Deconstruction: Paizo Adventure Path 120: Strange Aeons #2: The Thrushmoor Terror

Adventure Summary: 

After escaping from the waking nightmare of Briarstone Asylum, the former captives venture to the dismal town of Thrushmoor to unravel the enigma of their lost memories. Upon arrival, the adventurers find that the town’s leadership has either fled town or gone missing, and a rash of kidnappings and rumors of the Briarstone Witch spread terror among the townsfolk. As the adventurers investigate the unsettling mysteries, they uncover a secretive cult that plans to use Thrushmoor’s ancient monuments to grow its power. Will the heroes discover the secret behind their affliction and find answers in an uninviting town, or will they fall victim to the ruthless villains who want to sacrifice the people of Thrushmoor for some terrible purpose?

PART I: RETURN TO THRUSHMOOR

The adventure summary says that the PCs are going to Thrushmoor to find clues to uncover their missing past, but in reality, they have little reason at this point to suspect that there are any clues there. They're mostly going to Thrushmoor because it's the only place to go, presuming that they don't want to remain on the island with the ruined asylum and all of the dead and injured and stuff. At this point, all that they know is that Count Lowls dropped them off at the asylum, they used to work for him in some capacity, and that his behavior has been cagey enough that it's attracted the unwanted attention of the king's inspectors. Although they don't have any reason to know this, Lowls manor house is in Thrushmoor. Although he hasn't been there in some time, either.

This section starts off with a long monolog of what's going on behind the scenes, but then gives event-based encounters, which are supremely useful things in general, as well as some location based encounters, which of course can be adapted to another location or to an event-based encounter type as needed. Some of this stuff is trying to anticipate what the PCs are likely to do, or even prod DMs to prod the PCs so that they do do those things. Some of this gets into the Hangover type scenario, described in the last post, where NPCs will have knowledge of the PCs that the PCs themselves don't have because of their amnesia. 

Nicely, there is little if anything in this section that is new mechanically. It's a hallmark of clever scenario design that you can design it without the crutch of a mechanical novelty. For a mechanics-lite system like what I use, it's essential. In general, my impression of this section is that it has a lot of really cool stuff worth incorporating, but that the scenario that hangs it all together is rather weak. This isn't really the fault of the module itself, but of the carryover sitch from the last module, and the structure of the meta-plot of the adventure path overall. 

PART II: MISSING MAGISTRATE

There are two places other than the general town itself that PCs will no doubt be drawn to after wandering about town, talking to NPCs, etc. The method by which the PCs are supposed to be diverted into doing them in the "proper" order is some shady railroading, but again, I don't need to complain about the structure of the adventure non-stop since I don't intend to use it as written anyway. There's actually little to no progression of the "story" of the module in this part other than the fact that the Fort and the local government in general has been murdered and taken over by monsters. Here you'll face a doppelganger that can ambush out of mirrors, juju zombies and skum (fake deep ones, as reported in my Cult of Undeath review). The PCs will likely not find anything that links these monsters to the strange goings on in town other than that the bodies and occasional still living disappeared townspeople (some of them anyway) were obviously brought here; many of them killed and eaten by the deep ones. The whole affair feels a bit like spinning your wheels and getting enough XP to challenge the last phase of the module, which is Lowls' manor house (although there should be no expectation by anyone that Lowls is actually there, or even has been in a long time.)

PART III: AGAINST THE CULT OF HASTUR

The final part of the module is the storming of the boss's headquarters (surely a timeless horror story trope, right?) There's even an interesting note in the very beginning of this section; it claims that if the PCs want to stop the boss from aligning Thrushmoor and Carcosa and taking the town to that blighted dimension, they'll need to storm it. Of course... nothing whatsoever that's occurred in the module to this point would clue in the PCs in to that possibility; all that they know is that the people up in the manor are suspicious, people have been disappearing, other people in town are afraid, and that monsters have taken over the government buildings in town. If the PCs were supposed to have heard from the Deep Ones what was up, I didn't see it. I didn't even see that the Deep Ones knew anything about the boss's plans other than that they were promised that they'd be able to run through town eating all of the people that they wanted when she got whatever it is that she wanted. Granted; this might have been me. I was reading a bit distractedly, and maybe I missed something. But it feels much more like a flaw in the adventure design to me; you're supposed to go do this, because otherwise you have nothing else to do, by design, not because there are actually clues that point you there.

This section of the module is a fairly typical dungeon-crawl, to be honest. The main monsters on the above ground floors are kuru thugs (represented here as if they were a different race, but really all that they are is the stereotypical East Indies cannibal savage. This is especially appropriate, given Lovecraft's own use of "half-castes" and whatnot from the islands in "Call of Cthulhu" but somewhat surprising given Paizo's own political correctness. They tried to cover it up by making it a non-human (but barely) race, but c'mon. Kuru is even the native word for the laughing sickness, a neurological disorder caused by cannibalism of the brain. There are also cultists, and a handful of monsters, mostly just sitting in their rooms waiting for the PCs to find them kind of thing.

Below ground, the dungeon turns into an amusement park, where name-dropping Mythos creatures is the attraction for the players. Come! Fight the Hound of Tindalos! See freaky Elder Things and maybe try to talk to them before they fight you! The monstrous Men from Leng are represented! A star vampire! Rats in the Walls! Etc. I'm sure I'm not the first person to note this, although it's been a recurring theme on my blog for many years, but this is exactly the wrong way to do horror elements in your fantasy. Even something as iconically high fantasy as The Lord of the Rings did a much better job of emulating horror during the first half of the Fellowship of the Rings when the pursuit by the Ringwraiths was the main plot point to resolve. If that work can do it better, then something that's deliberately trying (allegedly) to emulate horror should do it even better. With a lot of work, this could be salvaged by a good GM, but why should the GMs have to wrench a module into actually doing what its stated purpose is?

The boss is a forgetable cultist figure, who sadly you will have heard very little about before you fight her, so there's another drastically wasted opportunity. But my biggest complaint about this module, you can probably tell (and the AP overall, although granted, it may improve) is that it isn't really what it purports to be. It isn't really a Lovecraftian horror adventure. It's a very typical, standard D&D adventure with a dash of Lovecraftian name-dropping. And even that almost comes across as more kitschy rather than in the true spirit of Yog-Sothothery.

But the module does provide what the last one didn't—clear pointers on what to do next. The PCs will have discovered that Lowls is traveling to the Pathfinder Middle East to find a copy of the Necronomicon, that he's a nasty cultist of some sort or another himself, that he's dabbled in the DreamWorld, and even that he sacrificed the PCs own memories somehow in the DreamWorld to a figure called the Mad Poet for more information, and then turned them over to the asylum as part of a pre-existing agreement. 

BONUS STUFF

There's a discussion and description of the town of Thrushmoor, which is a nice addition (I always like a good town description) included here. The historic Thrushmoor Vanishing is an interesting addition, but the module itself makes little use of it, and it actually seems likely that the players would never discover that it even happened. There's a discussion on the cult of Hastur, a decent little micro-story, and the bestiary. Let's review that, as normal:

• Byakhee - one of the most iconic Lovecraftian "low level" monsters, the Dark•Heritage ruleset has included them from the very beginning. There's some new development on their society, and an interesting etymological discussion, if you will, of the byakhee and its appearances in the literature.
• Faceless Hulks - kind of like giant-sized doppelgangers, sorta, with an aboleth related history.
• Mordiggian - Paizo clearly wanted to take advantage of this adventure path to stat out additional Great Old Ones that were unlikely to be added in subsequent bestiaries. This has no relation to the module, but it's a fun addition, I suppose. Throwing in some of somewhat lesser known Clark Ashton Smith deities is always a fun idea too.
• Keeper of the Yellow Sign - an undead kind of herald of Hastur, based on handwavy interpretations of some of the characters appearances in the stories.
• Star Vampire - another "classic" of the Mythos ouevre. One does actually appear in the module, although it's just a cameo.