After discovering that a sinister force has infiltrated the Stewards, the heroes travel to the floating bubble city of Roselight, in the clouds of the gas giant Liavara, to warn members of the law-enforcement agency! As the heroes navigate the seedy underbelly of this pristine metropolis, they learn that their enemies are fighting a battle of their own against another malevolent faction of mind-controlling aliens. If the heroes want answers, they will have to figure out who to trust in a time where no one is what they seem!
“The Hollow Cabal” is a Starfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for four 7th-level characters. This adventure continues the Threefold Conspiracy Adventure Path, a six-part, monthly campaign in which the players unravel the machinations of insidious aliens who have infiltrated galactic society. This volume also includes a gazetteer of the affluent city of Roselight and the grungy space station Upwell, an article describing the mysterious fungal dycepskians, and a selection of new and cryptic monsters.
Each monthly full-color softcover Starfinder Adventure Path volume contains a new installment of a series of interconnected science-fantasy quests that together create a fully developed plot of sweeping scale and epic challenges. Each 64-page volume of the Starfinder Adventure Path also contains in-depth articles that detail and expand the Starfinder campaign setting and provide new rules, a host of exciting new monsters and alien races, a new planet to explore and starship to pilot, and more!
ISBN: 978-1-64078-230-3
The Threefold Conspiracy 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 (6.7 MB PDF).
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
I ran this for a group of four (rather casual) players as part of the adventure path. I did not make any changes to the adventure as written except for the notes in the spoiler tag below.
We enjoyed most of the adventure both behind and in front of the screen. The locations are interesting, the NPCs are fun, and the story is engaging. Especially following the first three adventures, where the party was literally confined to some sort of prison-like structure in each part, the openness of this one was a very welcome change of pace.
GMs should be aware, though, that many bits and pieces are only very roughly outlined. You will have to put in a lot more effort than with the previous adventures to really make this shine. A sound knowledge of the Pact Worlds setting is also very helpful.
The presentation of some of the events and set-pieces reminded me of the Starfinder Society style of dense, "Here are the skill checks you may try" descriptions. To the point that one single page in the adventure took us about 3-4 sessions to play through. This may sound like you are really getting your money's worth in terms of content, which you do, but on the flipside your GM really has to put in the work to bring it all to live or it will easily turn into "Here are the skill checks you can try, everybody give me 12 checks each and we'll see how you do".
Given the amount of content that was squeezed into the few pages of this book, one thing is particular curious to me, however. I will put it in spoiler tags because it gives away a major part of this and the next adventure's structure.
GM only:
This adventure ends with the PCs raiding a biotech company. After going through a mostly room-by-room dungeon-like segment, they learn that the founder of the company has left the building and is headed to... another biotech company. The raid on that building takes up most of the next adventure's first act and is way more elaborately written with openings for various approaches ranging from stealth to artillery lasers. This feels entirely redundant, especially because the person the PCs are after is also not at this place. Instead, the party learns about his destination from some computer files. The entire back-to-back biotech firm pieces could have easily been combined into the one in the next book. That would have given the author more space to further detail the various social encounters in this adventure.
So all in all, while Upwell, Roselight, and many of the encounters in the first two parts were quite enjoyable, the lack of details for the investigation part and the redundancy of the final act were quite a letdown. In summary, I would give this adventure three stars as written.
If you are willing to make some changes to the adventure path's structure (see spoiler above) and have the time, energy, and creativity to fill in the blanks on the investigation and social encounters, you can easily beef this up to a 4 or even 5 star adventure for your players.
I like Threefold Conspiracy overall, but it does leave me some mixed feelings...
...Due to my personal tastes. Like this AP is REALLY harsh on players to make them isolated and feel alone. I think to some that might feel bit railroady even if it makes sense, but first three books all pretty much kill off all npcs that could be friendly to PCs. This is first book where pcs finally get some allies that aren't dead by end of the book so it is also my favorite book so far :D
In general I think this is gonna be interesting ap to run since I could see pcs derailing investigation based ap in so many ways, but at same time ap is overall pretty freeform in structure. Like there are investigation targets and details on how pcs can do them, but its open enough to have pcs be creative on their own. I also get feeling that this is so far best AP in terms of giving NPCs enough personality in each book and not just the recurring ones. It also helps that conspiracy theme it makes bad guys feel better when book DOESN'T give them background information(or even names) since players wouldn't ever learn them and them being creepy mystery spooks is how they from pcs perspective in first place
But yeah, without spoiling too much, I've enjoyed all different Unknown factions so far and books that showcase what they are about :D
I'm honestly super disappointed with the Barathu art. There are three new pieces of art, but they all look identical to the standard Barathu we have seen several times over, aside from one being conjoined. Same shape, same colors, same tentacles. For a race whose whole gimmick is self-modification and specialization, I wish the art was more creative and unique. I want to see more Barathu like the second picture in Alien Archive.
I'm having ten minute break in my paizocon game and yeah sad to notice I can't buy this yet :'D I guess I could just not buy it yet and buy it next month... I do want to use that paizocon discount at some point
I'm honestly super disappointed with the Barathu art. There are three new pieces of art, but they all look identical to the standard Barathu we have seen several times over, aside from one being conjoined. Same shape, same colors, same tentacles. For a race whose whole gimmick is self-modification and specialization, I wish the art was more creative and unique. I want to see more Barathu like the second picture in Alien Archive.
Yeah I definitely agree there. Didn't affect my review of the book, but its really notable here
I'm honestly super disappointed with the Barathu art. There are three new pieces of art, but they all look identical to the standard Barathu we have seen several times over, aside from one being conjoined. Same shape, same colors, same tentacles. For a race whose whole gimmick is self-modification and specialization, I wish the art was more creative and unique. I want to see more Barathu like the second picture in Alien Archive.
The hag on page 59 is adorable though, I'm not sure that's what they were going for. It's not in the adventure contents so I hope it's not spoilers or anything.
Tudine looks like "The Future of Tomorrow", i like it. I agree that the Barathu are uncannily "Barathu" like I haven't read the adventure yet but perhaps they are meant to look like that, suspicious!
