A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 1–5.
When a ship that Venture-Captain Calisro Benarry hired to ferry Pathfinders to the Gloomspires vanished, she called upon diviners to speak to the sailors, only to learn that they had met a watery grave. Benarry has narrowed down the ship’s location to the shoals off the coast of the pirate island of Tempest Cay. While the venture-captain asks some questions on shore and searches for survivors, the PCs must travel out to the shipwreck, uncover the reason why a crew of experienced sailors met their doom, and discover why the nearby ocean has been growing increasingly perilous.
Contents in “Grotto of the Deluged God” also contribute directly to the ongoing storyline of the Concordance faction.
I got to play Grotto of the Deluged God via play-by-post with my Prophet of Kalistrade character, Nistivo Cirek. The scenario takes place in the Shackles, a pirate-infested chain of islands near the infamous Eye of Abendego hurricane. The scenario has a nice connection to a Season 7 adventure (# 7-19: The Labyrinth of Hungry Ghosts). As a whole, I found it about average. Artwork and maps are good. The individual encounters are fine (if a little cliched at times) and I like that there are some non-violent ways to bypass some of them. The plot can seem a little random in sort of “and then this happens, and then this happens” way. In sum, Grotto of the Deluged God isn’t going to win any awards, but I imagine most players will have a good time.
SPOILERS!:
We don’t often get a ship-board briefing in Pathfinder Society, so it’s interesting to start off on board the Grinning Pixie--the mobile Pathfinder lodge helmed by Venture Captain Calisro Benarry. The ship is moored off Tempest Cay, the northernmost island in the Shackles, and Benarry explains that strange winds around the area have altered currents and tides and made visible the wreck of a ship called the Pride of Aspenthar. As told in PFS1 # 7-19, the Pride of Aspenthar was sent on a mission to the Gloomspires but never returned. Benarry wants the PCs to board the wreck and try to figure out why it sank. To help them out, she provides the group with some potions of water breathing, a feather token (swan boat), and a wand of touch of the sea. By Season 9, the Pathfinder Society takes a lot better care of its agents compared to the early seasons!
The wreck is visible on the outer edge of a coral reef. As the PCs cross the reef on foot, they’re attacked by the traditionary giant crabs (and a crab swarm, which might prove more challenging to a low-level group if they’re not prepared for fighting swarms). Exploration of the ship itself requires fighting off some zombie sailors (been there!) before discovering of the captain’s log and why the ship sank: a mutiny followed by a collision with the reef! Importantly, the log contains the captain’s suspicions that someone or something had been manipulating the currents around the reef with magic. The PCs are expected to follow another vague clue (found by peering through a spyglass on the rail) to a nearby sea cave, but if they miss the clue (which seems likely) the currents take them to the sea cave anyway when they try to leave! A bit of forced plotting there.
The sea cave features two encounters that can be resolved through either role-playing or combat. The first is with an injured triton named Nalu and his hippocampus mount. Nalu was on a diplomatic visit to another undersea community when the currents pulled him in and he was dashed against the rocks. The second (and the one more likely to start a fight) is with a young brine dragon named Tempest Monarch. Tempest Monarch, like many brine dragons, is ambitious and bombastic, and wants the PCs (“lesser beings”) to “swear fealty” to them. I liked this encounter because it’s a good way to seeing just how prideful most PCs really are. Tempest Monarch’s “lair” is near a planar anomaly, which is why wind and currents have been so strange.
When the group leave the sea caves, they may assume they’re done with the adventure, but they haven’t counted on the Cult of the Eye! The cultists consider the sea caves sacred, and unless the PCs do some fast talking, there’ll be a battle. After getting past them one way or the other, the group can then return to Venture-Captain Benarry to report in.
As a final note, one bit I really liked on the Chronicle is that if you do “swear fealty” to Tempest Monarch, you get a rare “negative boon”—you’ve got to bring her treasure or she spreads word that you’re an oathbreaker, costing you Prestige Points. A fun addition.
This scenario is basically a sequence of random unrelated events, and that makes it unsatisfying to play.
The Eye of Abendego is this huge storm that has been causing shipwrecks for decades. But something has changed, and now it's... a huge storm that's causing shipwrecks! What a shocking development! And it turns out there's a cult that worships this storm (but not e.g. Gozreh or Hshurha, because that would make sense). The Pathfinders are sent to a shipwreck to investigate. From here it gets weird.
Spoiler:
First there are two encounters with aquatic animals that don't do anything unless you're a murderhobo. Then, searching the ship reveals it sank because of a mutiny, and this has nothing to do with the "new" storm. At this point the party has completed the mission and it's a dud, and they should go home and report. But, for no apparent reason their boat gets magically pulled to a small cave.
The cave contains a triton here who's drowning (how?), and a large dragon. Shocking reveal #1: this dragon is actually the "deluged god" worshipped by those cultists! Shocking reveal #2: it's actually a small dragon covered by an illusion! This would be a nice surprise except I know at least three other PFS scenarios with the exact same trick. Shocking reveal #3: the dragon is researching the "new" storm, and has found that it's caused by something random and will go away by itself. So yeah, the investigation is still a dud, but you get to cow or bribe a small dragon.
Final plot twist: as you sail back home, a ship of cultists just happens to be sailing in the same direction. The scenario assumes that the PCs claim to be their new gods. This is frankly rather silly and most PCs wouldn't even come up with this, but you get penalized with less treasure if you don't.
Finally, the scenario runs very short unless you want to murderhobo the animals or the triton. The dragon sounds like it would be a cool fight, but he's actually a pushover.
I mean seriously what is this? The sequence of events is random to the point of incoherence, and it has enough nonsensical plot twists that M. Night Shyamalan would be proud.
A fun little adventure - but it NEEDS a follow up.
The combats were for the most part pretty uninteresting (which is the only reason i knocked it down to 4 stars).
The story was very fun and interesting - the reveal of both the problem and the haughty dragon guardian were excellent and offered up lots of excellent opportunities for role play but the end game resulting in what was basically a binary choice was a bit of a downer but ended up resulting in a hilarious combat where half the party was swearing fealty and refusing to fight while the rest of the party tried in vain to fight the Dragon!
Excellent scenario well deserving of a follow up - the "boon" is sort of a lame conclusion to the story if there is never going to be more!
Nice adventure but some questionable design choices
Im played this in high tier with a full group.
Overall it was pretty fun and the challenges were unusual and worked pretty well.
I have some major issues with design choices though.
See more in spoilers:
Spoiler:
The "reward" for not fighting the dragon is a bad joke. Especially in hier tier when you identify the brine dragon and see its size it's downright madness to just fight it. It is very hard to exactly identify that it's not exactly a large dragon you have there, unless the GM helps you along a lot. The negative boon is way too punishing and both getting a teleport scroll on a chronicle till level 6 and the fact that a brine dragon can ruin your reputation is pretty ridiculous.
Much worse though is that players who thought "We should not be facing a large dragon in this subtier and were not warned about it, I bet we can kill it somehow" get rewarded by metagaming like this. The boon also invites players to metagame for that teleport scroll chronicle.
Very bad choices that will neither make players nor GMs or developers happy in the end.
I played this scenario in the low-tier and enjoyed it so much I had to log-in to write up a review.
I really appreciated how the author included a number of solutions for what can otherwise be highly annoying encounters for low-level characters and there were a great mix of sections that could be handled by roleplay as well as those that had to be dealt with head-on in combat.
The boss fight was also one of the most memorable encounters I've ever played in PFS.
It did use Warship at the time of that posting, but it was changed last minute to Ship to better serve some encounter needs we caught during copyfitting.
I believe that there was also an issue with the placement of B3 during that conversion. The description of the entrance to B3 is in a different area than the map shows the entrance.
A fun adventure, but yet another scenario that punishes you for not just being a murder hobo. Is there even a scenario out there below the 7-11 tier that has a Scroll of Teleport on the Chronicle sheet? Meh.
A fun adventure, but yet another scenario that punishes you for not just being a murder hobo. Is there even a scenario out there below the 7-11 tier that has a Scroll of Teleport on the Chronicle sheet? Meh.
THIS!
One of the only times my group decided NOT to be murder hobos and we were penalized for it? WTF?!?!?
The wording of that 'boon' is also strange. It seems like the players at the table should be given the option of dividing the cost of a single Scroll of Teleport amongst all of the players at the table, but the way it's worded, everyone is getting charged the full amount (each). Anyway, if anyone does know of a scenario that has a Scroll of Teleport on the Chronicle sheet (that can be played by a 6th-level character or lower), please let me know so that I can look at running that next. Thanks.
I have to bring up that the tan texturing on the bottom quarter or so of the page makes portions of the text almost unreadable when printing in greyscale, which I normally do to save on ink costs.
A fun adventure, but yet another scenario that punishes you for not just being a murder hobo. Is there even a scenario out there below the 7-11 tier that has a Scroll of Teleport on the Chronicle sheet? Meh.
THIS!
One of the only times my group decided NOT to be murder hobos and we were penalized for it? WTF?!?!?
You're not punished for not killing it, you're punished for swearing fealty to it, above your vows to your gods and the pathfinder society. You can not-kill it all you want. You just can't bend the knee to it without consequences.
As I mentioned in the GM thread for the scenario, I laughed really hard when I saw that "boon"...after I picked my jaw up off the floor. It's so harsh, but loyalty matters.
I believe that there was also an issue with the placement of B3 during that conversion. The description of the entrance to B3 is in a different area than the map shows the entrance.
Yes. I've tried running the published scenario with both maps and I think both ships work fine. Really, B3 can be on whichever deck you want it on as long as the physical description in the encounter text is moved to the right place.
I think 17 months is not too impatient to chase my Pathfinder Wiki colleague's request. Seems this and 9-23 are still missing their final covers here that we want to scoop up and add to the wiki.
Organized Play Developer
