A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 9th- through 12th-level characters.
The Godsrain has caused chaos throughout Golarion, but it has also caused opportunity. The rain of pieces of Gorum's Armor, the Warshards, has lead to a race of various groups to collect these artifacts, either for study or more nefarious purposes. The Pathfinder Society has collected several themselves, and learned of a way to find more. When they employed this ritual, though, it pointed to the Netherworld within the Gravelands. A piece of surpassing size and power lies within the reach of Tar Baphon, the Whispering Tyrant. Fortunately the Society has a plane-hopping airship gained in its defeat of the hag Aslynn, as well as some strange fruit empowered by the silver rain that can grant the power of mythic heroes. But will that be enough to retrieve this item of power before the Whispering Tyrant claims it?
Written by Linda Zayas-Palmer
Scenario tags: Godsrain, Glyph, Mythic
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
I played this at PaizoCon2025 at 30 cp as a 2h striker fighter, with a party of a summoner, a shield/tank fighter, a champion, a maestro bard, and a Kineticist.
I think this is a good step in the direction of additional high level scenarios, and the author should be proud of the content. High level adventures are difficult to balance and get right, and the author did well because the combats did seem well balanced. That the boss fight is tough.. makes sense. It's a MYTHIC boss fight. If they keeled over after you just glared at them, it wouldn't be very fun, right?
I like that this scenario does an excellent job and really leans into the exploration and combat pillars of RPGs. There is a roleplay opportunity, but with the massive amounts of combats, it was rushed and I don't really recall any roleplay aspects of it. There was enough content here that the scenario should probably have been edited and split into two scenarios. The author put together a lot of great content, but the scenario needed better editing to parr down the amount of content, and Paizo dropped the ball on the Mythic system.
The _FIVE_ (5) combat encounters contributed to the scenario running long. The mythic system might provide some dubious boons to my player character, but the duration gives my real human soul the Fatigued condition. It took 40 minutes of prep and setup to get this scenario launched, due to having to explain the mythic system and other technicalities. Ultimately, it seemed like the Mythic system got more in the way of it feeling like a fun, heroic adventure than the system helped to make it more enjoyable or make players feel more "powerful." I would like to spend all of my current and future Mythic points to Rewrite Fate for a do-over on the Mythic system's rules.
I would recommend keeping the Planar Interference encounter as mandatory, but have Eando shout something about how the items deployed in the environment are more highly effective in this situation as a hint and prompt for the players to make use of this rather than their normal kit.
The Giants skill challenge is excellent, and makes at last one combat optional. I love that there is a real consequence for negotiations going poorly, as a few other role play skill challenges in other scenarios seem to lack stakes.
The Lock skill challenge was excellent, no notes. It did not, unfortunately, add too much to the adventure and could probably be cut for time if the party wants to interact with it more than just throwing dice at the checks.
The Ensnared combat encounter is one that should unfortunately be optional. It had excellent foreshadowing and pre-combat build up, but contributes to the duration of the adventure.
The Umbral Fortress exploration was fun and flavorful, and exploration done well. Unfortunately, exploration has a tendency to drag out a scenario unless players have a sense of urgency and move through it at a fast pace.
The Statuary Hall encounter should be optional. It's fun, but nothing stands out about it in a scenario already flooded with combat.
The Stairwell of Souls skill challenge was easy for us as my party rolled three natural 20s in a row, but other parties may struggle. Neat and flavorful as a skill challenge. It should probably be an optional cut for time if the party has dragged their feet up to this point, and/or wants to interact with it more than just throwing dice at the checks.
Other folks have commented on the BBEG fight, and I do not have any additional notes to add. If the other combats were removed or optional, this fight would have more "weight" and emotional investment to it. As is, due to all of the prior non-optional content, we arrived to this encounter with only a few minutes remaining in the scenario slot, and had to rush through it. All of those hours spent enduring the scenario setup just to end with a rushed payoff boss fight never feels satisfying.
When I Play Mythic, I Don't Want to Be Wishing I Was Still A Mortal...
I played this scenario in the last slot of Paizocon 2025 with a 6-man party in high tier, and first and foremost, I liked this scenario. We went to exotic places, met interesting people, fought terrible monsters, and came back heroes.
The setting and story were interesting - though the story itself was not explained very well to the players. We had to ask the GM after the game was over because we had so many questions. When he explained it all to us, we were able to appreciate what the author and Paizo were trying to do. Still, I feel the backstory could've been better presented to the party in a way that made things clearer from the get-go. All the callbacks to previous seasons were also fun and appreciated.
The fights were all interesting encounters too, and I loved the use of the first flip mat (I never see that one getting used) and the optional environmental mechanics. The use of the tile set in the third encounter was a little underwhelming though, as another reviewer has already noted.
However, while on the subject of fights, I know that a few reviewers have talked about how deadly the final fight can be. I honestly didn't see it as too big a deal. The big boss didn't really have a very impressive spell list (I downloaded the scenario and looked it over after the game, so I can confirm this). She had a few dangerous spells, but the party also has mythic points to save against her (so I really didn't find her to be all too threatening). The boss's minions could be dangerous, but when my group played through that encounter, we just had multiple frontliners rush the big boss and beat her down fairly quickly. The fight was pretty much a foregone conclusion after that. No one even went down to dying 1 in the final fight, I actually thought it could've been more challenging, especially since we were given mythic power and all.
Now, this brings me to my biggest complaint. I don't know how the full mythic rules work, but I kind of despised the simplified mythic rules in this scenario. Why does it take a special action to do a mythic strike? Another player and I were both using barbarians, and any time we Sudden Charged we could not use mythic points because Sudden Charge is a unique action and mythic strikes are another unique action. Why couldn't we Sudden Charge with a mythic strike? This could be an issue for other classes as well, like Monks with Flurry of Blows or Magus with spell strike. Also, why couldn't we use mythic points to reroll our attacks like we could do with hero points? Another reviewer called out the stabilizing too - and that also seems ridiculous that you can be "god-like," but still die more easily than a normal hero. I constantly found myself during the scenario thinking, I sure wish I had hero points instead of mythic points... And if I'm thinking that, then I feel like the mythic system has failed in some way.
I will admit that my issues with mythic points could be resolved with some house rules (allowing players to get hero points in addition to mythic points, or even just allowing mythic points to do everything hero points can already do but better). Still, in PFS play houserules are typically frowned upon, and in a scenario billed as being all about the power of legends, I often found myself not feeling very legendary (we had so many misses in our game that we couldn't reroll)...
So overall, a fun scenario that I would recommend. However, there were some issues with the scenario and the mythic subsystem that kept me from rating it higher than 3 stars. Good, but not legendary.
As a player, you should expect to spend 5-6 hours playing, and know that there is probably a 50% chance of a TPK in the final fight. If that sounds like fun, enjoy. It was not fun for me. The final boss fight comes down to initiative and a save or suck mind control ability. This has never been a good way to design encounters, and continues to be frustrating as a player.
I ran this one during the weekend for a 4 player party in the low tier.
Setting
Alright, the stakes are high, the location is cool, the tone is dark, and the artwork used in the scenario is great. I'd recommend showing the picture on page 15 when REDACTED and it becomes visible.
Skill challenges
The skill challenges are well designed and don't require any mechanics explanation to the players, which is especially good given the length of the scenario.
Combats
The combats are definitely not trivial, but the party should have the tools to be able to solve this. Some additional clarification for dealing with one of the hazards, and a Size correction for one of the encounters might be in order though. The final boss is a piece of work, and yes: As mentioned, the stakes are high!
Detractions
- The scenario easily takes 5-6 hours, despite attempts to speed things up
- Depending on the players, absorbing the information of the (toned down) Mythic rules may take long. In addition, formal clarification is needed on whether or not to use Hero Points in the scenario. My opinion is now to not hand them out, since Mythic Points replace Hero Points, but to still allow players to hand out the ones that are campaign rewards (i.e. from Glyphs)
- An encounter in a room where the enemies take up 100% the space just doesn't work
- I think the CP scaling for encounter B might be a bit off when you have 4 players with 14 CP. This was utterly brutal for the party precisely because of the scaling
All in all, I really enjoyed running this scenario. The length of the scenario combined with the detractions mentioned above knock it down to 4 stars.
Fortunately the Society has a plane-hopping airship gained in its defeat of the hag Aslynn, as well as some strange fruit empowered by the silver rain that can grant the power of mythic heroes.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook Subscriber
This might need a fix to the pdf. It looks like the map list in the scenario itself is really wrong. The list on the store is correct - the PDF does not match. The scenario tags are a mismatch as well - listed above are Godsrain, Glyph, and Mythic - the PDF includes Godsrain, Glyph, and Vigilant Seal.
Map list in the PDF:
The scenario lists Warship (correct), and Villain Lairs flip-tiles (not correct). The PDF does not list Haunted Battlefield, Fortress Chambers flip-tiles, or the Elemental Planes pack, which are correct and listed above.
I STRONGLY advise against playing this in an uptier party. Many of the DCs for tier 11-12 are flatly impossible for a level 10 character, especially the save DCs in the final encounter.
