A summary, from the Pathfinder wiki (technically I combined and edited together the text from the wiki and the source link, from the link that the Pathfinder wiki links to; a post on the Paizo messageboards.)
The Pathfinder Society explores a variety of opportunities throughout the Inner Sea, making inroads with the Blakros Family. The information broker Grandmaster Torch aids the society in completing several missions...but always at a price. The Pathfinder Society completes a long battle with the cult of Groetus in Cassomir that turns out to be a cover for a more sinister foe. Amenopheus tries to learn about the Jeweled Sages by helping an ancient evil rogue in a ritual that the Society is able to stop by gathering several relics, bringing Amenopheus back to square 1 (he will not reveal his reasons for helping Zuberi until Season 5). The Pathfinder Society twice foils the cult of Zyphus in Taldor, making an enemy of the cult. Whispers of a "Shadow Lodge" of disaffected Pathfinders prove to be a reality, as the Pathfinders discover and thwart a cell in Kaer Maga. The Eyes of the Ten arc begins, leading the Pathfinders on an epic journey.
Let's get started with another one of these, shall we? That summary gives away some minor spoilers for some of the adventures, but not for the greater meta-plot arc overall. I said earlier that I really liked the Grandmaster Torch adventure, for what it was worth (although it was pretty railroady about letting Torch get the best of the Pathfinders, and most likely they won't even know about it. That's the nature of the type of scenario, though, and the purpose for which they were written. I'm also not thrilled by anything that has to do with Kaer Maga, and having them mentioned so prominently in the summary of the season isn't great, but realistically, it's probably just one scenario. I certainly hope so. I should also note that the numbering of the scenarios did
not reset; the "first" scenario of this season is actually number 29.
- The Devil We Know Part I: Shipyard Rats: This scenario starts off a small series of linked scenarios; something that they did at least a little bit of in every season afterwards (well, if the titles are any guide. I haven't read them yet.) A Pathfinder has been kidnapped; part of a wave of kidnappings going on in Taldor's capitol city, but this time, the local Pathfinder Lodge chief has a clue; an Aspis Consortium servant boy escaped (one of their agents was captured too; they want to work together.) He'll lead you to one dockside tavern where you'll fight some guys and release some prisoners, but the one you're really looking for isn't here, so now you need to go to a ship where more prisoners are waiting. But still not the one you're looking for (sigh.) So you head off to yet another location to rescue more of them. It's... an underground hide-out, of course. With traps, and the "boss" with his hecuevas. There's a bit of a cliff-hanger feel to it, though—captives reference derro coming and taking other prisoners, although they don't know anything else about that, and it's beyond the scope of this scenario.
- The Devil We Know Part II: Cassomir's Locker: Actually, the derro were using the guys in the above scenario; they've got their own slaving operation going on independent of whatever those terrorists want. The Pathfinders get wind of it, and go into "Cassomir Below"; a sewer system, mostly, to find out what's going on. There's also a small neighborhood that's sunk and the street level was raised up above it (this is actually a real thing in some cities; I've been in one or two of these undercities in real life.) Unfortunately, the entire adventure is really just a dungeon crawl, though, full of traps and only loosely sensibly appearing monsters. Rats feature prominently, as there's some kind of artifact that turns rats into super-dire rats or some-such. Once again, you're supposed to leave the PCs with the impression that while they've set back the menace, they haven't (yet) defeated it. Later in the season, two more adventures that are part of this series will still appear.
- Sniper in the Deep: After an extraordinarily flimsy set-up back in Absalom, the PCs are supposed to run what amounts to a small errand; find a Pathfinder who hasn't been checking in (but it's supposed that he's just asleep in a well-known inn) and get him on track to find the artifact he's been claiming he's "close" to finding. Of course, he's not just asleep, and the thugs who murdered him attack the PCs when they show up asking around, although the clues and notes that point towards the artifact are conveniently left laying around in the room he was renting. There's a side mission to recover the murdered Pathfinder's body, although I'm not sure that you need to do this (and of course, if you do, you have to fight giant crabs.) The more interesting part of the adventure is the recovery of the artifact, which is underwater in a shipwreck in the harbor (the harbor of Absalom is very shallow, and they've deliberately created a blockade of sunken ships just below (and occasionally not entirely so) the surface. Here, you'll find undead sailors, Deep Ones (or one of the standard D&D equivalents, I should point out), sharks, and the dead Pathfinder's apprentice, who had betrayed and murdered him, and serves as the "boss" of the adventure.
- Drow of the Darklands Pyramid: Although technically related to the tomb-raiding going on in Fake Egypt in Golarion, in reality, this adventure starts at the entrance to a cave and the entire thing is an underground dungeon crawl. As you can probably guess from the title, it involves drow making raids from the Underdark... er, sorry, the Darklands, and the drow in Golarion are demon-worshippers, so there's loads of standard demons to fight (quasits, babaus, vrocks, a hezrou, etc.) The drow have their own archaeological expedition going on just underground, and it's linked to what the Pathfinder Society is doing, which explains the conflict. (Plus, they're drow. Of course you have to fight them.) There's a novelty trick; all of the PCs have (temporarily) the ability to fly in part of this, and they have to fight flying drow and driders. If this all seems a little odd and superheroish to you, it does to me too. I'm not a fan, I suppose, of novelty parlor tricks like that and find them kind of silly. Once inside this cavern, you have to explore the underground pyramid (and dungeon crawl within a dungeon crawl! How novel! Sigh.) Luckily, this is very scanty on traps; you mostly just fight lots of drow, some driders, and a handful of demons, recover some stolen artifacts, etc. It's stand-alone, very cliched (except for the chintzy mechanical novelty to make the tactical combat feel different) and overall, a relatively weak effort in this series. Unless you really like that kind of stuff, I suppose—but I don't think D&D of any variety (including Pathfinder) is interesting enough as a tactical game that tactical parlor tricks are interesting in their own right; and this adventure clearly is structured around the tactical novelty much more so than around anything else interesting.
- Assault on the Kingdom of the Impossible: Taking place in Jalmeray; a strange island kingdom that's half Achaemanid Persia and half mythical India, although as is often the case, it doesn't really matter where the scenario takes place, because none of that context and background color actually make any difference, nor do you really get to partake of any of it anyway. That said, the plot here is kinda interesting; you're setting a trap for a bandit that's been robbing Pathfinder caravans. This guy's a real piece of work; he murdered the former Venture-Captain of the Lodge here, he's got enslaved wizards disassembling magical items, and he's brought back into activity a cult of tiger monks that the local people hate because they're evil. In spite of that, we're supposed to believe that it's better to negotiate with this bastard and make him a Pathfinder agent rather than just shut his operation down the old-fashioned way by killing him. The ruler of the island has also sent agents to deal with him, which may get in your way if you're not diplomatic. There aren't really any monsters in this scenario; it does a good job of showing how plain old "bad guys" can still be interesting from a plot perspective. Also, the scenario is unusual relative to those I've read so far anyway in that the faction missions are a bit more complicated and difficult than in other scenarios, although they tend to come down to some kind of social skill check to resolve rather than good roleplaying (gotta cater to your audience still, I suppose.)
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