Deconstructing Ashes At Dawn

My summary for CULT OF UNDEATH has the PCs presumably attempting to rescue Revecca and stop the unsealing of a Primogenitor vampire at Grozavest, because the unleashing of such a monster would be catastrophic.  Plus, presumably they like Revecca enough to not let her get killed.  This is really more like the last chapter of the adventure path as written, and I don't have anything in my summary that follows very well what the fifth chapter, Ashes At Dawn has.  In fact, I really don't like this one even more than I don't like the other chapters of this adventure path.  Much of this can be seen quite clearly in the Introduction to the adventure, written by dysfunctional r-strategist and professional SJW F. Wesley Schneider.  Let me quote parts of it, briefly:

We’d been talking vaguely about Carrion Crown since PaizoCon 2010, when someone on the messageboards eventually hit us with what seemed to me to be a very obvious question: “Why would I help the vampires?” I understand this sort of question when all the details about a campaign’s plot are unreleased, abbreviated, or still forming. But as we weren’t ready or even able to release a lot of details yet, my only answer was essentially, “They have something the PCs want, putting characters into a ‘You scratch our backs and we’ll scratch yours’ situation.” 

For a certain subset of those in the discussion, this was not an acceptable answer.
“But vampires are evil!” “My party won’t work for the undead!” “I’m a paladin!” Wah, wah, wah! 

The world’s a hard place, and even harder when there’re fireballs and zombies! Toughen up! 

I wrote and deleted responses running the gamut of diplomatic shades, but I never posted anything with quite that tone. Most frustratingly, after considering and discussing the concern for a few days, I was forced to admit there was some validity to it. So I told folks we had top men on the job—I was planning to write it myself, after all—and assured them that, come volume #47, they’d be pleased with the outcome. 

Well, you’re holding the outcome in your hands. 

You don’t have to dig deep through Paizo’s backlist to catch the drift of my tastes. In short, I also always rooted for Skeletor over He-Man and the Joker over Batman. So obviously, like many GMs, I like the bad guys, I like overwhelming odds, and I like shades of gray and seeing the heroes forced beyond their comfort zones.

So... if you don't want self-righteous, ham-handed preaching during your gaming about nihilistic values where there's no such thing as a hero, or good and evil, then Schneider doesn't have time for you and only his reluctant professional duty keeps him from openly mocking you—although he'll still throw in some passive-aggressive BS anyway, like pretending that you're crying.  What a douche.  This is the guy who wrote the absurd fantasy Burning Man bohemian city of Kaer Maga, by the way.  Not surprising that the whole "save the monsters, because actually people are the real monsters, especially if they look kinda white and Christian and male, LOL" vibe is one that he's pushed heavily into the adventure path, and which has effectively ruined it.  That said, as I've done in the past with the other modules, I've kind of reworked the framework, i.e. "plot" and then go through each module to strip-mine them of any encounters and details of value that can be rehung on this new framework.  So, let's get to it.  I suspect that I may end up using less of this module than of most of the rest I've reviewed, but we'll see after I go through it in detail at the end of this post if that presumption ends up being true or not.

The gist of the adventure is that someone has started infiltrating the younger generation of vampires at Caliphas, the capital of Ustalav (so my Grozavest, in the TIMISCHBURG setting).  These younger punks are spurred into violent revolution, and begin by starting to murder their elders who stand in the way of their own political ambitions, but of course, these younger vampires are being manipulated by the Whispering Way cult, so they're chumps.  The PCs are expected to help the vampire elders, who at least make the trains run on time in Caliphas... I'm sorry, they at least recognize that parasites can't literally destroy the entirety of their host, so they oppose the Whispering Way which wants to turn the entire world into an undead one.  Given the rules for vampires and their spawn in D&D and Pathfinder, there's an elixir or some-such developed to give spawn free agency, made by hags, and they have their own agenda too.  The PCs are supposed to work with the leader of the vampires to solve the mystery of who's murdering the vampires and stopping them so that he will help them track down the Whispering Way and stop their funny business.   Again; I don't know how much of this I'll use, but the key elements can be used somehow other than they were originally written, if needs be, so let's have a look at them.

THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN  A Whispering Way adherent that the PCs have been following for some time has been turned into a Headless horseman, and is tasked with slowing or stopping the PCs.  They fight him on the road, where he's been tracking them, before they arrive in town.  He's got dire ghoul wolves with him, and rides on a nightmare.

HEADLESS HORSEMAN: AC: 16 HD: 4d6 (16 hp) AT: touch +4 (1d6) STR: -4, DEX: +2, MND: +1 S: undead immunities, only hit by magic or silver weapons, arrows do a max 1 HP damage.  Ghosts also have one of the following special attacks.  Also: drains 1d3 DEX on touch, creatures reduced to -5 DEX are immobile and helpless for coup de grace attack that kills them automatically, forces a Sanity check on all characters that can see the horseman. 

MOUNT: AC: 15 HD: 5d6 (20 hp) AT: bite +5 (1d6) STR: +3, DEX: -1, MND: -3, S: breathe fire (1d10 HP damage—DEX + Athletics check DC 14 will halve damage.) 

GHOUL-HOUNDS: AC: 13 HD: 2d6 (8 hp) AT:  bite +2 (1d6) STR: +2, DEX: +0, MND: -1, S: touch paralyzes for 1d4 rounds, humans wounded by ghoul-houndss are cursed if they fail a MND + level check (DC 12) and will slowly turn into ghouls themselves.  This process involves taking 1 point of MND damage every day (which does not heal overnight) until they reach -5, at which point the conversion is complete.  GM may provide antidote/remedy to counter this curse.

The ghoul-hounds should arrive as reinforcements after the combat has already started, which for best results, should be an ambush at night on a covered bridge.  (Keep in mind that I'm treating the headless horseman as a ghost story, which is more in keeping with the whole Sleepy Hollow tradition.  Irish folklore has the dullahan, which is a headless horseman of sorts too that carries around its own head.  This is an Unseelie Fae, not a ghost.  I don't know that it really matters, but I like the Sleepy Hollow ghost tradition better.  Plus, I'm not at all Irish, and in fact have a fair bit of Scots-Irish blood, so screw you, Paddy!)

VAMPIRE BODY INVESTIGATION Vampire bodies and gossip in the morning as the PCs wake up in their inn.  If you're not going to do anything with the vampire murder subplot (I am not) then this probably has no place in adventure.  Besides, it's not an "encounter"—it's where the PCs get a clue shoved in their face.

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA How typically Vampire: the Masquerade-ish.  After going to a fancy party, the PCs are supposed to convince someone to let them browse the archives for clues. In a pinch, they can break in later if they have no charisma or charm.  They find clues and probably set off a trap which summons four bone devils.  I wonder; I don't have anything quite like bone devils in the FANTASY HACK monster section, but they can easily be replaced with something else.  On the other hand; what would I have the CULT OF UNDEATH PC's researching exactly?  I don't really need them for anything.

Then a dhampyr NPC shows up and tells the PCs where to go next.  Sigh.  He offers to introduce them into vampire society so they can rub shoulders with the bloodsuckers and find more clues about who's killing them.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRES  That's actually what they call this section.  Now that they've offered about the fourth side-bar about trying to force PCs to not kill the vampires but work with them, they finally seem to assume now that they just will.  It starts out with the statement that you as GM will have eliminated any other option for them, giving them no choice but to seek out the vampires.  Sigh again.  The entrance to Vamp Undercity is through the Glass House, a bit greenhouse and park, guarded by a strange topiary-loving vampire who wears vines instead of clothes (oooh, sexy! Or something.) There's also stuff like Venus people-traps, enslaved vampire spawn guards, magical traps and loads of vampire nobles to talk to (or kill; they go out of their way to discourage and yet say that we can't stop you in the text) including a Nosferatu-themed guy, who even wears the same clothes as Max Schrenk, of course.  They are meant to discover the murderer and lay an ambush for him, or seek out him out his "lair"; a fancy haberdashery, since the vampire murderer is also a tailor.  Inside, there are demons, vampires, ghouls, and the vampire murderer himself.  At the end of this episode of "we promise, this is still D&D, not one of those White Wolf pussy games" the PCs are meant to know something about the witches, and go chase after them next.

There's not really anything in here that I need.  I don't have a whole bunch of individualized vampire stats.  Unless I need them (and I don't) a vampire in FANTASY HACK is a vampire is a vampire.

THE BELLS OF SAINT PAGAN SOMETHING OR OTHER  I've gotta be honest; the attempt at "cute" subtitles that mimic well-known movies and/or books isn't something that I'm immune to, but it also kinda ticks me off after a while.  The witches are, of course, hanging out in an abandoned abbey.  The story is that they are a coven of three, but one of them is "stuck" in spider swarm form because her body was destroyed and dismembered years ago.  Their motivation is that they're trying to get her skull back so they can finish reassembling the skeleton and revive her as a humanoid witch, rather than as a whole bunch of spiders crawling all over the place.  They've got a summoned demon and some charmed guards, a falling bell trap, invisible stalkers and a few other things kicking around, and then of course, the two witches themselves, plus the third in the form of a bunch of spiders that hold together in humanoid shape.  You find a fallen paladin, a weird "blood knight", a kind of animated armor dripping in blood, possessed by the spirit of a dead warrior.  And, of course, you find the two witches, who are illustrated to look like ratchet Renaissance Fair girls; pretty much exactly what you'd expect a nerdy D&D player to jerk off to, I suppose.  Shudder.  And then at the end, you get confronted by nagas.  The witches supposedly have a "get away from being killed by the PCs for free" card.

Although the adventure itself is... not my cup of tea, mostly because it is more like having a cup of tea with the duchess than it is an adventure, the section which follows the adventure proper and shows us the city of Caliphas is really quite nice as a city brief.  It's too brief to really be a good sourcebook, but it's a nice map, and I could easily use it for a decent-sized city.  I don't know that I want to use it to represent Grozavest itself, as I need a big, sealed prison in it (maybe one of the half a dozen or so castles in the city can double for this, though.)

I also like popping to the back and seeing what they've got going on in the bestiary, in case I want to convert up something using the same concept.  They don't this time, but they do curiously have their own versions of nosoi, a word that I also use as a type of daemon.  In Greek mythology, the Nosoi were spirits of pestilence and disease that escaped from Pandora's box when she opened it.  Because of this, I basically gave the name Nosoi daemon to a big, ugly plague-daemon loosely based on a Warhammer Nurgle miniature of the pox maggoths, so it wouldn't exactly fit in a box, I don't think.  That's OK.  Paizo have decided that they're little bird-like psychopomps, so they're even farther removed from the Greek original.  Mine at least are purported to have grown from tiny fly-like versions of themselves that crept out of the box many millennia ago.  There you have it.

One more of these, and then I'll decide what (if anything) still needs to be labeled CULT OF UNDEATH, or if it's ready to just transition completely into the new TIMISCHBURG tag that explores the setting.