Second Darkness Adventure Path

I finished--just a few minutes ago--the final pages of the Second Darkness adventure path, including even reading the Player's Guide before starting, which I'm now doing. (Why not? The pdfs are free, after all.) It's the third adventure path published after Paizo stopped doing Dungeon Magazine, the 6th adventure path in all, and the penultimate 3.5 adventure path. Next, although I'll read something else first, I'm sure, is Legacy of Fire, the last 3.5 adventure path.

While Second Darkness seemed to have elicited some excitement when it was new, because it brings the drow to Golarion, and still is the only major publication to feature them, I believe, it is also not seen as one of the better APs in retrospect, and when I asked ChatGPT to rank the APs, it put Second Darkness in the lowest, C-tier ("heavily flawed") with a summary of jarring mid-campaign tonal shift. That's fair. How about my quick summary of the six parts and the campaign as a whole?

Parts of the adventure path were actually really good. I doubt that any of the adventure paths are perfect; in fact, it seems to be a meme among fans that the 4th or 5th chapter is kind of an odd-ball that doesn't fit very well. Lower level plays out pretty classic, but as you get to higher level (5th and 6th chapters in particular) the characters are in the teens, usually ending at 15-16th level, so they're completely superheroes, and the game doesn't feel like classic fantasy anymore, it feels weird. The Avengers. Luckily Golarion isn't (yet) also the Muppets like 5e is, but it eventually gets there.

Anyway, here's the six parts, and my opinion (briefly) on each.

Shadow in the Sky: This is mostly an adventure of urban scum and villainy, hucksters, gangsters, pirates, were-rats, and the like. The vibe is very similar to Freeport, actually. While I don't really care for the casino employees gig that makes up a big part of it, it's certainly a serviceable urban adventure, and nothing at all is wrong with it. It ends with the reveal of the drow, which is supposed to be a big deal because they hadn't been revealed or described at all in Golarion up to this point. (Ironically, this adventure path was explicitly made "non-canon", I think it an effort to over-protect themselves in the wake of the OGL debacle, where they deliberately took OGL D&D concepts and made them either more generic or more specific to themselves... but no longer part of D&D. Now, it's not even clear that drow canonically exist in Golarion at all.)

Children of the Void: This is my favorite of the adventures; a treasure hunt that turns into a horror adventure of sorts, heavily based on Predator, Aliens, or any other adventure where you're trapped in a constrained space (a small island here) and under constant attack by alien monsters who are trying to turn you into a zombie. In fact, I'm going to explicitly adapt this into one of my two sailing campaigns; either Terror in Timischburg or Curse of the Corsair Coast.

The Armageddon Echo: Now, you're in the elf forest, and as agents of the elf queen, you are going to war against the invading drow in the elf forest. Quite the change from the piratey or criminal start to the campaign in a seedy, dumpy little town, but not a bad adventure, and one of the better "war-themed" adventures that I've read in a long time. Little bit hoaky finale, though. I'm not a fan of demiplanes.

Endless Night: I did not like this one. Here, you go undercover disguised as a drow into one of the drow households in the Underdark (er... Darklands) drow capitol city. The adventure is incredibly railroady, and the PCs have very little agency by design. Even when they're not being overtly railroaded, they're being deliberately hamstrung and put in a position where they can't do very much except be a spectator to the unfolding plot. I don't think I'd enjoy this one at all, and that's a much more significant flaw than any "tone shift". Getting jerked around by one girlboss NPC after another isn't anyone's idea of fun.

A Memory of Darkness: Another one that I did not like. You're back up on the surface now, going to a hold-out fortress in a demon-haunted section of the elf forest, but it's less of a raid and more of a visit where you're expected to go and talk to a bunch of people. It's also very railroady, and it feels more like you're a spectator rather than a "mover and shaker" in the story. Not only that, the adventure background gives the module very unlikeable context; the PCs are essentially manipulated by the girlboss elf queen, and there's an extremely transparent allegory of her being the feminist progressive "hero" and the whole point of the module is to go either convert or kill the traditionalist conservative elves who are the "villains". The module is all set up for the big reveal that elves who become "too Republican" turn into drow, which again, is supposed to be a big shocking reveal, and the module is set up as if it is, which isn't really a very appropriate way to structure a module, I don't think. I can't imagine running this one, ever. 

Descent Into Midnight: Finally, you go back to a weird section of the Underdark, fight lots of demons and drow at relatively high level, end the campaign. This is serviceable, but not particularly inspiring. The  Land of Black Blood should be cooler than it actually ends up being in practice, I found. It's a good idea that they do too little with.

Anyway, I didn't necessarily expect this to be one of my favorite campaigns. I knew ahead of time that it wasn't one of the more popular ones, and my AI ranking had it at the lowest tier at which it grouped 1e adventure paths. That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the first two chapters, the second one in particular.

Before I start Legacy of Fire I'm probably going to read Out of the Abyss, the 5e campaign that also focuses on the Underdark, drow and demons. It'll be interesting to see the same themes explored differently. 

I also ran another AI query of Google, asking it to rank the adventure paths, but I asked it to rank both 1e and 2e adventure paths. Thought I'd include that here for the heckuvit. Once again, I don't pretend to expect that my own rankings would match these. 

S-Tier: The Gold Standards

Universally praised masterpieces with exceptional writing, cohesive themes, and minimal required GM intervention.

• Curse of the Crimson Throne (1e): The ultimate urban campaign.
• Kingmaker (1e / 2e): The definitive hex-exploration and kingdom-building sandbox.
• Rise of the Runelords (1e): The quintessential high-fantasy Varisian epic.
• Season of Ghosts (2e): A masterclass in localized, atmospheric mystery and emotional storytelling.
• Strength of Thousands (2e): The premier roleplay-forward magical academy and diplomatic campaign.

A-Tier: Excellent & Highly Memorable

Incredible campaigns that fully deliver on their premises, holding minor flaws or requiring light GM pacing tweaks.

• Tyrant’s Grasp (1e): A grim, high-stakes military survival campaign against the undead apocalypse.
• War for the Crown (1e): A brilliant, courtly intrigue and political espionage campaign.
• Abomination Vaults (2e): The gold standard for modern, multi-level dungeon crawls.
• Hell’s Rebels (1e): An engaging underground urban resistance and rebellion campaign.
• Wrath of the Righteous (1e): An epic mythic crusade against demon hordes (held back only by late-game 1e mythic rules bloat).
• Fists of the Ruby Phoenix (2e): A high-octane, cinematic martial arts tournament arc.
• Iron Gods (1e): Splicing sci-fi technology and crashed starships into traditional fantasy.
• Strange Aeons (1e): The definitive cosmic horror and amnesia-driven campaign.

B-Tier: Good Campaigns with Small Caveats

Fun, deeply thematic adventures that stumble slightly due to subsystem weight, repetitive encounters, or disconnected acts.

• Blood Lords (2e): Climbing the ranks of an undead-run magocracy; suffers slightly from enemy damage-type repetition.
• Skull & Shackles (1e): A phenomenal pirate simulator hampered by tedious ship combat mechanics.
• Stolen Fate (2e): A sprawling, globe-trotting scavenger hunt using the Deck of Many Things.
• Carrion Crown (1e): Classic gothic horror monster-of-the-week, though books feel narratively disjointed.
• Quest for the Frozen Flame (2e): Immersive prehistoric nomadic survival; wraps up its final act too quickly.
• Legacy of Fire (1e): Genies, desert exploration, and Arabian Nights tropes.
• Reign of Winter (1e): A wild reality-hopping portal-fantasy (including WWI Earth) with polarizing tone shifts.
• Return of the Runelords (1e): High-level fan service tying together decades of lore; best reserved for veterans.
• Hell’s Vengeance (1e): The rare "play as the evil empire agents" campaign; requires a specific table dynamic.
• Ironfang Invasion (1e): Gritty guerrilla warfare against an invading hobgoblin army.
• Recent 2e Additions (Wardens of Wildwood, Curtain Call, Triumph of the Tusk, Seven Dooms for Sandpoint): Solid, well-received modern adventures that generally provide targeted, fun genre experiences.

C-Tier: Flawed but Workable

Fascinating core concepts dragged down by pacing issues, lethal early-edition math spikes, or structural disconnects.

• Age of Ashes (2e): Plagued by early-2e difficulty spikes and a disjointed "world tour" plot.
• Agents of Edgewatch (2e): Great urban encounters marred by tonal whiplash and punishing tactical lethality.
• Mummy’s Mask (1e): Incredible Egyptian tomb exploration, but suffers from massive dungeon burnout by Book 4.
• Outlaws of Alkenstar (2e): Incredible steampunk bank-heist opening that derails into an uninspired wilderness trek in Book 2.
• Shattered Star (1e): A straightforward, nostalgia-driven dungeon-delving fetch quest.
• Giantslayer (1e): A long, combat-heavy martial slog fighting giant variants.
• Ruins of Azlant (1e): Island colonization hampered by clunky underwater combat rules.
• Jade Regent (1e): A legendary caravan trek across the north, ruined by terrible caravan subsystems and NPC spotlight-stealing.
• Gatewalkers (2e) & Sky King's Tomb (2e): Compelling paranormal/dwarven hooks that suffer from disjointed chapter pacing and missing maps.

D-Tier: The Fixer-Uppers

The weakest links structurally. Playing these successfully requires the GM to fundamentally rewrite portions of the plot or mechanics.

• Extinction Curse (2e): Famous for introducing a circus theme and then entirely abandoning it after Book 1 for a standard subterranean lizardfolk crawl.
• Second Darkness (1e): Starts as a clever casino/crime syndicate intrigue before abruptly shifting into a generic Underdark drow war.
• Serpent’s Skull (1e): Features an iconic Chapter 1 shipwreck survival sandbox, followed by five books of tedious jungle slogging and an empty faction mega-dungeon.
• Council of Thieves (1e): Lacks focus outside of one famously brilliant, interactive theatrical play in Book 2.

Paizo Iconics - Mavaro

I've been doing these in batches of four, and that works out because I'll actually end the normal run just right; the total number is divisible by four. However, after that, if I go on, I've got a less nice number, so we'll see. However, sometimes it doesn't quite work out too; as Mavaro is the first of the "psionic" occultist classes, the actual Occultist, and he's the last for today. There are six total psionic classes, and I'll be mostly, but not quite, done in my next batch.

Of course, there are technically two entries for the Vigilante, even though they are the same character. It's a little bit like having Bruce Wayne and Batman being two separate iconic characters. Kinda dumb. 

In any case, I don't know if they were trying to go for a darker, edgier vibe to the occultist classes or not, but Mavaro is no hero. He's probably not actually a villain either, just a selfish jerk who unwittingly caused the death of every weirdo cultist that he grew up with, and then ran off to become a bit of a hedonist world traveler. I had kind of imagined him as a bit more like a Jules de Grandin with a few psychic powers of his own, but it doesn't seem like it.

I'm pretty curious about the whole Pathfinder 1e Occult line. It's obviously not at all the same take on Psionics as 3.5, which we get instead in the third party book Ultimate Psionics (mostly) but rather a completely different take on the concept.

Not being much of a mechanics head these days, and not caring nearly as much as I used to for alternative takes on magic, because I prefer a much lower magic concept anyway, I'm certainly less interested than I would have been twenty or twenty five years or so ago, or even ten or eleven years ago when this system was new. But I still have some interest in seeing exactly how this all plays out. I am listening to an actual play Carrion Crown podcast that features one of the PCs as an occultist, but it's hard to get a handle on what the class is really all about from that, honestly. She seems like a spellcasting fighter in many respects. No idea.

Here's another cover that prominently features Mavaro, also by Wayne Reynolds.

I honestly kind of wish that there had been an adventure path focused on the Occult line. There were five products for it, all starting with the word Occult...; ...Adventures, Bestiary, Origins, Realms, and Mysteries. It's not clear to me if one of the adventure paths kinda sorta played to the Occult themes, but there clearly wasn't one that really focused on them.

Paizo Iconics - Adowyn

At one point, the Meet the Iconics bios were actually bios, brief, but they made actually playing one of these iconics as a pregen pretty doable. At some point later on, they became very short origin stories that offer very little of what you need to do that, and just became self-indulgent stories written by would-be writers who didn't want to actually write a book or real short story. This particular problem plagues most of the second half, if not more, of the iconics bios, which is a bit part of the reason why the later iconics are not actually at all iconic.

Adowyn is also kind of a tough girl tragic girlboss, so not an interesting or likeable character at all either. Being kind of a hybrid of the ranger and druid classes and really focusing on the animal companion is not something that I ever had any interest in, so this is a class that I honestly don't have much interest in, and the iconic character certainly doesn't convince me otherwise.

Paizo Iconics - Shardra Geltl

I have little to no interest in the shaman class, and Shardra Geltl is one of the worst of an already sorry collection of iconics. Written by Crystal Frasier, a very confused man who presents himself as if he were a woman, it seems that Shardra is the same; a dwarf man who was confused and self-indulgent and decided because of the "spirits" or whatever, that he was actually a woman. The backstory is one of the most over-wrought, self-indulgent trite pieces of trash that I've read even in this kind of short game-related fiction, where those flaws are not uncommon. "Crystal" wasn't courageous enough to be too clear about this, though, so there's the (slim, but not impossible) possibility that I'm misinterpreting. But I don't think so.

Not only that, the design. What in the world is he wearing on his head? Is that stone? Bone? Bronze? And that weird lizardy thing is called a tuatara, which it mostly certainly is not. I've seen real tuataras, and they look nothing like that. 

What a disaster. I'm reading (as of the time of this posting) the Second Darkness adventure path, which is one of the really early ones; written before the Pathfinder RPG was even conceived, so it's still just a D&D 3.5 product. It's still painfully woke, and sadly, they only got worse from there.

Paizo Iconics - Zadim

The Slayer class is a kind of hybrid of the rogue and the ranger, and in practice, plays out a bit like a ranged attack focused assassin. Zadim is the iconic slayer, and he's literally a Middle Eastern religious cult assassin, which is perhaps not the most interesting use of the class, honestly. 

I like the idea of the class immensely, but I'm very much a confirmed fan of the idea of alt.rangers, alt.rogues, and other alt.fighter in general that lean towards assassin or swashbuckler. I think the Freeport class (for Pathfinder) called Freebooter is probably my favorite, but the Slayer is a good one.

Of course, I don't particularly love Zadim himself. I get it; going for the original hashassin cult vibe, but I'd never create one like that.

Still, it's hard to complain too much. The class is too good.

Sadly, or not because I have no interest in playing it, but the Slayer was not ported to 2e, although Zadim came on board as the iconc Avenger or something like that. Whatever, 2e.

Cult of Undeath ... tonight

My current gamer buddies are a bit unusual. I often get invited to join their "side group" (more accurately, I am part of the side group; I often get invited to join the main group) often with very little notice, and I'm often asked if I want to run. So yesterday evening, I was asked if I wanted to run a one-shot tonight. Sadly, my schedule is a bit constrained; I can do it, but it's going to make for a tight evening. I have a first pass job interview at 6 PM, missionaries over for dinner at 6:30, and D&D at 7:30. And, naturally, my day was packed full as it always is with no free time during the day to look at anything. I re-read, or skimmed rather, "Curse of the Brine Witch" and took some notes, which I printed off. I printed off a few AI generated pictures; one of Bridgetown and one of the Blackwater Hag, and I asked ChatGPT to generate me some 1st level renditions of the Scooby Gang as D&D characters, which I also printed off. Technically, I have five characters, because it made Scooby-doo into one too.

I told Tanya, the one who asked me, that I don't think my game is a one-shot. It's too hard to run a game, especially a 5e game, in 2½-3 hours. So, we'll call it a 2-3 shot... although I'm not going to point out until we get further along, that it's an optional campaign opener, because not knowing what else to do and having recently finished the Cult of Undeath outline, I decided to run Cult of Undeath. Honestly, it might well take more than 2-3 sessions to do this first part. But if it goes really well, and if we want to continue it, I'll be glad of the slower pace.

Alternate Blackwater Hag image

So tonight will be fairly low-key. I'll kill all of the PCs first, in their Scooby gang incarnation, which I'm going to give to them. Then, the regular PCs will be investigating the murder of the Scoobers. My favorite way to start a campaign, or even a season of an ongoing campaign. I've got enough roleplaying and investigatory notes, plus some towny random encounters, that'll keep them busy for easily two sessions, probably three, and possibly four depending on how hung up we get on looking in to anything that we end up looking in to. 

I'm not going to worry over-much beyond that. I'll have to adapt to D&D, which I'm not thrilled with, but which I absolutely am capable of doing. I hope I don't get a bunch of stupid Muppets characters, but I probably will. Probably have some dragonborn, some kenku, or some other crap like that. That's what I get for not disallowing them up front, but then again, this isn't even my normal group, this was last minute, and I don't know a lot of these players yet, at least not as players, to feel comfortable laying all kinds of restrictions on them yet. I'll just subtly influence them, I hope, by presenting a more grounded, darker fantasy, and hope that they get with the program if the campaign continues. If it doesn't... well, that's OK too, I guess. I'll at least have laid some seeds for the future. I never know what to expect from a last minute session like this, when I don't even know for sure who's playing or what kinds of characters I'll get. 

Anyway, I'll keep this post fairly short, and come edit it sometime tomorrow with a report of how it went.

UPDATE: As promised; the session went relatively well. It was a little rushed. I had little time to prepare, I had little warning that it was coming, I had no time to review characters (granted, from their perspective, these are one-shot characters, so I have no idea how much thought they even put into them—the guy who named his character Hey New Guy, which we decided to spell Hanu Guy obviously didn't create any backstory) and I had a busy evening, rushing from one thing to another to another until I got here, about fifteen minutes late compared to our targeted start time. We obviously didn't finish, but we did OK. I kind of rushed them through some investigation, threw them a lot of clues that I'd otherwise possibly have made them work a little harder for (although probably not)

It was otherwise pretty much what I'd hoped. Maybe a little sillier, but that's on me for giving them the Scooby gang as pregens to get killed at the beginning, and making it very obvious that they were, indeed, the Scooby gang. 

I do feel a little rusty as a GM. Other than a few one-shots here and there, I've not really run anything in several years, and I find that some of my bad habits, like moving too quickly through stuff, are ones that I definitely need to keep an eye on. Part of that was a function of me feeling so rushed, both to prepare for the game, to try and get a lot done in about three hours or even slightly less, and the whole hecticness of the evening in general. Without those factors, I'd have reviewed my notes and outline one more time, made a few more notes with some names of NPCs that they'd likely run into instead of having to improvise them on the spot, or if I did improvise them on the spot, I'd have taken a little bit more time to look them up on my DM screen's name list panel at least. I would have been just a bit more prepared, I guess. And I like running pretty fast and loose; don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I'd be a lot more prepared; I'd just have spent a little more time in prep and reviewed what prep I did do one more time so the whole thing went a little bit smoother.

Good news is, we're meeting next week to continue, and because I know about it in advance, I can do that. Although there are two more players who are normally part of that group, so there's a possibility that I'll have more players and more things going on. While this "one shot" doesn't end on a cliff-hanger exactly, it does leave places for it to go as a more campaign-ish type thing. If we get to that point and people still want to play, then I'll need a little bit more on their characters.

I'm not super thrilled about adapting my campaign to 5e with a group where I'm kind of a back-up, but y'know... it beats not doing anything at all. And I feel like we did maybe a third of what I prepared. My outline is a good three sessions; probably four if I slow down a bit and take things a little bit more deliberately. Enough time to get my sea legs under me with running, I hope. River legs, maybe, as the case may be in this campaign.

Terror in Timischburg; first pass at expansion

Cutting and pasting my original Terror in Timischburg outline, and I'll add some more thoughts on how to expand.

1) The "white whale"—some kind of large, nasty sea monster that's been threatening the coast and shipping. It needs to be found and hunted. 

I never meant, of course, for the "white whale" to literally be a white whale. I'm actually leaning towards something like Scylla right now. Not sure how to do this, though, so it's more interesting that just "sail around for a while and then fight a monster in the ocean." The Leviathan chapter of Elder Evils might have some ideas that I need to look at again. I'm also thinking that it requires special equipment. Maybe special equipment made out of star-metal, which conveniently will be crashing on an island as part of another front below. So, there's this whole end times cult that's used some kind of ritual to call a meteor down to crash on an island as a test; a bigger and more deadly attack later. 

Not 100% sure how to tie this in to the sea monster other than that creating ballista heads of skymetal, and skymetal swords, or whatever, is necessary to slay the monster. But I'd like to think of an even tighter relationship.

2) The city-state of Rozovka has often born the brunt of vampiric slave raids, clandestinely. Joining up with Inganok, another victim, they are hoping to discourage them militarily. Although not capable of fighting them, they're looking to commission privateers via letters of marque against Timischburg's clandestine vampire raids. It's worth noting that the idea that vampires clandestinely rule Timischbrg is secret(ish), hidden behind plausible deniability, and many people don't believe in vampires.

I'm not sure what this looks like either. It sounds like sailing around hunting vampire (or at least vampire representative) pirates and attacking them, but that's not a very structured approach either. I think that I might be able to adapt some of the Freeport material, maybe particularly the one actual sailing ship combat module, "A Storm of Sails". I'm sure that there are more sailing modules out there, but I don't know them off-hand. There's a whole 5e campaign (3pp) called Call of the Deep I think, plus the Saltmarsh 5e collection, all of which I should probably read too. They're both on my radar, but not in the short term. I might consider pulling them ahead to read.

Either that, of course, or I don't finish this particular one until I get to those points in my reading. Which is fine. I'll probably leapfrog Curse of the Corsair Coast at least ahead of this, at least when I get to the final supercut.

3) Pirates have been hiding out in remote coves on the Nizrekh Islands and even hiding their treasure haul there. Of course, the locals are unfriendly, hostile, and xenophobic. And snake cultists, and cannibals. Seriously bad news. Probably undead too, some of them. And, well, Nizrekh is what's left of Atlantis, so there's even more bad news there too. 

This is where I'm thinking of adapting part 2 of Second Darkness, "Children of the Void." It's going to be a bit more bulked up, and I'll have a look at some of the jungle exploration modules that I've read earlier from Savage Tide, or maybe "Souls for the Smuggler's Shiv" adventure from Serpent's Skull. 

4) The seal mentioned elsewhere at Grozavest that keeps Tarush, the undead godling trapped underground, is weakening, and nastier, more primal and feral ghouls/vampires are slipping through. Not only in the wilds of Timischburg, but also in Nizrekh, and in the jungles to the east of the corsair cities can the PCs find out how to tighten up the seals and keep the already horrifying enough "secret" vampire aristocracy of Timischburg from being replaced by a ravening horde of daemons and undead.

This is a major change from the ship-based stuff otherwise going on. In some ways, this may be the closest to a dungeon-crawl that I've come up with; but primarily I need to focus on the PCs finding a way to strengthen or re-do the seal. Maybe the skymetal above on Nizrekh is important here, or the fellshard ore in Garskarfells. But ultimately, having Tarush somehow breaking his seal is the worst case scenario, so it needs to be prevented at all costs. 

5) The Godfather in Port Liure. A patron sends the PCs to disrupt dangerous drug and occult trade in the city of thieves which is wreaking havoc on more innocent Timischer people, and they get caught up in a gang war, among other problems.

Port Liure is already going to be the setting for Curse of the Corsair Coast, so I probably want to involve a different one of the Corsair City-states like Razina or St. Haspar or something. There are some Freeport modules that I can easily adapt to this; I need to go double check on them and see which ones best fit.

(Bonus) Innsburough in the Orlok Marches is deliberately meant to evoke Innsmouth of Lovecraft fame. Cults of Dagon threaten the entire coast, centered on this horrible town. Sea devils and deep ones and cultists. Can they be disrupted without it being fatal?

The final one, a bonus one, is just "Shadow Over Innsmouth" at least as its currently described. Again, I'm going to have a look at some existing modules for this one too. 

I think mostly my plan is pretty solid, but it's still a little light for many of these, and what I'd like to do is adapt existing material rather than make it up myself.  This post gives it a little more flesh, but it's still not enough to go on. But it's enough that I can go back and do some research with existing modules that I have, and then come back and do each of these six fronts as a separate, more detailed post.

EDIT: The current banner is probably the busiest that I've ever made for this site, but... I kinda like it. I'm sure I'll get restless with it in the future and change it again, but for now, I quite like it. I'll post it here just because at some point in the future it may not be the one that's on the header.

Cult of Undeath Supercut Add-on

At one point, I thought it would be interesting to not only have a super complete and complex 5x5 (plus add-ons) for Darkness in the Hill Country, and I created another 1x5 leg specific to the iconic characters as an example of what I'd like to do with the actual PCs, even though the actual PCs, of course, wouldn't be the iconic characters. I now think that this was not a good idea. I created some NPCs that made the iconics seems much more interesting and deep, but that means that they work better as novel characters rather than ... DM NPCs, which is what they effectively would be otherwise. Unfortunately, I think some of the NPCs that I created to be foils of these iconics are quite good, and I find myself wanting to find ways to use them. In fact, I've even made AI images for campaign use for some of them, including Vaspar Oksandros, Audley Hardwicke and a few others. One of my favorites though, and one that I initially created for Darkness in the Hill Country, but which I think would fit extremely well in Cult of Undeath is Alys. 

Alys is an agent, or support character, added to the PCs group like a cohort, but she comes from a source that is perhaps not the most trustworthy. I think that she would come up in Cult of Undeath in Gaskarfells, where she could represent the interests of either Dietmar von Hohenstahl or Roderich von Szarad. Maybe, even, she's an uneasy compromise between the two of them, who are rivals, but who both might want to convince the PCs to help with the depredations of feral vampire Velgar Tzarnik and his proto-vampire and ghoulish minions. Of course, von Hohenstahl is himself a more cultured Timischburg vampire, although the PCs wouldn't be expected to know that at first, or potentially even at all if they aren't very curious, and while von Szarad is known to be a necromancer, it's a different kind of thing in Gaskarfells, and not necessarily villainous. So yeah, they're not expected to know that von Szarad is obviously a villain himself angling at becoming a lich, no doubt at the expense of the town and the greater Timischburg population around it. Assuming that they do find out about that, it's probably not going to be surprising to eventually discover that Alys herself isn't the pretty young helpful pseudomage prodigy that she presents herself as. 

Oh, sure, she is young, pretty and probably kind of likeable. And yeah, she does offer a lot of benefit to the PC group as a potential sage to be consulted, as a non-combatant travel companion who can offer limited healing and magical buffs, as well as be consulted in all kinds of things. But she was assigned to them not only to help with the specific task of defeating Tzarnik, but also to keep an eye on the PCs, who neither von Szarad nor von Hohenstahl really trust. They also don't trust each other, and to some extent, probably not Alys neither. 

See, Alys is actually an ancient wight-witch, i.e., a wight who has access to some spells and pseudomagery (imitation of spells through magic items.) Her pleasant exterior is merely an illusion, and in certain circumstances, the PCs should have the opportunity to see through it. She's the "wife" of Tarush, the Charnel God who fell to the earth, created the first vampires (allegedly), is buried and sealed under the constant nightfall of Grozavest, and is the primary source of all undeath in the world. Although "wife" is more like the way in which Catholic nuns are considered "brides" of Christ; she's not literally his wife, of course, and she post-dates his fall to earth by many centuries. 

That said, in spite of Alys' true dark and disturbing demeanor and practices, and the casual way in which she doesn't care about most people around her and willingly and thoughtlessly sacrifices them if it helps her pursue her goals in any way, she does come to become genuinely fond of the PCs, I think. I like the idea that the PCs have an ally who is genuinely helpful and they genuinely probably want to keep around because of it, but that she genuinely creeps them out and makes them nervous too.

I may add other of these NPCs to the potential outline, i.e., Hardwicke as a corrupt fallen Shadow ranger, or Oksandros as a sinister Chersky mafia gangster, or a few of the other characters which help to make the setting a bit more rich and the plots a bit more complex. Maybe some of the former iconics who were "demoted" to cohort or NPC status, like Shule, Oisin Dughall, Dean Bannermane, etc. too.

Paizo. Huh. What are they good for?

Not absolutely nothing, say it again. I've been reading a lot of the early Paizo stuff, partly as part of my trawl of the adventure paths (nearly halfway done with Second Darkness as of this writing, but you need to remember to add the three 3.5 adventure paths done in the pages of Dungeon Magazine before starting on the Paizo adventure path books.) I've also been reading the Paizo Adventures; originally called the GameMastery series, and I've still got a little over half a dozen to read before I get to where they spill out of 3.5 and become Pathfinder the RPG. I want to finish those and the adventure paths that were for 3.5 specifically at about the same time, so I've been reading a lot of the stand-alone modules to catch up, but now I'm going to slow down and pace them a bit. Ready to read the next one of the adventure path after having not read any of that in a few weeks.

Anyway, I thought I'd document which of the modules I'm reading I think are good enough that I'd potentially revisit them and adapt them into one of my ongoing campaigns. This will obviously be an ongoing effort; there were a lot of these modules published over the years, even just for 3.5, and there were at least twice as many published for Pathfinder 1e as for 3.5. Between the two, there were probably close to seventy modules published. I'll also talk about the chapters of the Adventure Path that I think I'd like to use, although I'll probably do a second post where I talk about the adventures from Shackled City, Age of Worms and Savage Tide. I should do some Freeport stuff too; maybe I'll even fudge it a little bit and post that under my new PAIZO REVISITED tag, which I'm creating specifically for this, since some of the modules, especially at the end, were published for the Pathfinder 1e system. All in all, I envision that the Paizo Revisited tag will be a nice little reference for me when I've done more of them in terms of what modules are workable to be adapted into one of my campaigns. I should attempt to adapt more modules into my campaigns after all; that's why I'm reading them, and although Darkness in the Hill Country and (maybe) Terror in Timischburg are not really adapted from anything at all, Cult of Undeath is largely (although radically) adapted from, mostly, the Carrion Crown adventure path, with some additional ideas inspired by the old 1e module "Against the Cult of the Reptile God" and another portion inspired by the H. P. Lovecraft story "Shadow Over Innsmouth."

Anyway, this isn't meant to be complete; I just want to document which modules I like while I still remember them well enough to do so. Maybe "like" isn't the right word; which modules have elements or even a basic structure that I'd think I want to potentially adapt. I'll bold and red the module titles so it's easier to pick them out when looking back at these posts later...

"Hollow's Last Hope", the very first stand-alone adventure, is pretty good, and pretty classic. While it isn't super innovative, and the whole "lumber barons" thinly veiled political statement is way too Seattle hipster for me, I never claimed I was going to run them straight out of the book. This module is sufficiently well-done that I could adapt it to a different setting, potentially with different monsters even and certainly within a different context, but the basic structure is sufficiently sound that I like it.

"Hangman's Noose", a low level haunted house, was a fantastic read, and is very strongly one that I want to consider finding out how to adapt it. I don't know for sure that I love the way that the characters were hooked into the adventure, but that's always campaign dependent anyway, and I don't hold that against an adventure, where they'd gotta think of something, but most likely you've gotta change it too.

"River Into Darkness" is a classic jungle river voyage, heavily influenced by The African Queen, the famous movie from 1951 starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. Although I haven't read it in a long time, I know that the first half of "Racing to Ruin" from the Serpent's Skull adventure path has a similar theme, and the two could probably be combined to give you plenty more options, if you wanted them. I dislike the anti-colonialism soapbox, or even the need to acknowledge that such existed because they absolutely cannot do so without presenting it as a propagandistic narrative, but if you switch out the wild jungle elves with convicted felons; maybe even the equivalent of Moslem rape-gangs from the UK and elsewhere in Europe, it works better, and the wild elves that are attacking the fort are, instead of justified anti-slavers, brigands and criminals in their own right who you can defend yourself against violently without feeling the least remorse. 

This is the most recent one that I've read, so I'll do any winners out of the remaining 3.5 modules in another post, maybe along with the D&D modules from the early adventure paths. I do want stuff that I can use in my newer southerly tropical and subtropical sections, like Baix Pallars and Porhomok and the jungle that separates them.

Meanwhile, from the Paizo adventure paths, I've combined "Burnt Offerings" with "Hollow's Last Hope" in an extremely abbreviated format before, and I think that they work quite well. There are other parts of "Burnt Offerings" that I like, but parts of it that I don't, so I'd certainly do some editing, if nothing else.

"The Skinsaw Murders" is one of my absolute favorite Paizo adventure that I've read so far, and I'd use the crap out of it. I'd probably change the context rather than have it be part of a campaign that has any resemblance to Rise of the Runelords, and I'd focus especially on the first half in the Sandpoint countryside, and maybe not even use the Magnimar section at all... although there's nothing really wrong with it.

I don't love "The Hook Mountain Massacre" as much as some fans do, but it does have some good material. I'd have to more liberally modify it, but as with "Hollow's Last Hope" I think that there's a good structure behind the module that I could still use. 

I'm going to skip Curse of the Crimson Throne entirely, because I'm going to hold back on that one and think about possibly adapting the whole thing more closely, as Cult of Undeath was to Carrion Crown, but of the Second Darkness adventure path, which I've not finished reading yet, "Children of the Void," the second one, which is a kind of riff of movies like Alien or Predator or even Jurassic Park in a way where you're stuck in a wilderness setting with monsters running amok is actually quite a good one, and I'm going to use the "magic ritual calling down a meteor" idea from it as part of one of my own campaigns, probably Curse of the Corsair Coast as well.

Finally, although not a Paizo adventure, I've also recently read most of the original run of 3e adventures, and of those, "Speaker in Dreams" is absolutely the stand-out one that I'd consider using.

When I revisit PAIZO REVISITED, I imagine I'll have finished all of the adventures, both adventure path and stand-alone, published for 3.5e D&D. I'll also read some summaries of the original three D&D adventure paths that Paizo wrote before they went on their own so I can remember a little better what those were like. I know for sure that at least some of those adventures would pass muster, but I don't remember which ones at this point. 

Adventure Path modules possibly need even more adaptation than stand-alone, to make them fit in a campaign of my own making instead of the one that they were originally written to take place in, as well as to level adjust any that are higher level, and to "context-adjust" them all out of a D&D context. This is more important for higher level modules too, of course, as low level D&D doesn't feel nearly as ungrounded and it is more like regular fantasy as you'd expect it to be. It quickly becomes a sub-genre of its own as access to more and more D&D magic because a given, which of course always makes these not work as well for me.

Banners - I have a problem

I admit that I have a problem. I like making banners and using what is little more than WordArt level playing around to make them with lots of fonts, backgrounds, WingDing or runic decorations, etc. That said, I enjoy it, so here's a big batch upload of most of what I have that I haven't rendered obsolete and deleted. This applies both to the setting, and to the campaigns.