/more than human, so let's take a look at the entries.

Drow: Who can have an underground book without the drow? As a species done and redone, how does Golarion's take on the dark elves measure up? The drow of Golarion have a new and intriguing history involving their departure from classic elves, which strikes a great balance between the familiar FR drow history and new material. This history also explains in flavour the reason for their mechanical stat changes from surface elves and works very well. The drow are also given demonic patrons, which is an interesting development, as the race is LE and demons are CE. The drow of Golarion practice a new and terrifying science, fleshwarping, which is an interesting blend of science and magic which supports both CE and LE and magic alchemy. No mention of the divine is made in fleshwarping, which I feel is a lost opportunity to tie the race to its unusual demonic patrons. The drow stat block shows a new dual classed character, although it would've been cool to have a matron statted up. The campaign role gives excellent suggestions for low to high level parties and each level shows off a different aspect of the versatile drow.

Duergar: dark dwarves, these guys feed off Paizo's unique spin on dwarven history. Like drow, they are blessed by an evil god, and they really feel like a race beholden to Droskar with his worship and priesthood showing up in many of their cultural aspects. Although drow and duergar are both slavers, slavery in both cultures is very different. The duergar are suggested for low to mid level parties due to their location in the darklands. A great, flavourful entry.

Gugs present as a mixture of humanoid and monster culture and physiology. Despite their interesting alien origin, the rest of this entry was rather uninteresting.

Intellect devourers are Paizo's answer to mind flayers. And they are an excellent retort. They are very much a horror trope that fans of the Mythos will love. This is a race with a unique and full background, which makes them at home in both PF and SF. Again an enslaving race, slavery is very different in intellect devourer culture than it is from other darklands species. Treasures consider the unique physiology of the species. Ilvarandin is only briefly mentioned as are locations in space.

Morlocks are yet another race that fled into the underground to escape Earthfall, but their original race was human. The locations section was interesting, but otherwise this was another underwhelming entry.

Finally, the only good race to dwell underground, the new and exciting Munavris. Introducing psychic powers to the darklands, the Munavris were only recently introduced before the printing of "Darklands Revisited", making them a blank canvas. The entry for this race doesn't disappoint its new fans, and they are a much more interesting evolution of humans than the morlocks.

All in all, most of the races have excellent entries, which more than make up for the few underwhelming entries. None of the entries are terrible, and even the underwhelming races have some nuggets of awesome in their entries. If you want a nice read or some inspiration for your next campaign, you could do worse than this.

A pretty handy volume for anyone intent on using the Darklands of Golarion- the fleshing out of the Munavri is particularly welcome, but in general, just about every creature examined here benefits from the improved going-over. I especially liked the overview of Duergar society, and all of the creatures presented here got at least a little bit of cultural detailing to make them more flavorful.

I'm a fan of the "Revisited" series in general, so this was a nifty thing to find in my FLGS today.

To go with the 5 stars, two caveats-

1. Some of the Drow material felt a bit redundant- although not scrambling from the Advanced Race Guide to Inner Sea Races to old volumes of Second Darkness will be appreciated.

2. I don't think ANYONE can get me fired up about using Urdefhans. However, if you're fond of 'em, there is some excellent material here.

The underground world has always been an allure to me. The 'wilderness' is always more dangerous, and the creatures are like something the animals of Australia would have nightmares about. The longest campaign I was ever a part of from my 3.0/3.5 days, about half of it took place in the 'underdark'.

The Darklands of Golarion are very interesting. There's some traditional stuff there (Drow and Duergar) and they're societies are given a little more info here, and even provides some interesting plot ideas for players interacting with these races, and reminding us why they're so terrible.

I really, REALLY like the addition of more detailed information of species in the Darklands that actually have what some would consider a form of 'society'. Morlocks, Gugs and Intellect Devourers to name a few.

The addition of the Munavri is awesome to me. The Darklands have always been a desperate place, but the closest things we've had to a 'good' species down there are Svirfneblin, and they're more like 'leave us alone' not evil. I LOVE the albino, psychic, Darklands-sea-traversing swasbucklers! My only downside is they're way too good for play in some games, but I guess they have to be powerful to do what they do, where they do it! :)

I mentioned the Gug earlier, they and the Neothelid give the 'dark tapestry' love to the Darklands, and honestly, it's cool. The more detailed on how Neothelids are more than just big magic worms, and have a semblance of a hierarchy and society is really cool.

Finally, I love the emphasis on use of the Occult stuff. That's something I felt wasn't done as well before Pathfinder; including new concepts into an existing setting.

I'd love to see a Darklands focussed AP, or even an anniversary/updated Second Darkness!

Definitely a great acquisition.