On the frozen frontier far from civilization, a recently-disturbed shrine to an evil god has brought chaos and conflict to a community of centaurs and humans. The humans blame the centaurs’ greed for the plague of undead, and the centaurs seek a powerful magic item—starting with a single horseshoe—to put the threat to rest. Will the spirit of chaos bring all-out war or can both sides face down an ancient menace that threatens to destroy them all?
The Horseshoe Calamity is a 7th-level adventure for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game that can be played on its own or as a snowy side-trek to a larger winter-themed campaign. Grab this 28-page adventure today and Make Your Game Legendary!
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This adventure clocks in at 28 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of introduction, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of SRD, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 18 pages of content, so let’s take a look!
As always: It should be noted that I am working for Legendary Games as developer; I have received this module and the request to review it prior to taking this position, and hereby vow I’ll rate it to the best of my abilities in a neutral manner.
This adventure can be used as a stand-alone adventure, or it can be used to complement the third part of the Reign of Winter AP, “Maiden, mother, Crone.” It is intended for 7th level characters, and begins in the small town of Dolanni, inhabited by the semi-nomadic Ovoskich tribe.
The village comes with proper settlement statblock, as well as an impressive full-color map of it and its surroundings. Even better, the pdf does come with a proper, player-friendly, key-less version. Kudos! The dungeon map btw. also comes with a player-friendly version – cartographer Marco Morte did a great job here as well. The pdf contains a magic item that is a special reed – when it’s consumed, the character gets to instantly reassign a language known. There is also a magic axe contained herein that may change its damage type for cold, and a new monster at CR 8 is also included inside.
This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.
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All right, only GMs around? Great! So, as the PCs approach the settlement, they’ll meet a welcome committee of the most unusual kind – you see, half the populace there actually consists of centaurs. Why? Well, you see, there was a tomb unearthed, and in the tried and true tradition of foolhardy folks, a magic horseshoe was taken – and now, racial tensions are rising: As blackened ghosts (Specters) are rising from the disturbed tomb, humans blame the centaurs for not returning the horseshoe, while the centaurs consider the humans reticence to fight cowardly. Both sides have suffered losses at this point, and it’s only a matter of time before things escalate.
The first component of the module is about deescalating the racial tensions – which, while optional and good in the long run, will pit the PCs against a hothead centaur hunter, potentially has the PCs partake in aforementioned reed, and face down the inevitable specter attack. The second part of the adventure has the PCs explore the tomb that the scout Alasha plundered by kinda-accident, facing the new monster, the hoofghast (basically an undead centaur that heals in cold temperatures and has a concentration/Int-based skill/ability-impeding aura) and also a dread frost wight cleric of Kostchtchie, which can provide hints/an optional tie-in with the big AP-module. Rewards for the winged horseshoes and rewards are appropriate.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level, though there are a few instances where magic item references aren’t italicized. Layout adheres to the neat two-column full-color standard of the Reign of Winter-plugins, and the pdf sports several really nice, original full-color artworks I haven’t seen before. The cartography, as noted, is amazing, with full player-friendly map support. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.
Ron Lundeen’s “Horseshoe Calamity” can help provide a more organic introduction into the statues-dungeon of the AP, and it makes for a nice chance to roleplay. It is, in short, a nice sidetrek with excellent production values. While its brevity means that it’s not exactly the most complex of narratives, it doesn’t have to be. All in all, this is a nice little addition to the AP. My final verdict will clock in at 4 stars.
Endzeitgeist out.
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Jason Nelson
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
Now available, a chilling new adventure from Legendary Games!
How much, if any, of this adventure could be appropriated to fit with the centaurs in The Varnhold Vanishing adventure of the Kingmaker adventure path? Trying to figure out if I should take the plunge into the icy cold depths of this adventure.
How much, if any, of this adventure could be appropriated to fit with the centaurs in The Varnhold Vanishing adventure of the Kingmaker adventure path? Trying to figure out if I should take the plunge into the icy cold depths of this adventure.
CB
tl;dr: All of it fits, and very, very easily.
Longer answer: I've run Kingmaker, and it's inevitable in the Varnhold Vanishing that the PCs run into the suspicious but peaceable centaurs of the Nomen tribe. There are two ways to easily incorporate the Horseshoe Calamity there. In either case, you should arrange it to be a hard winter at the time.*
First, the village of Dolanni (where the adventure begins) might be where the PCs meet the centaurs; that is, the Nomen centaurs of Varnhold Vanishing are the same as the Ovoskich tribe of the Horseshoe Calamity--pick either name. Aecora Silverfire (from the Varnhold Vanishing) and Mikka (from the Horseshoe Calamity) are both the same war-leader--pick either name. This puts the PCs right into the adventure and inserts it most neatly.
Alternatively, the Nomen centaurs know of the Ovoskich tribe a few days to the east (off the map of the Stolen Lands) and ask the PCs to look into a rumor for them: that the horseshoes of the legendary centaur Ildarik have been found there. More specifically, instead of asking the PCs to go take on the spriggans to prove their good intentions, Aecora asks them to check on the Ovoskich in the village of Dolanni instead (in this, the PCs seem like good candidates to her, because they're humanoids and there are humanoids in Dolanni). Then your PCs travel to the site of the Horseshoe Calamity.
If I'd written this adventure a year earlier, I would have inserted it in my personal Kingmaker game just as described in the first option above. (I wasn't the GM for our Reign of Winter campaign; my wife was.)
* You can set forth a particularly harsh winter during the latest kingdom turn, via a "random" kingdom event; I engineered various kingdom events to suit my narrative quite often, "rolling" the result that would create the best story.
