The heroes journey deeper into the Vast to find the Gate of Twelve Suns, an alien megastructure consisting of a dozen stars arranged in a perfect circle. However, members of the Cult of the Devourer precede them, and the heroes must contend with the cultists for control of the alien technology found on the single planet orbiting each sun. Only by defeating these foul marauders can the heroes keep the superweapon hidden here out of the wrong hands—though the destructive zealots are far from the only threats found in the system.
This volume of Starfinder Adventure Path continues the Dead Suns Adventure Path and includes:
"The Thirteenth Gate," a Starfinder adventure for 9th-level characters, by Stephen Radney-MacFarland.
A collection of technological relics left scattered across the galaxy by the kishalee, members of an ancient advanced alien civilization, by Stephen Radney-MacFarland.
Detailed descriptions of the worlds and cultures of five never-before-encountered alien species, by Mikko Kallio, Jason Keeley, Lyz Liddell, Ron Lundeen, and Mark Moreland.
An archive of new creatures, from the main inhabitants of the five new alien worlds to an undead manifestation of entropy, by Mikko Kallio, Jason Keeley, Lyz Liddell, Ron Lundeen, Mark Moreland, and Stephen Radney-MacFarland.
Statistics and deck plans for a heavily modified starship crewed by Devourer cultists, by Stephen Radney-MacFarland, plus a glimpse of a barren planet cloaked in shadow in the Codex of Worlds, by Owen K.C. Stephens.
ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-028-6
The Dead Suns Adventure Path is sanctioned for use in Starfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure Path and Chronicle sheet are available as a free download (1.7 MB PDF).
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
I played through Chapter 5 of Dead Suns with AZ102011, my Sentient Robotic Organism (Azlanti assassin robot) PC. This character (meant initially as a short-term bridging PC) was barely verbal, and in retrospect a very poor choice for a role-playing game. On the other hand, the AP had by this time made it clear that it was a 100% railroad, so there wasn’t a lot to have substantive conversations about. I had mentally checked-out of the campaign by this point and don’t really remember much of Chapter 5, but on reading it for the purposes of this review, I’m not particularly impressed with it. I understand Dead Suns was the first Starfinder AP and the writers were still figuring out the system and setting, but Paizo is very experienced with adventure design and this AP just keeps falling flat at every stage. Anyway, we’ll start with the non-spoilerly back matter here and then move onto the adventure itself in the corresponding section below.
The back matter consists of four sections.
· “Relics of the Kishalee” (4 pages): This section talks about the nature of kishalee technology, which is really interesting because it depended on manipulating demiplanar energies. This allowed the tech to become highly advanced (despite long pre-dating the Drift), but also dangerously unpredictable or simply inoperative when used in any place other than the Material Plane. The section introduces the game mechanic concept of relics, which are effectively unique (non-magical) items from an ancient culture that can’t be bought on the open market but have to be found (and can be sold for 100% of their value). It’s one of the few ways to really have discovering new items be exciting for players, because relics aren’t just something listed in a book they can buy in-game at the local gear shop. Kishalee dimensional comm units, disruption fusions, and more are pretty cool.
· “Alien Worlds and Cultures” (12 pages): This a long but interesting section that essentially functions as a sort of preview of what a book on the Vast would contain. It contains five two-page-long entries on various far-flung planets and introduces a new bit of tech related to each one. None of these planets have anything to do with the AP, so they’re perfect for homebrew GMs who want to have the PCs pick a star in the sky and see what’s around it. The planets are well-described and I’d be happy to see stories involving each of them. We get Arshalin (a poison cloud marsh world embedded with mile-high shards of metal from an orbital disaster), Elytrio (from the classic SFS scenario Yesteryear’s Truth, a planet and culture perfect for exploring big ideas), Primoria (a planet where invertebrates have evolved as the dominant species), Sepres VI (great sci-fi concept of a planet whose entire remaining population lives in orbit after a bioweapon made it unlivable for just that species), and Silselrik (a planet with constant gravitational fluxes and sapient oozes). There’s a lot of good stuff here, and it’s worth reading even if one has no interest in the adventure.
· “Alien Archives” (8 pages): This section contains one-page entries on seven new creatures. Five of the seven relate to the planets described in the previous section and have stats to make them playable PC races. So we get Ilthisarian (weird serpentlike humanoids with additional snakes jutting from their shoulders, native to Arshalin), Ghibrani (beetle-like humanoids native to Elytrio), Scyphozoan (jellyfish-like creatures from Primoria), Seprevoi (four-legged but medium-sized creatures from Sepres VI), and Selamids (oozelike creatures with no fun ooze traits from Silselrik). The new species are well-designed, but it’s clear the designers went to great lengths to prevent any type of power creep by making them more advantageous than existing Core Rulebook races. There are also two new monsters, jubsnuths (twin-mouthed predators) and oblivion shades (bland, higher-CR shadows).
· “Codex of Worlds” (1 page): This issue’s entry is Urrakar. It’s a dark, cold, distant world notable only for the presence of “black emeralds” that some mining companies are after. Bland and forgettable, especially compared to the planets introduced above.
It’s not really a section per se, but I’ll mention here that the inside front and inside back covers detail a new ship called the Modified Atech Bulwak. It’s a Tier 7 ship that is unremarkable.
Now, onto the adventure.
SPOILERS!:
The backstory to “The Thirteenth Gate” is fairly convoluted. After the kishalee stole the Stellar Degenerator from the sivvs (poor inventory control, sivvs!) and later used it against an unnamed foe in a later war, they decided it was too powerful of a weapon to ever risk using again. Instead of destroying it though, they constructed a pocket demiplane and wrangled a dozen stars(!) and a dozen moons(!) to lock and monitor the demiplane. (talk about an infrastructure budget!) There’s then some stuff about two scientists deciding to upload their consciousnesses to monitor things if kishalee civilisation ever faltered, and the two resulting AIs becoming rivals after one was corrupted and turned evil. The “good” AI had to lock up the “bad” AI and millennia passed. The bad news for the galaxy today is that the Cult of the Devourer has been one step ahead of the PCs the whole time and has arrived at the Gate of the Twelve Suns, helped the “bad” AI break free, and just need to find one circuit board to open the way to the demiplane and get the Stellar Degenerator.
In Part 1, the PCs have to travel through the Drift to reach the Vast where the Gate of the Twelve Suns is located. Illogically (but perfectly keeping in tune with the AP so far), the amount of time the PCs spend gearing up and travelling make absolutely no difference to later events, despite the premise that the Cult is on the brink of finding an ultimate superweapon. During the Drift travel, the PCs encounter Quillius, an “anhamut inevitable” who has been driven mad by a previous encounter with the Cult of the Devourer (the Drift must be smaller than I thought!). Quillius is super tough but I guess there’s some role-playing possibilities with him. Once the PCs arrive at the Gate of the Twelve Suns, there’s the chapter’s requisite starship combat against a Cult of the Devourer ship captained by the Jangly Man—I like him. Oddly, there’s a forced reason why the PCs need to board his ship, something that almost everything else in Starfinder makes impossible or cumbersome.
In Part 2, the PCs set their ship down on the controller moon for one of the suns. Here they enter a complex, battle some monsters and cultists, make a ton of Computers checks, and meet the AIs. I’ve mentioned the railroading in this AP--everything must proceed in an exact order for the plot to work—but I’ve rarely seen a sidebar like the one on page 25 that instructs the GM on how to keep the PCs from leaving the rails! The whole sequence in Part 2 is pretty forgettable, apart from the potentially mind-boggling twist that the “good” AI has decided that the PCs should open the demiplane so that they can destroy the Stellar Degenerator before anyone else can get to it. That’s a pretty controversial call, but the PCs have to go along with it for the AP to continue.
In Part 3, the PCs have to chase the Cult of the Devourer to one of the other controller moons where they went to get the control board necessary to open the demiplane. One of the cultists there, a dwarf named Deldreg the Butcher, is great. A three-part AP where everyone plays Cultists could be fun. Anyway, the PCs fight a bunch of cultists and their leader, an android named Null-9, to get the control board. When you think about it, in this entire AP, the PCs could have not been involved the whole time and everything up to this point would have played out exactly the same (and as we’ll see next chapter, stopping the Cult of the Devourer simply makes room for an even bigger threat out to get the Stellar Degenerator). Anyway, the PCs presumably get the control board and follow the script to open the gate to the demiplane, cuing the cliffhanger that concludes the chapter.
Overall, the adventure has a nice touch here or a cool NPC there, but the story just gives the PCs absolutely no agency and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to boot. But at least the back matter has some cool stuff!
Okay starship combat/early combat -- bad late combat
I felt like the beginning and middle of this AP was better than the ending -- several major personalities are basically chewed through like meat in a meat grinder in the final area of the core facility without much of an opportunity to explore them. I know that a hostile NPC's life can be measured in rounds in d20 games but I would have liked for them to have made an appearance earlier (perhaps in book 3 or 4).
In The Thirteenth Gate, the long and perilous trail to find the location of the Death Star Stellar Degenerator is finally over, and the PCs arrive to secure the megaweapon before anyone else can. This adventure seems like the beginning of the action movie climax in terms of scope, but the content is surprisingly basic. Two unremarkable "modern dungeons" in the form of two facilities that the PCs explore, the requisite starship combat, and a dud of a boss. That's not to say its all humdrum, but its an odd and frankly disappointing way to cap off the Devourer Cult's involvement in the story.
The Good:
Previously the Devourer Cult didn't have much personality. But between the Jangly Man, Xix and Zaz, there's a bit more spunk and more fun to be had interacting with enemies. Sure they're all quite insane, but they're given more quirks than most of the previous raving psychos the party has crossed energy blades with.
The Gate system itself gets some cool art and some cool sci-fantasy descriptions that really give the whole thing an epic feeling.
The plot definitely serves to fill in some of the gaps in player understanding and flesh out the Stellar Degenerator.
The Bad:
There's many boring foes to fight in here, especially the oblivion shade spawn that do little more than tickle the SP of your heroes while taking tons of focused fire to bring down. Devourer cultists with swords and pistols similarly seem to have a lot of HP without being very threatening.
The two mini-dungeons are just a bit dull, especially for high level play. A lot of fairly clear rooms without hazards or interactive elements. A lot of clearing room-to-room for the PCs. The environments themselves are just mundane "office-building-ish/factory-ish" without any features that wow the GM or the players. Its all perfectly functional and playable; there's no significant problems (except for a grid/scale issue with the second dungeon), but it could have been a lot more.
There's an enormous info-dump delivered in the middle of the adventure that clues PCs in to the background of the Stellar Degenerator. While its good to have the PCs less in the dark regarding the primary plot point, the way this comes in all at once out of an NPCs mouth feels like a missed opportunity. Imagine instead if each room in the control facility had info that the PCs could glean themselves, piecing together the background and function of the facility and the Degenerator?
Dead Suns in general has a very railroady plot and it continues with gusto in this volume. The plot intends that the PCs hop moons to fight the cultists and get the MacGuffin control circuit. After a brief bit of self-determinism, they meet an NPC that directs them on exactly what to do next. There's very little flexibility built into the descriptive material to allow for PCs to deviate from the intended path, and the intended path feels unintuitive in a way that both times I've run this players have noticed.
Despite capping off the Devourer Cult's involvement with the AP, the final clash with them feels like you're tangling with random nobodies in their organization. My PCs asked "How long do we have before the main part of the cult gets here?" mid way through the adventure, which really highlighted that feeling. There's been so little detail about the Cult thus far that the players have no context for who Null-9 is or what scale of threat the cult poses. Its all left kind of vague.
There are several mandatory filler encounters (jubsnuth, atrocite) and several non-mandatory encounters (swarm threshers, marooned one) that feel incredibly out of place.
The adventure feels weirdly short. Perhaps its the somewhat shallow interaction with the two brief dungeons? Or the lack of narrative build-up around the boss?
A Rant about Railroading:
This book and the next book suffer from some seriously blatant railroading. Railroading on its own is often fine - especially when the reasons the PCs have for taking the intended actions are natural and logical - but it feels outright bad in this book and even worse in the next.
The biggest sin in this book is that it fails to provide a really compelling reason why destroying the Gate or the Moons wouldn't work. There's some lip service that only destroying the degenerator itself would be a "permanent solution", so you have to activate the gate and get the Degenerator out. But every group I've played with or GM'd for has scratched their heads at this point. "Surely there's a better way?" is the most common comment. The problem is that there's one more adventure here, and that adventure absolutely HAS to have the gate open and the weapon at risk, so this one bends over backwards to make that happen.
And this one is easiest to remember out of first five books due to me finishing running it couple of weeks ago ;P
But yeah, first four books of this scifi movie are just build up to the action packed climax that starts in this book. And its plenty noticeable because this book doesn't moments that feel like obvious filler in the same ways as previous books did. Well okay, maybe the few extra encounters in final dungeon count, but hey I found it amusing that strongest CR wise enemy in the book is locked in the toilet :P
Anyway, quirky miniboss squad in the book is great and memorable :D They were fun to run and I think they made more of an impact to players than last time devourer cultists appeared in the ap. And I like shenanigans you can do with Xix ;D Their mooks are also much tougher than previous cultist mooks, though oblivion spawn shades are really weak and lack interesting abilities.
I do have few nitpicks though: 1) bit hard to build up npc that has heroic sacrifice in same book they appear in 2) the final boss' escape sequence is cool but hard to pull off because they start as solo boss(unless they have severely weakened minibosses from previous encounters joined up with them) and its bit hard for them to run through pcs to escape 3) its kinda weird that high ranking cultists retreat to Null-9 by either running through pcs to reach her or by entering her room... From room next to her. 4) the map is labelled as 10 ft map but its drawn as 5 feet map. Also it doesn't align to grid perfectly 5) could have used atrocite in encounter where its buff abilities work better ;D
So yeah, not perfect book, but I do consider it best book of ap so far.
So I have to say that my impression from skimming is that this might be best book of the AP so far ._.
I'm not completely sure yet since I haven't payed attention to mechanical side of things due to lack of time(it might be one of those modules that over use single type of mook over and over in encounters?), but at least content wise of "What PCs do in this one" yeah it is best. Its mostly action, but its really cool flavored action scenes and moments and set pieces and thing I'm really impressed with is amount of named cultists who have strong personality you have chance to show off. It kind of feels like some sort of movie scene at times.
Thing with this AP is that it feels like its meant to be like a scifi movie, but its been split to parts so pacing is really off, it doesn't feel like each book has their own climaxes really. This is part of the movie where they are getting close to climax so things are feeling climatic if that makes sense?
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Yea i felt the same way, the onther ones felt sort of like rising action with no real pay of, plus this one feels like your really achieving something plus i didnt realy like the cult before but this book made them grow on me
Anyone know what to use as the movement modes of a Selamid PC?
Unless stated otherwise, a PC creature has a land speed of 30 feet. The NPC selamid has some extra movement modes as part of the special abilities given to it (like its compression ability, which PC selamids don't have).
Its mostly action, but its really cool flavored action scenes and moments and set pieces and thing I'm really impressed with is amount of named cultists who have strong personality you have chance to show off. It kind of feels like some sort of movie scene at times.
Fantastic! That was definitely my goal when writing it. I hope you enjoy playing it.
All parts of Dead Suns mentioned as legal (sanctioned) in SFS in special document in Additional Resources.
I understand that creating one page so important as Chronicle Sheet is a lot of balancing work, especially for the adventure book as large as 64 pages and it can take even two months in case of Dead Suns Part IV.
But what about such small thing as related switch/option in paizo event reporting form? Looking how in-time they create such entries for SFS/PFS scenarios each month - why Dead Suns 4 and 5 entries are absent?
Ak. As an astronomer, reading the opening paragraphs of the adventure background is kind of painful.
Yes, I *get* that this is a science fantasy setting, so things will happen that "couldn't happen". But when explanations are given for a result that are just *wrong*....
Phew, finally reviewed all five books I've finished running :'D Probably not as detailed if I had done all of them one by one after running each book, but still good to have done it
