A Pathfinder Society Quest designed for levels 1–4 (subtiers 1–2 and 3–4).
Venture-Captain Bjersig Torrsen calls the PCs north to the town of Iceferry in the frigid Land of the Linnorm Kings. There, Bjersig informs the Pathfinders that he has a request from the family of a storied and long-dead Linnorm King. The family's patriarch, the warrior Hlavard Grenskuldr, appears to have perished in a shipwreck while wearing the family's heirloom, the gorget of the Linnorm King Grehunde the Sunchaser. For one hundred generations the family has passed this heirloom down from parent to child, until Hlavard sought to wear it on a journey to Valenhall as Grehunde herself had intended to do before perishing with the task unfinished. Unwilling to leave the relic to rust away in a watery grave, Hlavard's family has requested the Pathfinder Society's assistance in locating the shipwreck and retrieving the family treasure.
PFS Quest 3: Grehunde's Gorget is a fun adventure into the Land of the Linnorm Kings that makes use of the setting's strong characters and personalities in the area. The story is, as expected, rather simple for a one-hour session. Find the macguffin, retrieve the macguffin, protect the macguffin, and return home victorious, macguffin held high.
Despite this constraint, author Kate Baker manages to write a memorable story about retrieving a family heirloom feared lost at sea. The story, despite being one of adventure and peril, is remarkably grounded in its telling. The mission, essentially a salvage operation, is one that you would conceivably hire a group of archaeologists-cum-mercenaries to undertake. The heirloom itself does not have a fanciful name, simple a history that gives it personal weight to the family requesting its return.
While the PCs are required to make some skill checks in order to reach the climax (the combat encounter), these checks did not feel boring. There was a risk attached to failure, but also a reward attached to success. These were not significant enough to overshadow the combat encounter, but still made the PCs feel some sense of accomplishment for overcoming what was otherwise a narrative event.
The combat in the Quest is successful for many reasons, chief among them an oft-underused enemy and a rare sense of mathematical balance between high and low tier that is often lacking. The Quest is written such that, should a low-level party end up playing into high tier because of challenge points, they won't immediately get slaughtered.
Maybe.
I say "maybe" because there is a reason I gave this quest 4 stars. While it is true that I find the combat scenario fun and fair, there is an issue with a particular sidebar regarding scaling for that encounter. There appears to be an omission that, if intentional, would transform a high tier encounter into an exceptionally lethal one given enough challenge points. Simply put, the math does not check out, as it would raise the monsters to health and damage amounts well-beyond appropriately-leveled challenges.
To that point, I would add that I did not like how scaling was linked only to challenge points, rather than tier and party level. It proved for a rather unwelcome arithmatic problem I had to solve shortly after the game started, when I finally knew the final CP value of the party. I cannot, however, entirely blame the Quest for this, as it is simply trying to make the most of an adventure scaling system that many GMs are still acclimating to.
In conclusion, Grehunde's Gorget is a short, but entertaining, quest that stands out amongst its peers. The quest's excellently-designed combat encounter is marred by an obtuse scaling mechanic that, at least from behind the screen, prevents it from living up to its full potential. My group, however, had fun, not in the least because my low rolls meant their continued success.
