(Belated) Extinct Animal of the Week: Panphagia

From Infogalactic:  Panphagia is a genus of sauropodomorph dinosaur described in 2009. It lived around 231 million years ago, during the Carnian age of the Late Triassic period in what is now northwestern Argentina. The name Panphagia comes from the Greek words pan, meaning "all", and phagein, meaning "to eat", in reference to its inferred omnivorous diet. Panphagia is one of the earliest known dinosaurs, and is an important find which may mark the transition of diet in early sauropodomorph dinosaurs.

My first thought was; hey; 231 million years ago isn't in the Carnian, its in the Ladinian!  But I notice that in 2012, the IUGS seems to have updated the dates. My chart is now out of date! My second thought was that while I don't know of anyone who disagrees that Panphagia protos was probably a basal sauropodomorph, at the same time, the position of the Basals is really ugly and subject to a lot of uncertainty and disagreement.  Wedel and Hallet's new sauropod book, for instance, claims Eoraptor is such a basal, while Nesbitt et al.'s big definitive cladogram has it as a basal therapod.  It's also been called a basal saurischian, a basal dinosaur, and even a non-dinosaurian sister group.  As Wedel and Hallett point out, the whole assumption that carnivory is ancestral to Dinosauria comes into question now that we know that the silesaurs are a closer sister group to the dinosaurs than little Lagosuchus after all.  This suggests that herbivory could easily be the ancestral condition for dinosaurs instead of carnivory—or at least omnivory.  This would also help explain why it's so hard to sort out who belongs where at the base of the dinosaur (or at least saurischian) family tree.

In any case, Panphagia is an interesting little character; not much larger than a chicken, and apparently biologically adapted to an omnivorous diet—we think (although studies of iguanas and other animals with similar teeth show us that maybe that's not quite as cut and dried as we've tended to think in the past.  The same is true for almost all of the dinosaurs coming out of the Ischigualasto Formation in La Rioja and San Juan Argentina; it's the same formation as the original herrerasaurs (which come in more genus names than are valid, no doubt), Edodromeus, Eoraptor, and some slightly more defined animals, like Pisanosaurus and Chromogisaurus.  Of these, Panphagia's position as a sauropodomorph seems fairly secure compared to some of the alternatives, which have bounced around all over the place.  Whether or not Eoraptor turns out to be even more basal, or part of some other group, Panphagia seems fairly secure, as does our interpretation of its likely omnivorous diet. 

In any case, Panphagia would have closely resembled several other non-dinosaurian relatives from the same time and area, roughly.  Lagerpetids and silesaurs are also in the formation, as well as aetosaurs, rauisuchians, ornithosuchians, poposaurs, proterochampsians, rhynochosaurs, etc.  Cynodonts and dicynodonts with a fair degree of diversity are also found here, as are temnospondyl amphibians.  Rhyncosaurs and herbivorous cynodonts are the most common fossils found here, and herrerasaurs seem to be the most common carnivores.  The Ischigualasto area was a volcanically active floodplain with plenty of rivers and monsoon-style seasonal rains.  At the time, of course, it was part of the supercontinent of Pangaea, and it would have been located fairly close to the western Panthalassic Oceanic coastline—close to the back of the "pac-man" shape that Pangaea had.

Star Trek vs Star Wars

http://www.castaliahouse.com/what-is-the-appeal-of-star-trek/

I'm 45 (have been since January.)  I was 5½ when Star Wars came out.  It's literally the first movie that I remember seeing on the big screen.  It's been with me almost as long as I can remember.

Compared to Star Wars, Star Trek is flimsy.  It's hoaky.  It's corny. Read the comments; nothing that they posit as the reasons for its success weren't done better by Star Wars.  I can accept that people who were older than me and remember Star Trek from before Star Wars came out feel nostalgia for it.  Especially the Original Series.

I can also accept that Leftists, and globalists, and busybody nannies and totalitarians and commies and pinkos and fascists and r-selected rabbits (but those all mean the same thing) like Star Trek, because it flatters their sensibilities.  I'm always shocked when normal, psychologically healthy and functional people, especially men, aren't seriously turned off by Star Trek for that same reason, though.

I can accept that other people have other nostalgic reasons for liking Star Trek, if they grew up watching reruns of it as a kid, I suppose.  I can accept that people like it because they flatter themselves into believing that it's somehow more "serious" than Star Wars, and therefore they feel smug and superior, or something.

But otherwise, I struggle to understand, as the author of the blog post linked above does, why anyone would prefer Star Trek to Star Wars on it's intrinsic merits. Most of the comments on the post there talk about the chemistry between the actors (hardly a novel achievement), the swashbuckling fun (in which it's vastly inferior even to the old Republic serials) and the comfortable Utopian setting (which is nonsensical and actually kind of sinister in a Brave New World kind of way.)  When even its fans can't comment on what they like about it without referring to aspects of it in which it's clearly inferior and even they admit it, then it makes me wonder what's up.

Of course, sometimes people just like things and there doesn't have to be a reason.  I could probably wax eloquent on why I like 80s New Wave music, or the anthemic epic arena sound of hardstyle, but the reality is: I just like it.  I don't have to explain it, and I probably can't in a way that really makes any sense.  It just is.  But hopefully I have enough honest clarity of vision and ability to self-evaluate to recognize that that's me.  I liked the 80s music that I did because I'm an ornery iconoclast who grew up in a modest sized central Texas town, and I rebelled against the ubiquitous country music by listening to urbane, European, stylish electronic music, and I still like it now due as much to inertia and nostalgia as to any actual musical merits.  It's part of my identity to like that kind of music, and I doubt I could change it if I wanted to.  Which I don't.

So, I'm OK with people liking Star Trek, even if I don't.  I'm even OK with people preferring Star Trek to Star Wars (especially as Star Wars has... stumbled, to put it charitably, a number of times in the last twenty years or so, and looks on track to do so spectacularly in the near future again.)  Even though when one of my friends told me that, I've had to tell him since that I'm trying not to think about that so that we can still be friends.  But just own it.  Don't try to excuse it.  You like it, just like it.  Other people don't have to accept it.  Nobody at home accepts my love of hardstyle dance music.  My wife says it gives her anxiety, and she'd probably have a panic attack halfway through the second song.  My daughter and my youngest son just quietly get up and leave the house, and if pressed tell me that they feel like they're about to have a heart attack.  My oldest son, who's no stranger to unusual electronic music fandom himself, can tolerate it, but still says it's weird.  And Young Desdichado #3 tells me that listening to it causes cancer.  Whatever.  No excuses; I like it, and if nobody else around me does, that's OK.

Megamix #3 and #4

I've talked too much about my megamixes.  I'm not really very good at remixing, or even of "megamixing" but I like to have these megamixes, because I listen to the big hour+ long mp3 files and I know that I've got my favorite hardstyle songs put together in a way that I like, without me having to do a bunch of tedious work setting it up and keeping it playing properly.  So anyway, I'm homing in on megamixes #3 and #4.  After a fair bit of playing around with the tracks I wanted to include, I think I've got that sorted out pretty well now.  I've done a bunch of last minute reviewing to make sure that I've got the songs I really want, and not some hastily chosen songs that I'll later be disappointed that I've included.

Now; until I go to actually make the megamixes, I don't know for sure what I'll include, because between cutting sections out and stuff, I don't know for sure how long the megamixes will end up being.  My goal was an hour, but I ended up going 10 minutes over megamix #1 and 5 minutes over for megamix #2.  I should formally restate my goal as between 60-70 minutes.

I also decided to do something a little weird.  I really like the various "Hardstyle Instructor" tracks by Blutonium Boy.  And they really aren't the same song, either—or at least, some of them aren't.  They do, however, sound like the "sequels" are using leftover dialogue from the first one, or something like that; i.e., they do have a common thread running through them.  Which isn't at all surprising.

What I've decided to do for megamix #3 is to string three of them together, so they play out a little bit like they're a single extra long track, or something like that.  But I've got mixes that do have a lot of unique elements on them, so they also have enough about them to stand out from each other too.

Anyway, here's my real tracklist, and I'm going to sit down as soon as I have a free evening (which probably won't be tonight, or tomorrow night, and maybe not Saturday or Sunday either—so this may linger into next week.  But I'm tentatively hoping to do it later in the evening on Thursday, since I can sleep in for Veteran's Day on Friday.)

Hardstyle Megamix #3
1. Headhunterz - Rock Civilization [Desdichado Hybrid]
2. Blutonium Boy - Floorkilla [Blutonium Boy vs DJ Neo Mix]
3. TNT & DJ Isaac - CTRL
4. Wildstylez - The Moon
5. Blasterjaxx & Justin Prime - Push Play [faster]
6. A-Lusion - Supernova [Reverse Bass Mix]
7. Blutonium Boy - Hardstyle Instructor [Blutonium Boy Hardstyle Mix]
8. Blutonium Boy - Hardstyle Instructor Part 2 [DJ Neo Hardstyle Hit Mix]
9. Blutonium Boy - Hardstyle Instructor Is Back [Blutonium Boy Oldschool Mix]
10. Ed ET & DTR vs Hatom - Feel the Vibe
11. Da Tweekaz - Twerkout Revolution
12. Cyber - DLTBGY
13. Firelite - What's His Name?
14. Cally & Juice - Drop the Beat [Ed ET & DTR Remix]
15. Flarup & Activator - Wicked
16. Jimmy the Sound - MODULO
17. TNT - Pulsation

Hardstyle Megamix #4
1. A-Lusion - Auditory Phenomena
2. Nitram DJ - It's a Smash Hit!
3. Ed ET & DTR vs MCP ft Natski - Reverse Bass Generation [Original Mix]
4. TNT & DJ Isaac - Digital Nation
5. Hatom - Showtime
6. Lowriders - Don't Get Back [Dr Rude Remix][Reverse Fanatic mix]
7. Blutonium Boy - Acid & Bass [DJ Neo Hardstyle & Acid Mix]
8. Francesco Zeta - Reverse Bass Will Never Die
9. Pavo - Raven
10. Equinox - Fight Club
11. Memorize - Exception
12. Technoboy - Rage (A Hardstyle Song)
13. Raxtor - Revelation
14. Speedwave - Junior [First Switch Mix]
15. Omegatypez & ASYS - BSSDRM [Original Mix]
16. System F - Out of the Blue [Showtek Remix]
17. Blutonium Boy - Hardstyle Superstar [B-Boy Mix]

Extra tracks in case my time comes up short (not likely, but just in case)
Blutonium Boy - Hardstyle Instructor Part 3 [Original Mix]
Re-1st - FIRE
Mauro Picotto - Komodo [Zatox Hardstyle Mix]

For what it's worth, I'll only play a very small section of "What's His Name?"—two minutes or so worth.  Other than that, though—I'm mostly only thinking of cutting intros and outros.  I probably won't actually fit this within my tracklength goal.  Sigh.  Trying to decide whether to break the goal, or cut a song or two.

For posterity sake, here's the tracklist for my already made megamixes.  When I'm done with all four of these, I'll probably be done for some time with making megamixes out of hardstyle tracks.  Maybe I'll load them up on YouTube or something after that.

Hardstyle Megamix #1
1. DJ Activator - Italian Hardstyle
2. K-Traxx - Noise Tool [Technoboy Remix[
3. TNT - Musick
4. Zatox - Tanz Electrik [R3belz Remix][Reverse Fanatic Mix]
5. Geck-O - Another Way
6. TNT - Double Dutch Darkies
7. Builder - Her Voice [Headhunterz x 2 Custom Remix]
9. Audiofreq - Warcry
10. Scope DJ - Rock Hypnotic Again [2011 Refixx]
11. Da Tweekaz - Cheese Police
12. Geck-O - 2-1 [Jack van Gelder Version]
13. Speedwave - Junior [Hardstyle Masterz Remix]
14. K-Traxx - Hardventure [Technoboy Remix]
15. Scope DJ and Audiofreq - Robot
16. DJ Stephanie - Black High Heels

Hardstyle Megamix #2
1. Ed ET & DTR vs MCP ft Natski - We Don't Care
2. TNT - First Match [Tuneboy Mix]
3. Analogic Disturbance - Hunting 1
4. Technoboy - Put Some Grace [In Your Face Mix]
5. Brian M vs MC Bunn - We Like Bass
6. Alphaverb - Just a Little Noise
7. TNT - Psylent Hill
8. Jajox - Superstar
9. Tatanka - On a Cloud
10. A-Lusion - The Ultimate Bassline
11. TNT - Fuel [Benzine Mix]
12. Technoboy & The Prophet ft Shayla - Psycho Ex [Original Re-boosted]
13. Da Tweekaz - The Past
14. Brian M vs MC Bunn - The Dub We Play
15. Thoqy - Bass Up!
16. Real Booty Babes - Derb [08 Club Mix]

The North Horn Formation

This is an illustration of the Alamosaurus Faunal Assemblage of the North Horn Formation of Utah, a latest Cretaceous Formation that is a bit different from the Lancian assemblages a little further north in Montana and Wyoming with the Hell Creek and Lance Formations.  As most fossil assemblages are, it's a relatively flat area, with rivers and lakes that represents a rather high energy depositional environment.  (This is because these conditions are the best to preserve fossils.  This certainly isn't to imply that dinosaurs didn't live in other environments.)  Because of the lakes, rivers, and probably wetlands that made up the plains of the Maastrichtian North Horn, there are lots of fossils of fish, amphibians, crocodiles, and champsosaurs.  There are also fossils from a large variety lizards (and snakes), turtles and mammals.  Both bird and dinosaur egg fragments have been found, and pterosaur footprints in the mud.

Of course, in dinosaur-bearing formations, what most people are most interested in are the dinosaurs.  Naturally.

However, there isn't a ton to go on, really.  Alamosaurus has been found there, as well as Torosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex (represented by juveniles in the picture above.)  Some indeterminate hadrosaur fossils have been found.  Based on fossils found both to the north and to the South of North Horn, I'd expect ornithomimosaurs, troodontids, dromeaosaurs (maybe even quite large ones, like Dakotaraptor), oviraptors, ankylosaurs, another big ceratopsid (Triceratops or Ojoceratops), smaller leptoceratopsids, hypsilophodonts of some sort, maybe a pachycephalosaur or two.

Of course, we don't know what kind of animals we have there exactly, just that it's likely that representatives of those groups are probably mixed in there somehow, since they appear both to the north of the formation and to the south of it.

This makes something like the North Horn Formation my #1 destination if there were ever a Terra Nova project in real life to go colonize the Cretaceous.  It's got big sauropods (in fact, some Alamosaurus specimens suggest it's a contender for "the biggest"), it's got big therapods—T. rex even!—and all kinds of other stuff.  It's as if the Morrison had less diversity in its sauropods, but upgraded Allosaurus to T. rex and swapped out Stegosaurus for Triceratops (or at least a close relative.)  There's also probably less small ornithopods, because ornithomimosaurs and oviraptors replaced them.  And the flora is more modern—angiosperms (even grasses) are around.  Mammals are more diverse.  Pterosaurs are considerably less diverse, but toothed (and sometimes claw-winged) birds are plentiful.

All in all, it's a strange hybrid of all kinds of classical dinosaur action—the biggest, most iconic therapod, a really big sauropod, big ceratopsians, big hadrosaurs, all kinds of small dinosaurs, potentially big raptors, big pterosaurs (Quetzalcoatlus is present in the Ojo Alamo formation to the south.) The rice family is estimated to have appeared a good 40-50 million years earlier; there might even be native crops that are edible.  And smaller ornithopods and herbivorous (or at least omnivorous) therapods would probably be good eating for the likes of you and me. The weather probably isn't so miserably hot as it is to the south, but it's still tropical, or at least subtropical.  And although it's a floodplain with rivers and lakes and probably wetlands obviously present, it's not just pure marsh either—probably more fun for the likes of you and me to explore without getting wet, muddy, killed by crocodiles or mosquitoes, etc.  The highlands making up the mountains at Laramidia's western edge aren't too far away, although we know nothing whatsoever about the fauna that lives there.  All in all, this would be a great place to visit.  Maybe even to settle.

Speaking of the highlands and drylands; I wonder if they resemble contemporary (or nearly so, anyway) Mongolia-Chinese fossil assemblages a bit?  By which I mean: therizinsaurs were present in North America earlier, although none are known from these formations, but they continue and in fact are quite diverse in Asia.  There are also really weird animals like super-sized ovirpaptors (Gigantoraptor) and the bizarre Deinocheirus—but then there are very close relatives to T. rex and Edmontosaurus present as well.  Much of the smaller dinosaur fauna is also referable as closely related to North American faunas. 

By the way, the Nemegt would be a fun one to visit as well.  Maybe it'd be interesting to see the latest Maastrichtian of the Nemegt area to see what (if anything) changed in the NALMA.

Deconstructing the Serpent's Skull 3: City of Seven Spears Part II

PART V: THE DREAMING JUNGLE This section is the ruins of a residential district.  The jungle has taken over this district more than the others, due to some decision of preservational magic made at the founding of the city (don't you just love all that historical banal detail?)  The theme of this district is fungus and vegepygmies—and as I said in my discussion of the first module, I don't really care for either all that much.  Anyway, lots of fungal hazards are suggested, although only obliquely as "make any encounter more tricky by adding these elements to taste" kinda way: violet fungi, shriekers, brown and yellow mold, green slime (etc.)  In addition to hordes of vegepygmies, which are unorganized, there is a "dream spider", a giant russet mold colony on the ziggurat, including an advanced vegepygmy chieftain, and a green hag who lives in an old manor house.

PART VI: THE SACRED SERPENT This was the artisan district, the ancient Atlantean Greenwich Village, or somesuch.  It is ruled by a lillend, a creature that looks a little like a winged Medusa, except beautiful because the top half isn't just a woman, but an angel (no snake hair, though.)  There's a tribe of locals who live here, and of course, they're all artists and crap.  A variation on the We Wuz Kangz fallacy, except instead of kangz, they're all super wonderful people and sculptors.  This is the one that the PCs are most likely to be able to ally with, rather than having to conquer.

A lot of the encounters here are with NPCs, then, not monsters, although this isn't entirely true.  A lot of the "statues" are actually very elderly people who willingly turned to stone via basilisk rather than die normally.  There are guards who paint themselves to look like statues, which is actually kind of clever.  There's a memorial to the founder of the city, with a big statue, but the area is swarming with venomous snake swarms.  The old arts academy is where most of the tribe lives, including their witch doctor (druid) leader.  Assuming the PCs haven't been wandering through the district massacring tribesmen, he's willing to talk, but wary.  (Curiously, although the Mwangi Expanse is Golarion's fake pre-Colonial Africa, the art here has Osond, the druid, look more like a meso-American native of some kind.  He's got a real Mayan vibe going on in the art.)  This district is also dealing with an outbreak of bubonic plague, although this is something that isn't really described at this point in the adventure. There is a ball pit, further suggesting a Mayan connection, where the basilisks live. Finally, the ziggurat is where the insane lillend lives.  She's supposed to be relatively powerful for the PCs to tackle, nor are they supposed to want to, although of course, she is mad (although relatively lucid in recent years.) (She's CR 13; the PCs are only half that in level.  The other challenges of the other districts are CR 8 and 9, mostly.)  She may ask the PCs to kill the monstrous vampire that's causing the bubonic plague (see below.)

Finally, there's some "haunted ruins" that are empty if explored, but will play a role later.

The least ridiculous-looking froghemeth image I could find.

PART VII: LAND OF THE GREEN GOD This is an interesting district; a former farming district (yeah, why there's a "farming district" inside of the city makes little sense, but the farmers mostly lived at the north and the fields spread to the south.)  The old farms are partially submerged under a big lake. There's a tribe of boggarts (frogmen, but not the scuba type) who live here, but they're in somewhat desperate straits.  Their witch doctor has been dominated by the aboleth (see last post in this series) which means that the magical fetish that protects them from the vampire mentioned above is at risk, they will be weak against their human and troglodyte enemies, and the froghemeth that lives in their lake will probably rise up and eat them because it's not properly appeased.    In spite of this, of course, they'll be quite wary of the PCs, but they can be friendly if the PCs help out, and they'd be happy to allow their area to be a base camp if sufficient help is provided (i.e., returning their missing witch doctor, killing the lillend mentioned above, or killing the trog high priest.)

Enemies to be encountered here may include frog-men patrols, the frog-man chief, and of course the froghemoth in the lake itself.  There are also some unusual challenges.  The witch doctors island has a charm that keeps the monstrous vampire (a vrykolakas, or Greek vampire) at bay.  This same vrykolakas is the creature mentioned in the artisan district as causing the plague, but it's also a threat to the boggarts, especially if the witch doctor's fetish is destroyed.  I like the idea of the vrykolakas (although maybe not necessarily the name) as a more feral vampire that is less focused on drinking blood, but causes disease, suffocates sleeping victims, and can possess animals when killed, to return another day after burying itself and slowly transforming from a possessed animal back into the same vrykolakas again—unless properly disposed of (burned, chopped up, staked, etc.)  There are some alternate names for the vrykolakas, including vorvolakas, and the in the south Slavic languages from which the Greeks borrowed the word, vǎrkolak and vukodlak.  Sadly, there's nothing particularly interesting about the encounter; it's just sitting around in an abandoned building.

At the top of the ziggurat is an entrapped hezrou demon.  It was summoned by the original chief of the froggy tribe in a botched ritual to become a half-fiend, but it remains trapped.  However, the nature of the trap was that after answering 101 questions, it would be free.  The chief was pulled into the Abyss and never answered the questions, but others have come by and asked from them time to time, and he's now up to 99, and very frustrated at continuing to be stuck.  When the PCs arrive, he attempts to woo them with his ready answers to their questions (although he prefers inane questions that are easy to answer, of course.)  If they ask and he answers two questions, he attacks them, now free—but he's not going to fight to the death and get sent back to the Abyss.  He'll flee and possibly even become a recurring villain in the area for some time, upsetting the balance of power as badly as the PCs have, for that matter, in the ruined city.

PART VIII: THE MANTIS HERESY This is the old temple district, and it has a cult of monster-god worshiping troglodytes, which in D&D are particularly smelly lizard people. (For purposes of FANTASY HACK, there's no difference between lizardmen, troglodytes, boggarts, or serpentmen—I just don't see any point in coming up with new stat-lines for herpetological people.  Besides, I've already split lizardmen into a big mauler and a lighter scout-type stat.)

Besides the combat encounters, there's the possibility of doing archaeological research about what deities the ancient Fake Atlanteans worshiped, if you're so inclined, and some detail is given to accommodate that.  You'll fight scaly acolytes (clerics) and advanced thugs.  There's a promenade with several gigantic "jungle mantises" waiting to ambush anyone who comes in.  Although these mantis do also eat the troglodytes, they have cultic significance to them.  If the PCs kill them, there will be howling and wailing and gnashing of teeth from the old buildings of the ruined city, and waves of lizardmen will attack the PCs until four groups are killed off.  The crypt of the city's founder is also located here, although curiously, it's not detailed at all, and you're told that if the PCs want to explore it, you can either make it already looted, or create your own dungeon to meet your needs for it.

As with each other district, there's a ziggurat here, and of course, the lizardman high priest lives here, with two pet Deinonychus (as mentioned a few adventures ago, this is way too big to be an actual Deinonychus, so it must be a Dakotaraptor or Utahraptor instead.)  He's also got a mantis blade; a special magical sword, up here, and will be supported by lower level lizard clerics.

The south entrance to the city is also here, although to get through it you will need to deal with a gigantic predatory parrot called a camulatz.  And one of the old temples is haunted by the insane ghosts of four priests from the city's heyday.

PART IX: ESCAPE FROM THE UNDERWORLD While not keyed to a specific location, the plot finally intervenes after letting the PCs explore all of these districts in the form of a refugee from below.  Juliver was part of a Pathfinder expedition that was captured and has been missing for some time.  She escaped and damaged the teleportation crystals necessary to reach the serpentmen city below, but found serpentmen undead clogging up the escape "hatch" that reaches the city.  So, while she makes it, she's been subjected to a feeblemind spell, which renders her unable to speak, paranoid, and basically has the intellect of a non-verbal toddler.  The first wave of undead that comes up after her includes a mummy "boss" with four wights and eight ghasts (a kind of "superghoul.")  He'll come up in the "haunted manor" mentioned above, but the place will be empty until Juliver passes through and awakens the undead buried beneath.

The final "boss" of the adventure is an undead ghast serpentman necromancer (I kind of dislike the layering of concepts like that that 3e introduced and made normal.)  He's also got another mummy, more ghasts and more wights with him.

Following this, there's a list of a bunch of magical treasure scattered at various places around the city.  I've downplayed magical items in FANTASY HACK a lot from a D&D perspective, but I don't mind having some.  There's way too many for my taste here because I prefer a more sword & sorcery low magic paradigm to the magical item supermarket.  Then there's some discussion (mostly in the form of a bunch of fiddly rules) about where the PCs may set up their campsite, and in fact introduces a mini-game of exploring the city for "points", which they'll presumably compete with against the other factions mentioned earlier—Aspis Consortium, Red Mantis Assassins, Pathfinder Society, etc.  They can also, of course, raid their rivals and kill their people and destroy their camps.  There are also some rules around how the actions of the PCs can lead to changed attitudes of the various factions—either the guys who already live here, or the explorers trying to crack the city open for their own purposes.

Finally, of course, there's the bestiary at the end of each module.  Here, we have the camulatz (giant parrots), various new swarms—snakes, venomous snakes, piranhas, megapiranha swarms, and an odd plant-based effects that act like swarms.  We have the mokole-mbembe which is basically an aquatic sauropod with an Elasmosaurus head attached.  There are these kind of totemic tiki gods that become constructs of sorts.  And finally are the harvestmen: strange pseudo-undead that are like Frankenstein's monster, constantly replacing their injured or damaged or aged parts with body parts scavenged from their prey.  This is supposedly because of a juju curse; and there's an essay here about Juju magic, which is basically a D&D version of voodoo.

I've got the following that I'd need to use in this module, then:

• pterosaurs and crocodiles—I already have stats for both
• a ghost
• the mokole-mbembe (I'd just have a carnosaur and make it amphibious)
• troglodytes (lizardmen)
• gibbering mouther (addressed in the last module)
• the aboleth (curiously, I might use the stats for a succubus, make it aquatic (not amphibious) and just describe it wildly differently.  Assuming I wanted to have something like an actual aboleth.)
• I already discussed last module what to do about the various apes needed here.
• For the demon-ape that's been petrified, if it gets unpetrified, I'd use the Typhon daemon stats.  Maybe give it fly if you care about having it fly.
• For the gigantic crocodile, I'd take existing crocodile stats and ramp up the hit points, to hit and damage a bit.
• keches can use bear stats, but make them arboreal and give them a bonus to hiding
• I've already got chimeras (chimerae?)
• I can recreate shadows with the ghost template.  All of these incorporeal undead are too much alike to justify being totally different kinds of creatures.
• serpentmen and boggarts and troglodytes will all be treated as lizardmen stats
• the rakshasa can be represented by a succubus statwise
• the giant two-headed snake can be a sea serpent, if that's not too big and dangerous for you.  If it's not, you can always make it attack with both ends, where it really will be difficult to deal with.
• The zombies can be skeleton stats, as normal
• I've already discussed various fungal hazards and vegepygmies.  I probably won't convert them at all, but if I do, I'll use something in my stat blocks.
• I don't have hags, but I prefer to see them less as monsters and more as NPCs anyway.
• The dream spider can probably be a wyvern that doesn't fly, but which spins webs that cause hallucinations.
• The closest thing to a lillend that I have is my angel stats, but those won't do at all.  I'll probably have to whip up something new if I want to use the lillend.
• I don't have basilisks, but some work with the medusa stats will probably do just fine.  Just reduce the intelligence.
• The ketos is probably too much to represent a froghemeth.  In a pinch, I'd use carnosaur stats made amphibious, and add tentacle attacks.
• I'd like stats for an alternate vampire, although I don't know that I'd call it a vrykolakas, or any other derivative of that name, actually.  
• I'm also not sure that the typhon demon makes a good stand-in for the hezrou or not, but I also don't think it's worth the trouble to worry too much about it.
• The jungle mantises, like most other gigantic insects and other bugs, can be represented by wyvern stats.
• The camulotz can be represented by pterosaurs; pretty much any large predatory flying animal works there.
• I've already got mummies, wights and ghouls, but not ghasts.  Since ghasts are just slightly advanced versions of ghouls, I won't bother.
• I can recreate the new swarm types by simply moving my existing swarms to a new environment; i.e. insect swarms can't fly and become snake swarms; bat swarms swim instead of fly and become piranha swarms, etc.
• I have no idea what—if anything—I care about the harvestment or tiki gods, but if I want the former, a toned down flesh golem would work.  I'd need to create the latter from scratch.

Deconstructing the Serpent's Skull 3: City of Seven Spears Part I

Busy day for me today all day, so I'm not going to try to do more than half of this module, unless time frees up.  I've got a three-day weekend coming up, but I'll probably be even more busy for that than I am normally.  Sigh.  Either way, I hope to finish part 3 (in two parts) of Serpent's Skull this week, as well as hopefully do the same for part 4—which I might also break in two.

This particular adventure is structured to be more of a hexcrawl—or at least small-scale graph crawl, more accurately—of the ruins of Saventh-Yhi, the ersatz Atlantean city deep in the faux-African jungle.  (Sadly, it bears little real resemblance to Opar, and there's nobody at all like La.)  The introduction calls it a "sandbox" but then immediately apologizes for scaring would-be GMs who read that.  An entire adventure dedicated to exploring a ruined city, maneuvering against your rivals as well as hostile natives—I dunno if it's really my thing.  But it's better than where this continues to go, as the rest of the adventure path essentially rips off Lovecraft's The Mound entirely, and has the players go into the ruined city of an underground serpent-people empire and preventing the resurrection of their serpent demon-god, or whatever.  But, again—I'm strip-mining these adventure paths, and I may well not use much of what I find in any given one, as I create an entirely new context around which to hang it.  I do suspect, however, that I may need to combine this with some other strip-mined adventures to really work.  Either that, or I leave the second half of any putative campaign I run completely open-ended at this point rather than attempt to map them out.  (This isn't a bad idea.)  But I bring that up only to point out that I may find that as this adventure path gets into its second half, I may find less and less that's actually useful for me, because it turns into a completely different kind of adventure, and its one that I'm less interested in running than in the jungle exploration theme; a kind of African Queen meets King Kong as it starts out.

As an aside, I laugh, yet ruefully, at the fantasy setting convention of making stuff crazy old.  Why in the world does this city have to be 11,000 years old?  Do you know how long that is in years that we can comprehend?  There are no ruins of anything that isn't simple mounds of rubble that's anywhere near that old in our world.  The city of Troy, one of the most ancient sites for which we know anything historically valid, is 3,200 years old.  Ur was founded only 5,800 years ago (estimated), and it was buried rubble (there's a reconstruction of the ziggurat on site, built in the last hundred years or less) but the first thing that we really know about it doesn't until 4,600 years ago.

This is the oldest stuff for which we have any reliable evidence other than fossils.  11,000 years ago was in the middle of the Ice Age, specifically the so-called Late Glacial Maximum, a smaller pulse that followed the bigger Last Glacial Maximum.  The Great Lakes, for instance, were still covered by continental glaciers 11,000 years ago.  The Fosna-Hensbacka paleolithic culture reaches the brand newly cleared (yet still Arctic in character) Scandinavian peninsula.  In short; it's kind of absurd to talk about anything that happened that long ago.  Yet in fantasy settings, everything has to be BIG especially the number of years that passed since something happened.  In reality, there's no reason to talk about tens of thousands of years, when just a couple thousand is so much that the entire face of the world can be changed repeatedly.

Anyway, that's a pet peeve of mine.  Without further ado; here's the adventure summary.

"City of Seven Spears" is an unusual adventure, in that there is no central plotline waiting to be explored and unfolded. When the PCs arrive in the ruined city of Saventh-Yhi, the actions they take are largely left up to them. They can explore the ruins at any speed and in any order they wish—and as they do so, the other factions who have come to the city do likewise. 

Upon first reaching Saventh-Yhi, the PCs must locate a suitable entrance and site to serve their expedition as a base of operations. With this choice secured, they can move on to the task of exploring the city—each of Saventh- Yhi’s seven districts has several different goals the PCs can pursue, and with each they’ll begin to build up their expedition’s success and claims. Conflicts with both the indigenous tribes and the other competing factions in the region are all but guaranteed, and as the PCs forge alliances and make enemies, they’ll build their own storyline in the jungle ruins. 

As they explore, the PCs begin to learn of the doom that came to Saventh-Yhi in those ancient times. Hints of a strange underworld below the city suggest the possibility of yet another lost city beneath, while the unavoidable presence of more serpentfolk is likely to raise concerns. Something dire is building in, or perhaps below, Saventh-Yhi, and by the time the PCs’ explorations of the city come to a close, they’ll have the proof they fear in the form of a half-mad refugee from the ruined city of Ilmurea below—an escaped prisoner of the serpentfolk who, once cured of her madness, can tell of the great peril building in the dark below.

So the structure of this mining operation will heavily favor exploration of "districts", each with their own character, and there is a relatively thin plot that weaves its way through the whole thing.

PART I: THE GLORY OF SAVENTH-YHI  The PCs were in the ruined city of Tazion at the end of the last adventure, and the journey from ruined city A to ruined city B is only twenty miles.  They actually recommend that you "red line" (as in Indiana Jones movies) the travel based on the assumption that the PCs will have done enough of it lately.  Saventh-Yhi is protected by a number of very D&Dish spells that keep its location hidden, but stuff found in Tazion gives up the location.  The obvious answer to is enter via a river tributary, but climbing on sheer cliffs, with aerial encounters is also doable.  It would be fun if they even had an opportunity fly in.

Anyway, the city has seven big spires, one corresponding to each of the districts, and there are magical effects from these spires, because they're actually gigantic magic nodes or something.  There's a pretty nifty map on page 9 that could (and should!) be used for cities that aren't abandoned ruins. The first thing that it gives GMs is the ability to have PCs research/learn the history of the city.  While this may sound rather dry and academic, it is actually well in keeping with the pulp tradition (you ever read At the Mountains of Madness?) and they at least try to make the stuff useful and/or helpful in some way other than just fake history of a fake city for its own sake.  One of these secrets is the secret of activation of the seven spires or steep ziggurats (or spears, as they're called, although they're big stone towers, not spears.)  Other than that, the expectation of the module is that the PCs will interact with the various factions within the city, as will the other factions of explorers, and that doing so will prompt conflict that has been simmering but not boiling over for some time now in the city anyway.

And the first encounters, at the entrance, are some pterosaurs and crocodiles (I have stats for both in FANTASY HACK already.)  Then there's the ghost of the traitor of an ill-fated Pathfinder expedition that stumbled across the city by accident, killed his group hoping to claim all of the glory for himself, but himself died for his trouble.  An aquatic cryptozooligical dinosaur analog (the mokele-mbembe) lives in the lake in the center of the city.

At the opposite end of the city from the river entrance is the Ivory Gate, and some other potential encounters, including another potential entrance and egress point.  This is guarded by some troglodytes, and gibbering mouthers (see last post; weaker shoggoths, basically.)  Finally, in the far SE corner, there's an aboleth researching the city, and enslaving people to help him explore it.

Each of the next parts refer to the various districts.  Because this post is already getting long, and it may take a long time to go through each of them, I probably will not do very many of these right now, and come back later for the rest.

PART II: WRATH OF ANGAZHAN  Angazhan is a gorilla demon in Paizo, who plays a similar role to Demogorgon (or at least part of Demogorgon's "portfolio") although James Jacobs (the creator of the character) once told me explicitly that he started off with the idea of "what if King Kong were a demon lord?"  Anyway, this describes the Military District, at the far north of the map.  It's inhabited by Angazhan-worshiping man-apes, led by "high gorillons"—Barsoom white apes that are intelligent rather than merely savage monsters.  Patrols wander the district that are made up of two man-apes with a dire ape brute.  The PCs entering this area will be met with hostility, and the aggressive nature of the districts leader means that a peaceful alliance of any kind is unlikely.  It can be conquered militarily, although that means killing a lot of man-apes and probably the white ape leaders too.

The district has an old fortress, magically semi-preserved, and this is where the white-ape warlord lives. He's got dire ape bodyguards, and a witch-priestess man-ape (woman-ape?)  In addition to plenty of man-ape soldiers, dire ape muscle, and a few white apes, there's the spire, of course, which gives a modest bonus on intimidating people (huh?) and there's a petrified winged half-fiend dire ape.  If he can be "restored" from petrification by some magic (which I don't like, really—you remember that the reason that Medusa scene from Clash of the Titans was actually one of the most effective and tense was because turning to stone meant you were dead) then he's too savage to do anything except attack everybody around, and then flee if it looks like he's going to be beat, so he can get revenge on his rival that turned him to stone and then retake the district as the true warlord who should rule it again.

PART III: RUINS OF GREED  The Merchant District is the most "ruinous" of the districts, so no faction claims it; it's just full of monsters.  Looted long ago of anything of value, and half sunken into the lake, it seems like the least "friendly" of the districts, but it can be "tamed" and turned into a base camp by killing enough of the monsters.  Wandering monster encounter percentages are doubled here, and the PCs get a bonus to Diplomacy if the spear is active.

Other than wandering monsters, there are a number of "posted" monsters.  A swampy area that's partly submerged is the home to a Sarcosuchus (an actual prehistorical animal) which is essentially a gigantic "dire crocodile".  There's a tribe of keches, six in all, who are like carnivorous man-ape eating lizard-apes covered with leafy coverings.  They go back to the original 1e Monster Manual 2, if I remember correctly.  There's a lair of three chimeras with green and black dragon heads, so they don't breathe fire like my FANTASY HACK chimera does.  I'm not sure if I'm enthralled or irritated by the D&D style dragons with their weird array of breath weapons, though—I really doubt I'd change this.  Then there's an advanced gigantic jungle bat, and I mean really big.

Finally, there's a building with a number of shadowy undead (three shadows, specifically, and a greater shadow.)  I don't have anything specifically like a shadow, but it's a pretty iconic D&D monster that is kind of like a ghost—but different, of course.  I'd probably create one using the ghost as a starting point and just describing it a bit differently.

PART IV: PRIDE OF THE FALLEN This is the central district, and refers to the Government offices that once were here.  Today, it is the home of "degenerate serpentfolk"—snake men who are insane and primitive and don't even know that a city of their people lies below their feet.  A crocodile-headed rakshasa (one of the many, many, many versions of demons that D&D entertains) rules them as a pseudo-god.  As with the apes, its unlikely that you can make an alliance with these guys, so the only way to set up your basecamp here is to kill enough of the bad guys to pacify the district.  The bonus to this spire is to Sense Motive (these are quite silly, in my opinion.  It's not worth it to bother activating the spires just to get some lame minor bonus to some social skills.

There are guards and patrols of snake men to fight, a frog-man witch doctor, zombies, and a flooded arena with a gigantic two-headed snake in it (a head on each end, to be specific—weird and unnecessarily so.)  And then in the ruby Senate dome, you'll find the rakshasa, assuming that he hasn't come out to see why you're killing all his snake men patrols already.  As is demons' wont in D&D, he can change his appearance at will, cast all kinds of spells, dominate via Jedi mind trick all kinds of minions, etc.

Hardstyle megamixes

OK, I've rejiggered my hardstyle megamix raw materials list.  The following (rather large) list may be enough material to get two nice megamixes out of, although after I do #3, I may find that I'm a little on the short side for #4 and I need to use more material after all.  That's OK.  I've got plenty; I'm just trying to make sure that I'm only using the best stuff in these megamixes.  And after doing three of them, looking for material for a fourth is starting to get harder, because I'm left with stuff that by definition isn't "the best" anymore.  I think I'll be OK with the list I have here, though.  Let's go through it very briefly.

A-Lusion - Auditory Phenomena
A-Lusion - Supernova [Reverse Bass Mix]
A-Lusion - Visual Perception
      I actually have a few more A-Lusion choices if I need a bit more material that are nearly as good as these.
Blasterjaxx & Justin Prime - Push Play
     Might need to be sped up a bit
Blutonium Boy - Floorkilla [Blutonium Boy and DJ Neo Remix]
Blutonium Boy - Floorkilla [Nik Import Mix]
      Obviously, I'm only going to use one of these, but I don't know which yet
Cally & Juice - Drop the Beat [Ed ET & DTR Remix]
Cyber - DLTBGY [Pro Mix]
Da Tweekaz - Twerkout Revolution
Ed ET & DTR - The Black Hole
Ed ET & DTR vs Hatom - Feel the Vibe
Ed ET & DTR vs MCP ft Natski - Reverse Bass Generation [Original Mix]
Ed ET & DTR vs MCP ft Natski - Reverse Bass Generation [Toxic Remix]
      Obviously, I'm only going to use one of these, but I don't know which yet
Equinox - Fight Club
Firelite - What's His Name?
      If I use this, it'll be heavily edited, because I like part of the song, but the other part not as much.
Flarup & Activator - Wicked
Francesco Zeta - Reverse Bass Will Never Die
Hatom - Showtime
Headhunterz - Rock Civilization [Desdichado Hybrid]
      This is mostly the original mix, but I took out the slow section and replaced it with a portion from the Technoboy remix.  I really like the result, but it also 
Jimmy the Sound - MODULO
      I may edit this quite a bit.  It really only starts getting really good about halfway through.
Lowriders - Don't Get Back [Dr Rude Remix][Reverse Fanatic Mix]
Memorize - Exception
Nitram DJ - It's A Smash Hit!
Omegatypez & ASYS - BSSDRM [Original Mix]
      I'm not quite sure how to make this fit, as the beat is considerably different than most.  Probably have to have it come on after one of those explosive break-n-fade routines where a beat change will be seamless.
Pavo - Raven
Raxtor - Revelation
Re-1st - FIRE
System F - Out of the Blue [Showtek Remix]
Technoboy - Rage (A Hardstyle Song)
Tektony - Bring the Noise
      This is the most iffy inclusion I have.  I might not use it after all
TNT - Pulsation
TNT & DJ Isaac - Digital Nation
TNT & DJ Isaac - CTRL
Wildstylez - The Moon

UPDATE:  Yeah, Tektony's song is coming off.  Although I like the hardstyle verse part, the bridge and then the crunchy part, which uses the bridge, is really annoying.  I'm tossing it.  Instead, I've got some Blutonium Boy to add.

Blutonium Boy - Hardstyle Superstar (B-Boy Mix)
One of the many Hardstyle Instructor versions; although it may not be fair to consider all of them the same song, really.  Leading contenders are Hardstyle Instructor (Blutonium Boy Hardstyle Mix), Hardstyle Instructor Is Back (Blutonium Boy Oldschool Mix) and Hardstyle Instructor Part 2 (DJ Neo Hardstyle Hit Mix).

Friday Art Attack

I like having mighty thews vs apes; I guess it goes back to my very young fandom of Tarzan.  If you've never read the first two Tarzan novels (at a bare minimum) get off my blog right now, go get them for free at Project Gutenberg or from Amazon for your Kindle or Kindle app (or even web-reading) and read them.  But even before I could reasonably be expected to have read them, I was a fan of Filmation's old Tarzan show.  It aired in the mid-to-late 70s, and was surprisingly faithful to the tone and feel of the novels.

Jonah's whale in DARK•HERITAGE is a weird Cthulhoid monstrosity, and Jonah comes back from the experience insane and both disturbed and disturbing.

I'm a little leery of nearly naked warrior babes—they're not very realistic.  On the other hand, they are nearly naked warrior babes, and the attraction of that idea speaks for itself.  But put one on a dinosaur, and you really can't go wrong.  I really should use more dinosaurs in general.

This is such a great image, but I'm really not quite sure what it is.  Probably a very specific need on a very specific AD ASTRA planet, where mechanical stilts are a necessity because of hazards at ground level.

The "Chaos Warrior" archetype as a kind of iterative variant on the barbarian is relatively new, but realtively common nowadays too.  The stitches running down his chest and across one pec also make me wonder if this isn't actually a flesh golem of some kind.  Wouldn't Frankenstein have been a lot cooler if he'd made the monster look like this?  Well, in TIMISCHBURG, he does!  The CULT OF UNDEATH Beast of the Ebenbach Road is probably one of these.

Although most of my settings are more northern European than southern European, I do feel the need to make sure and give shout-outs to classical mythology too.  Plus, I have really fond memories of the Harryhausen Clash of the Titans from when I was a kid, so crossing the River Styx in Charon's boat just feels right somehow.

Women are trouble.  Every single one of them.  It's not a question of whether or not they're trouble, it's a question of 1) are they hot enough that you can forgive them for the inevitable trouble that they'll cause you, or 2) are they worth the trouble?

This particular exotic example is hotter than most, but also a lot more trouble than a nice local girl next door.  Verdict: not worth the trouble.  Be very careful in Nizrekh.  The women are beautiful but deadly.

Well, well well... if it isn't another Magnus Robot Fighter.  I've already discussed how he'd fit into AD ASTRA when I posed a different picture of him.

I've always been a huge fan of 1) Wayne Reynolds, and 2) demons and devils in D&D.  They are a strange mesh, in many ways, of classic Judeo-Christian folklore (not doctrine per se; most of the demonological stuff falls more firmly in the realm of folklore), classical mythology (check out, again, Charon—illustrated in both of these images, as it happens) and Lovecraftian weirdness.

Daemons in FANTASY HACK are a mesh of the same basic elements.  The big nasty leaders of the daemons are beyond the ken of being worth statting (with the exception of Cthulhu himself, and that's mostly just as a point of reference) but the spectrum that I do have statted, from imps and servitors, through the nosoi, typhons and baal-rog are not meant to be exhaustive.  There's always room for more types of daemons.

I don't know why I prefer the British spelling of that word, to be honest.  Daemons is how you type it in Warhammer, but of course, that's a British game.  Daemons also exist in D&D, although they're certainly not nearly as popular or iconic as the demons and devils themselves.  Because the splitting of them into those categories is essentially an artifact of making them personifications of alignment nodes, I don't have any need or desire to have more than one kind of "fiend", and daemon just seemed like a word that had less baggage then the alternatives.

In this regard, it's a little unusual; I did have a few latent British habits, probably from reading so much Tolkien over and over again as a kid (until recently I was probably more likely to type grey than gray), but in recent years I've learned to stop being afraid to embrace my natural jingoism and K-selected in-grouping, and one minor side-effect of that is that I almost always choose an American spelling over a British one now, no matter the context—even in fantasy, where British spellings give you that Merry Olde Englande feel or whatever.  So, daemon is just the exception that proves the rule, or something.

Working up two new hardstyle megamixes

You should be able to look all of these songs up on Youtube and give 'em a listen, if you're so inclined.  Here's my proposed Megamixes #3 and #4.  I hope to get #3 done by this weekend.  I haven't yet settled on track order in the mix, so don't concern yourself yet too much with that.  Also, I haven't made any attempt to measure the length of these mixes (or how much I'm going to cut from each track, or speed it up—both of which I do, especially the former) so I may not actually be able to use everything that I've listed before I hit my hour or so target length.

Hardstyle megamix #3

• Headhunters—Rock Civilization [Hybrid Mix]—by which I mean I'll be cutting the middle slow section and inputing some stuff from the Technoboy remix in its place.
• Equinox—Fight Club
• Firelite—What's His Name?
• J-Rod—The Present
• Da Tweekaz—Twerkout Revolution
• Lowriders—Don't Get Back
• Blasterjaxx & Justin Prime—Push Play
• Cyber—DLTBGY
• Flarup & Activator—Wicked
• Francesco Zeta—Reverse Bass Will Never Die
• Hatom—Showtime
• Memorize—Exception
• MKN—Bass In The Place
• TNT & Isaac—CTRL
• Project One—Raiders of the Sun
• Tektony—Bring the Noise

Hardstyle megamix #4

• ED ET & DTR vs Hatom—Feel the Vibe
• Omegatypez & ASYS—BSSDRM
• TNT & Isaac—Digital Nation
• Tatanka—WTGD
• Da Tweekaz—#Tweekay16
• Da Tweekaz—Wodka
• TNT—Pulsation
• Wildstylez—The Moon
• A-lusion—Auditory Phenomena 
• Francesco Zeta—Rock N Rave
• Raxtor—Revelation
• Coone—Starf★ckers (that is actually how it's spelled)
• Cally & Juice—Drop the Beat (Ed ET & DTR Remix)
• Hatom—Turn Back 2.0
• System F—Out of the Blue [Showtek Remix]
• Technoboy—Rage (A Hardstyle Song)
• Pavo—The Raven
• Zatox—Poltergeist

If, on the other hand, I actually end up short, I've got a few more songs up my sleeve to mix portions of into the megamixes, including a few more tracks by A-lusion ("Back to the Future", "Visual Perception", "Supernova") and some old skool classics by Jimmy the Sound ("M.O.D.U.L.O." and "L.O.G.I.C.O.").  If I still need more, I'll get another TNT song; "Pulsation" probably.  I really doubt I'd need more than that.

Deconstructing the Serpent's Skull 2: Racing to Ruin Part II

The second half (last third in terms of page-count, but there's a lot more action here) of the adventure is basically a big open air dungeon; a ruined city of Azlant.  Just in case you're not up to speed (in which case, this series probably isn't very interesting or comprehensible to you anyway) Azlant is Paizo's faux Atlantis.  Mwangi is sub-Saharan Africa, and this (as well as the city further on that makes up much of the rest of this series) were colonial cities by the Azlanti many centuries ago, fallen into ruin and lost.  The city of Tazion was the gateway, if you will, to Saventh-Yhi, but then it itself was lost.

The assumption is that the PCs arrive there first, but GMs are supposed to track their time on the road (for very loose definitions of road) and if they're slow, then they might not arrive first.  Here are the other factions, their arrival time, and what they do, very briefly:

—Red Mantis: Arrive at 56 days, sneak in, find what they want, and get out without anyone being the wiser.

—Aspis Consortium: Arrive at 59 days, pay a big chest to the inhabitants for the information, leave in peace.

—Pathfinder Society: Arrive at 63 days, fight the inhabitants.  Some of their group are prisoners, and they kill about a third of the inhabitants, who are replenished as hunters in the backcountry wander back into town in 1d3 days.

—Free Captains: Arrive at 65 days, make a frontal assault, kill half of the inhabitants, loot the Aspis Consortium bribe, and lose a few of their own, including the leader of their expedition.

—Sargavan Government: Arrive at 68 days, make a frontal assault, wipe out everybody still there in a 2-day seige.  If the PCs arrive after this, they find the whole town abandoned and looted, except for the bodies.

The inhabitants are some kind of demon-worshiping man-apes, or awakened anthropomorphic apes like in Tarzan, but with clothes and gear and stuff.  There's also a serpentman priest who leader their cult.  Tar pits linger all over Tazion, which look like water, but acts as flammable quicksand.

Trying to sneak into the city subjects the PCs to barbed net traps and three trios of man-ape guards.  Or, they can attempt to sneak in via the old abandoned aqueducts, since the man-apes are unaware of them.  One of them is collapsed partway through, but the other gets them in.  There is a water elemental that lives here, though, left by the Azlanti to clean the aqueducts or somesuch.    If they make it past this, though, they will end up either in an old water tower, now full of snakes (Very dangerous! You go first!) or the Well of Unending Screams (see below.)

They've also turned an old building of some unknown original purpose into a temple to the snake-god.  I always wonder about why anyone would make traps in a place where they actually hang out and would risk tripping the traps themselves, but D&D doesn't seem to care; there's a falling block trap here, and all kinds of tar pit hazards.  There's also a sacrifice room, where they put their victims in the tar pits and set it on fire.  Depending on when the PCs arrive, they may find their old gnomey Pathfinder friend due to get this treatment.  Either way, there are man-ape priests all over the place.  They also find the man-ape boss, although he does get killed in the Free Captains assault, if the PCs are late.  Although he's a cleric, he has a big python or anaconda animal companion or somesuch.  Plus man-ape acolytes.

In the Well of Unending screams, there are a few decapus—forest octopi who create magical illusions kind of like will-o-the-wisps.  And then, you'd have to climb a 60 foot old stone wall out of the well.

There's also an old Azlanti ziggurat to explore.  Here, the PCs find giant wasps, some old Azlanti idols (that serve as a kind of small stone golems with a permanent magic mouth effect on them).  There's another room dedicated to the Dark Tapestry (i.e., Lovecraftian cults) full of dark, stagnant water and leeches.

There's a "fungal predator" lurking in a staircase.  Yellow mold, cobras, more wasps, more man-apes and a gorillon (Barsoomian white ape) round out the remainder of the hazards until the PCs find the "bosses" and solve the gemstone puzzles in a pillar of light (Raiders of the Lost Ark map room, anyone?) that reveal the map to Saventh-Yhi (seriously; did anyone ever in the history of the world build anything like these ridiculous D&D puzzles that you have to solve?)  Solving the puzzle is complicated by the fact that a serpentman wizard, who leads the Tazion man-ape cult, will probably try to kill the PCs for stumbling into the room where the route is noted.  He's also collected three of the four gems needed to solve the puzzle—so fighting him is kind of necessary.  I'm not sure how the Red Mantis were supposed to get what they want without dealing with him.  Plot hole warning.

Anyway, for the next adventure in the series, the PCs hurry off from the first lost city to the real lost city further inland.

There's a section on Eleder, the city mentioned at the front of the module, although it's quite brief (less than five pages) as well as some other stuff that's less useful (information on the weird nature god of Golarion, part 2 of a serial story, etc.)  And, as always, they round out the module with a small bestiary.  Some of the guys will be ones that were faced in the adventure, but some are not.  There are also random monster tables for the jungle and the savanna that the PCs will be crossing, which is nice.  The monsters are a weird shark-themed mermaid race, a weird tropical fey not unlike jungley redcaps, I suppose, really nasty weird mosquito swarms that cause sleeping sickness, brain-eating ape-bears (as mentioned in the first half of the module), and a strange creature that's essentially a storm elemental—half water, half air, all angry.  They also have little side-bars congratulating themselves on researching African and East Indies folklore to come up with these creatures that nobody else will ever have heard of or therefore care where they come from.

So what stats would I need other than NPCs for this module, and what do I not have, assuming I were to use all of these?  I've mostly adopted (or simply used) stats that I already have, but anything I'd have to invent I've marked with the dagger sign (†).

• dogs with some kind of rabies feature (I can easily add the dire rat disease to wolf stats from FANTASY HACK.)
• a kelpie (I probably have something aquatic that I can use as a surogate—but I probably won't use this anyway.)  †
• a thunderbird (I certainly don't have this.) †
• a raptor dinosaur (already covered)
• a crystal ooze (I dislike oozes.  They should be more like hazards than monsters, if you even use them at all, in my opinion.) †
• salt wights (can just use wights just fine as is. Same for the cairn wight boss.)
• the brain-eating ape-bears (I can either use an ape or a bear and give them a magical ability.  Either that or just have them make creepy brain-eating attacks without changing the stats at all.)
• an ankheg. † Plague zombies too—although I'd just use skeleton stats for minion type undead.
• a Loch Ness monster of some sort.  I'd probably also make this a raptor dinosaur that happens to swim.  If I wanted it to be really challenging, I could use a sea serpent, but then only quite powerful PCs could hope to deal with it.
• lizardmen (got 'em) and hippos (don't got 'em, but an aquatic rhino is close enough.  Instead of goring with its rhino horns, a hippo uses its big hippo tusks in the same fashion.
• I also don't have a zombie troll †, nor do I think I'd want something so unusual and esoteric.  But I do have a succubus.
• I've already got a water elemental, so I'm set there.
• Decapus, or some other kind of octopus, I suppose.  I'm actually a little bit surprised that I don't have a giant octopus already that I can make terrestrial as needed. †
• a four-armed white ape.  Can use gug stats.
• stone golems.  I don't actually have these, but I've noted before that I probably should. †
• REH style man-apes.  I'd probably use baboon stats but raise the intelligence and give them spears and daggers and stuff.  Powerful ones can be done with the ape stats.
• a serpentman—no reason not to just use lizardman stats here, though.  
• A fungal predator, whatever exactly that is (if I did this, I'd probably use Dark Young stats.)
• plenty of snakes, although I won't bother making customized versions; I've got a big constrictor and a poisonous one already.

LOCATIONS Maps that can be adapted to another setting, if needed

• whaling company building
• the route to Tazion; i.e. Sargavan and Mwangi regional map that covers the caravan route
• Fzumi salt mine
• small section of Kalabuto docks
• Tazion city ruins
• Temple of the Snake; ruins in Tazion
• Azlanti ziggurat
• Eleder city map

That last is actually the most likely to be useful to me, but the site-based adventuring maps are small; these aren't anything like the tedious "megadungeons" that we sometimes see.

Deconstructing the Serpent's Skull 2: Racing to Ruin Part I

I love how in the forward, James Jacobs resents the label of railroad.  Well... I suppose he probably would, wouldn't he?  Anyway—other than a few snide remarks here and there because I can't help it, I've already decided to abandon any attempt at following the specific structure of these Adventure Paths in these adaptations, so that's merely a funny anecdote at this point. I should give him a break; he also gives a fanboy call-out to Deinonychus in there. Here's the adventure summary:

Having escaped Smuggler’s Shiv, the PCs arrive in Eleder, where word of their discovery on the island quickly leaks out. Many rival factions seek to find Saventh-Yhi, and the PCs must choose one to ally with to organize their expedition. Before they can set out on their journey, however, they must deal with an armed rebellion in Eleder (possibly instigated by a rival faction), and secure the aid of a strange cleric of Gozreh as a guide. 

Once on their way, the PCs race across Sargava, dealing with native hazards and ravenous beasts, and contending with rival factions again at a stopover in Kalabuto. Along the way, the PCs have the opportunity to gain new allies to help them reach their final destination, the ruins of the ancient Azlanti outpost of Tazion. 

Now inhabited by a renegade tribe of charau-ka cultists dedicated to the serpent-god Ydersius, the ruins of Tazion also hold an ancient Azlanti device that can reveal the location of Saventh-Yhi. The PCs must battle the vicious ape-men and their mysterious serpentine ally while scouring the ruins for the Azlanti device and the means to activate it.

A GATHERING OF SCAVENGERS Eleder is described later in the module (I always love a good city description), but it's the capital of Sargava, the virtue-signaling White Colonialism is Really Bad themed city, so... yeah.  That said, that plays only a minor role in this adventure, thankfully.  The PCs need to get their notes about the location of the hidden city translated (from Aklo, of Lovecraft fame although of course Lovekcraft borrowed out from Machen; although apparently it's easy to find a translator in Eleder.  smh.)  The most interesting part of all this is that there are five factions that also want to find the lost city, so it become a race of sorts to get there first, and the PCs are key elements, because they're the ones with the best info on how to find it (although the castaways mentioned in the last adventure have a role here too, if any of them are rescued.)  Depending on what (if anything) the PCs did with these castaways, they could be friendly, or hostile to the endeavors of the PCs, meaning that there's a chance for some BioWare-like influence on the various factions; or at least on the NPCs, which could have effects that cascade to the various factions. There should be incentives to ally with a faction, since they will offer to fund and outfit the trip to find the city. Whichever faction the PCs join will also suggest a primary rival faction, although none of the five really appreciates the other four. The various factions are; since at this point in the module, they're described:

—The Aspis Consortium: These guys are allied with the Japanese sailor castaway mentioned last time.  They are pretty much what a stupid Bernie Bro thinks a capitalist entity is like; all caricature and stuff. The recruiter is utterly ruthless and cold-blooded, willing to murder or order murder for the flimsiest of excuses. On the other hand, their relationships with the natives offers some base-camp benefits.

—The Free Captains of the Shackles: Our angry half-elf chick Aerys is linked with these guys.  The faction says "free captains" but it's really just a single ambitious pirate captain who wants the loot from the hidden city to further xir own ambitions.  Yeah, it's a girl captain, but since that's thoroughly unrealistic, I can't bring myself to call xir a her.

—The Pathfinder Society: Mostly the protagonist organization for the entire setting, but not always.  The snarky little gnome is affiliated with them, and in his efforts to get back on the good side of the Society, he brings what he knows of the city with him.  The Consortium and the Society are, as always, primary rivals.

—The Red Mantis: These guys are assassins and cultists, but they believe that the hidden city contains sacred (and lost) information about their cult.  They use our manic pixie girl, quite possibly by intimidating her, since she's not a member of the group, as a link.  They are rivals to the pirate captain.

—The Sargavan Government: There is no rivalry per se with this group, although once "in the field" it's presumed that one of the four other factions will emerge as the rival.  Here's where we get the typical colonialist bad guys nonsense, if you side with this group.

There's a few events that happen while in town as well, that can be worked in as the GM pleases.  These aren't encounters per se, although some of them resemble encounters to a great degree.

—The Freemen's Revolt: There's a riot, sparked by false rumors spread by the PCs rivals, actually—they're accused of being associated with slavers, and the natives revolt against the colonials.  This takes a few forms:
- Who Let the Dogs Out? Rabid dogs run through the street.  You have to kill them or be bitten and get rabies.
- The Roof Is On Fire! Arsonists attempt to burn down the PCs warehouse, where their expedition equipment is being gathered.  You have to fight rioters as well as put out the fire.
- Damsels In Distress. The NPC allies of the PCs have been kidnapped by rioters who threaten to murder them, overthrow the government and murder every white person in town. (I'm actually not kidding. Although here they're called "foreigners".)  They're in a whale processing plant (I'm also not kidding about that) and going into the plant, fighting terrorists and murderers and rescuing the damsels (and/or dudes) in distress plays out like a minor dungeon.  There's a trap, but mostly it's just fighting NPCs, including a "boss" NPC at the end.

—The Tempest is actually a person; because it's suggested that the PCs attempt to hire a seasoned guide, it's assumed that they will undertake this suicidally stupid attempt to reach one who lives in such an inaccessible place that they have to row a boat out to a rocky cliff, try not to get battered against the rocks and killed, climb sheer, wet cliffs, fight giant crabs, get past a couple of traps, and then convince this cranky old fart to take them and their quest seriously.  In order to do this, he challenges you to prove yourselves by doing some stupid tasks for him:
- Challenge of Water: go pearl diving, fight a kelpie, and get a black pearl for him (if I went to this much trouble, I'd keep it and kill the stupid guide, personally.  I'm a bit of a rogue when it comes to being a player, though.)
- Challenge of the Wind: Climb another cliff a day away in a thunderstorm and retrieve a single thunderbird feather.  You may have to fight superstitious natives after you get the feather too, because they demand it back.
- The native gives them Golarion's version of ersatz peyote, and the PCs have to go on a dreamquest and fight a dream serpent, and get assigned a spirit animal.  Mine is a T. rex.

THE RACE BEGINS This part is more railroady, and involves an entire expedition of NPCs to deal with.  To mitigate this, the railroad says the PCs should be trailblazers out in front of the expedition by a day or so.  The route includes taking some older, disused paths along the edge of the jungle to the town of Kalabuto, a river trip through the jungle (African Queen!) until you get to some rapids, or on foot next to the river, which is kind of recommended because of the rapids, travel through the Bandu Hills, and on into another jungle.  Here's where they are meant to find Tazion, the missing gateway to the missing city Saventh-Yhi.  While this route is just about as spelled out for the PCs as a railroad track, it is kinda fun to give them some overland travel to do—more echoes of Isle of Dread again.

There is a shortcut through some old salt mines, though, which gives them at least a choice to make.  If they take this route, they have to deal with a Tarzan-like girl with a pet Deinonychus (spergy dinosaur fans like me will point out that based on its size, it's most likely a Utahraptor.)  There's a risk of catching some weird jungle fever (not that kind) as you pass through the abandoned mining camp, and then you cut through the mine.  Inside, you'll find:
—a crystal ooze (this is such a weird D&Dism, that there's no way I'm converting it to FANTASY HACK or using anything like oozes in general.)
—salt wights (very minor change to regular wights)
—a collapsing ceiling trap and more salt wights
—a boss "cairn wight" plus a "negative energy orb" which kills people and turns them into wights

On the other side of the mines (or if the PCs go around them, if I remember correctly) they find a caravan with a shady guy running cock-fights, who tries to shake down the PCs.  If they bet on the cock-fights, he refuses to pay if he loses, and demands more than they bet if he wins.  Either way, they're probably fighting him and his thuggish caravan guards.  This is the kind of nonsense you get when you travel in Africa kids, ask anyone who's been there.

There's also a village where the villagers are strangely hospitable.  Turns out that they believe that they are under a curse, and want the PCs help to remove it by killing the ape-bears that are coming into their village each night to kill somebody and eat their brains.

Then there's ankheg's—gigantic anti-lions, basically.  Some wicked vultures, and some plague zombies laying under a tree as encounters to encounter while en route to Kalabuto.  This seems like overkill; some random encounter tables would have done the job, but these aren't bad ideas really.

KALABUTO AND BEYOND As you can see from the map, Kalabuto is the first major stop on the way.  Here, a number of things are supposed to happen:
—A little girl begs the PCs to buy good luck charms that are supposed to make the natives beyond recognize them as friends.  They actually will do the opposite, and the little girl is a con artist paid by the PCs rivals.
—They meet the contact that they've been advised to meet; a dwarf explorer who sets up expeditions further inland.
—Further rival agents try to ambush the PCs in town.

They may get wind of a treasure map up the river at L, where they fight an African Nessie guarding a sunken ship.

At M, there's a native ambush.  At N there are lizardmen hunting hippos, who get angry on seeing the PCs and prod the hippos into attacking.  Then you fight the lizardmen too.  At O there's a dire ape possessed by a shadow demon that's killed the advance party of another one of the groups racing for the city (not sure if it's a given that they get ahead of the PCs; although I've read this adventure before, I'm just skimming it for this review, and I can't remember.)

At P, the PCs might come across a tomb a little off the beaten path with a witch doctor necromancer with a troll zombie that attacks.  At Q, there are gnome headhunters that attack you (actually spriggans, to be precise and D&Dy) and finally at R, they come across some slutty native bathers who invite them to "party" with them—but it turns out that one of them is a succubus.  And then, they arrive at the ruins of Tazion.  Which, I'll start up with tomorrow.