Tuesday, May 07, 2019

Pathfinder Society Season #0 Part 4

The final portion of the Season #0 review.  I've got eight scenarios to review, and this post won't go up until they're all done!

Here's the summary of Season #0, from the Pathfinder Wiki:
In the summer of 4708 AR, the Pathfinder Society held its annual Grand Convocation at the Grand Lodge in Absalom, the City at the Center of the World. Hundreds of new agents had recently joined the Society, some graduating from the Grand Lodge's training program, others earning field commissions through their previous exploits. This influx of new (and untried) agents gave the Society's leadership, the anonymous Decemvirate, the opportunity to expand the Society's activities in an unprecedented manner. The Decemvirate expanded cautiously, not pushing the limits of these new agents too hard. 
From the Grand Lodge in Absalom, Pathfinders were sent all over the Inner Sea region. Some teams were sent to explore newly-discovered ruins or investigate strange items; others went in aid of members or allies of the Society. Through its actions, the Society gained several new allies, including Skelg the Ripper, an envoy from the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, and Nigel Aldain, curator of the (now infamous) Blakros Museum in Absalom. Agents were sent to many of the nations in the Inner Sea, including Taldor, Andoran, Cheliax, and Qadira. Teams were dispatched to locations as far-flung at the lawless River Kingdoms, revolution-wracked Galt, and the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse. 
Throughout the year, various national governments saw the Pathfinder Society as a tool to further their own goals, and quietly began to support individual agents within the Society. These national factions garnered much support, and began to co-opt Society missions for their own ends. Pathfinders who once worked as a team instead carried hidden agendas from one of five national factions: the Eagle Knights of Andoran; the nobility of devil-worshiping Cheliax; the Sapphire Sage of Osirion; the merchants of Qadira; or the nobles of Taldor. While not leading to outright conflict between members, these factions often distracted Pathfinders from the Society's goals. 
By the end of the season, the Decemvirate had tested their crop of new agents, weeding out those unable to handle the duties of a Pathfinder. The Society's masked leaders had also noted the increase in nationalism among the Society's members. Rather than clamp down on the national influences, the Society embraced them, and Pathfinders began overtly assisting various nations as troubleshooters and investigators, alongside their normal duty of exploration. But there were some in the Society who saw this rise of nationalism as an ill omen, and yet others who saw it as an opportunity to strike.
Anyway, on to the scenarios...
  1. The Eternal Obelisk—I will say one thing about the brevity of the Pathfinder Society scenarios; when they have to do dungeon crawls, it's nice that they are so brief.  This one has, what—six total areas, is all?  Anyway, a headstrong and idiotic teenaged girl runs off to try and prove her worth as a future Pathfinder by exploring a temple that promises eternal life.  She is instead killed and decapitated by the medusa that lives there, and her stone head is sent to her father: a powerful man, who blames the Pathfinder Society for putting such foolish notions in the head of his daughter.  There are mephits, some animated petrified horse statues, grimlocks, a xorn, and of course the medusa herself to face.  I have to admit, although I don't like dungeon crawls, the idea of facing a medusa in an underground lair, a la Clash of the Titans, is a pretty classic trope that I can kind of get behind.
  2. Fingerprints of the Fiend—A fabulous lost city has been found!  The Aspis Consortium has already taken over and set up a dig site, giving this scenario some of the vibe of the middle act of Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Nazi dig site of Tanis.  But first, the PCs must climb the Cliffs of Insanity while being attacked by an erinyes.  Speaking of 80s adventure movie pop culture references, after fighting some of the camp, the PCs might well find themselves in a mine cart chase down to the city, like Indy and Short Run.  Almost a page's worth of text describes rules for adjudicating this possibility.  There's also morlocks (another reference, although The Time Machine probably can't really be called pop culture), a damaged golem, and the "boss" of the scenario, a cleric of Asmodeus and his Aspis Consortium bodyguards.  While the city is therefore open to exploration, the deus ex machina  notion o there being hundreds if not thousands of morlocks and possibly more golems just out of sight is supposed to encourage them to just pick up and leave at this point.
  3. Tide of Morning—The PCs are to go to a forest in Andoran and deal with an unfriendly druid, asking for his lorestone McGuffin.  However, the druid has just been murdered, and the PCs must face a few waves of fey and gnome enemies, make their way before sunrise to a druid circle deeper in the forest, and stop a sunrise ritual to destroy the lorestone before the fey can do so.  Not one of the more memorable scenarios.
  4. Decline of Glory—Taking place in a swampland in Taldor seems a far-cry from the Old West of Americana, but the plot of this little module is right out of the idea of cattle barons trying to force homesteaders off of their property through intimidation.  Add unfamiliar and inhospitable weather, an attack of ghouls, and fungus and plant-based enemies here and there complete the picture.  If you're successful, you've helped establish a new Pathfinder Lodge, although why they'd want one in this out of the way backwater (literally because it's in the middle of a swamp) is never really explained very well.  This scenario also has a number of notable typos; the first that I've paid attention to them, so either the earlier ones didn't have any, or at least they were inconspicuous and I didn't notice them.
  5. Hands of the Muted God—A strange, but mostly benevolent cult of silence operates in Absalom, and the Pathfinder Society wants to find out if their silent object of worship actually managed to become a god or not (this is related to a key element of the Golarion setting.  See Starstone on the Pathfinder wiki for more information.)  They follow the cultists up a mountain trail in the wilderness on the island, and are ambushed by drow (making their first appearance in this series), a chimera, and finally fighting a drider demon cult priest.
  6. Lost at Bitter End—Messing around with the ruins of ancient civilizations in Golarion seems to be a sure-fire way to unleash some kind of ancient catastrophe—which the PCs end up having to be the clean-up crew for.  A Pathfinder has been messing around with an anti-magic zone far to the south and accidentally gotten herself and an entire town sucked into a demiplane full of waiting undead soldiers and devils.  You have to travel there, find out what happened to her, disrupt the invasion plans, bring back the missing townspeople, etc.  You'll fight some juju zombies, hellcats, bone devils and weird necromantic clerics.  And, of course, the hapless Pathfinder who unleashed all this is hopelessly dead.  This seems to be a common theme of these scenarios, actually.
  7. Our Lady of Silver—This one is different.  Not only does it include a fair bit of material related to the faction missions (stuff that otherwise happens completely "off screen") but it also is a slow starter, giving you plenty of time to role play the wedding of a young Pathfinder to the daughter of an important merchant prince.  The after wedding feast is disrupted and robbed, and clues point towards a jealous and angry spurned former suitor of the daughter.  The PCs fight a clan of dervishes and an erinyes before being arrested and discovering that they've been themselves framed for being in league with the thieves.  They're meant to clear their names, but have to rush off to confront imposters pretending to be them, as well as the sorcerer spurned suitor.
  8. Lyrics of Extinction—This is not one of the better scenarios.  A lot of space is dedicated to backstory and fictional anthropological details, while the adventure itself is a perfunctory, "oh, yeah, here's some encounters for you to fight" without much context on why you would be doing so.  It feels like some fan fiction about the Battle of Jericho with the alignment reversed came first, and fitting it into a workable adventure came later.  Anyway, the PCs rush off into the "African" jungle to meet with a witch-doctor in his canoe (which seems like a scene from Disney's Jungle Cruise ride), looking for a "song" which causes city walls to fall.  They fight giant beetles and stuff like that before finding the cleric of Zon-Kuthon.  Along with all kinds of text about what natives believe about their desecrated temple (in spite of the fact that no natives are around to tell the PCs this information) you finally get the bad guy and all of his bad toys and wrap up this poorly conceived adventure.

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