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 me 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 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. 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.

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.