[Almost OSSR] Savage Tide Adventure Path

[RelentlessImp]

Sorry guys, been dealing with some depression that doesn't want to go away, but I'll try to finish this up.

Part Six: Against the Crimson Fleet
So, we get about a page full of bullshit about Vanthus coming back and Cold Captain Wyther that continues in the vein of Saturday Morning Cartoon Villainy, that finally culminates in telling you how the PCs can locate the Crimson Fleet Headquarters.

First off, Crimson Fleet HQ is hidden by a series of permanent illusions that add up to one giant screen spell that makes the cove the HQ is in appear to be an empty saltmarsh. Secondly, it has a permanent Mordenkainen's private sanctum that keeps you from seeing the cove even with true seeing - meaning you have to walk through the area illusioned up to find it, succeeding on a DC 22 Will save.

So, the HQ itself is basically a collection of wooden walkways joining together some strips of land and the moored ships that currently serve as barracks for most of the men. This means we have a series of maps, as this path clearly expects you to fight on and in the ships rather than, say, just setting everything on fucking fire.

Also, if you've noticed that my summary doesn't include a way for the PCs to actually find the fucking place, then you win a gold star for observation - neither does the section titled "Finding the Base". You know, I'm thinking these headers are assigned pretty much at fucking random and have nothing to do with the text under them. You could have called it "Demogorgon's Wake" or "Vanthus Is A Colossal Cockmuncher" and it would have made as much sense.

So anyways, the section I glossed over - the backstory - says that Vanthus came back, took Cold Captain Wyther's ship, and sailed off to the Gaping Maw on it because of the wakeportal on it, and that handing off his ship to Vanthus has caused a lot of the Crimson Fleet captains to mutiny and spread out the resources of the Fleet so that there's no better time to murder them all.

Here's our map for this section:



Alright, so let's go on, I'm not even going to try and figure out a way to make this flow narratively.

D1 is a collection of shit used to bar entry via boat or skiff. When a boat approaches, there's a death slaad that uses animate objects to raise the Huge barricade up to let them pass. The fact that these guys are using DEATH SLAADS as GATE GUARDS and not ARMY MEMBERS is fucking stupid.

D2 is the death slaad's guardpost, bound here by a level 15 Crimson Fleet wizard, who can go free once he kills 101 good-aligned creatures; he's killed 54, the last of which is hanging in the guard post. Mostly he tries to kill anybody that "looks good-aligned" with his SLAs if they approach the gate and aren't members of the Crimson Fleet.

D3 is a Shrine to Demogorgon. Next.

D4 is the altar to Demogorgon. Currently occupied by 5 bar-lgura (Crimson Recruiters).

D5 is a group of Clerical quarters that have two Chaotic Evil candles of invocation. It's like the path is TRYING to make you break it.

D6 is an occupied guard post, with 4 Scuttlecove Thugs.

D7 is full of food, drinking water, repair materials... basically "nothing of real value".

D8 is another guardpost, with another 4 Scuttlecove Thugs.

D9 is a Watchtower and it's occupied by one of the Crimson Fleet Captains, Captain Longshanks Le'shiv, and 4 more Fighter 4/Rogue 4s. Le'shiv? Really? Was Kitteneater McBabykiller taken? Fuck. Anyways, all the Captains are lemorians, and this guy is no exception, as a Lemorian Rogue 8/Fighter 2, SR 20, saves of +8/+11/+3. There is nothing stopping the PCs from using Dominate Monster to make every one of these captains their Pokemon, but why would they want to?

D10 is a guest house that serves as a place for the Seventh Coil allies to be hanging out. As such there are 4 Seventh Coil Assassins and 2 Seventh Coil Slavers, yuan-ti, here.

D11 is a condemned shack, and pretends the PCS care about traps set off by walking. It's occupied by an Advanced elite fiendish eye of the deep that's eaten a lot of Crimson FLeet soldiers but was beaten by Cold Captain Wyther and bargained an alliance. It's named Vzorthys. The Eye of the Deep is a 24 HD Huge aberration with a +31 Listen and Spot, an attack routine of 25/25/25, eye rays of +16 touch - the eye rays have 150ft range, DCs of 27, and are Hold Monster and Cone of Cold, cast at CL 12. As you can guess this isn't exceptionally dangerous, but it has a Fuck You option:
Baleful Flash. It's a 60ft cone of blinding light that blinds for 2d6 rounds and stuns for half the duration. It has a DC 34 Fort save to negate the stunning and reduce the blinding to dazzled.

The setup is such that it's going to nail your PCs all at once with it, and it has a pretty decent chance of blinding/stunning all of them and leading to a TPK. This is like giving Blasphemy to someone who has 6 more HD than the party and is described as opening combat with it.

The binary nature of high level encounters is pretty well talked about elsewhere, so I'll leave it at that.

Shortly after this it details Lemorians. They're basically the Half-Fiend but gain a Poison Sting instead of Bite, DC of 10+1/2 HD+Con mod, 1d6 Wis/1d6 Wis. +4 Str, +4 Dex, +2 Con, +2 Int, +4 Cha and HD-based SLAs of command 3/day at 1HD, suggestion 1/day at 3, fear 1/day at 5, charm monster 3/day at 7, dominate person 1/day at 9, mass suggestion 1/day at 11, unholy aura 3/day and unhallow 1/day at 13, mass charm monster 1/day at 15, summon monster IX (demons only) 1/day at 17, and dominate monster 1/day at 19.

Anyways, that big ship that is decorated with Es and Fs is a structure called The Wreck and it is actually suspended above the base. It's an impossible collection of ships that are suspended in the air via magic. The map for it is as follows:



E1 is the deck and the door below the fo'c'sle is warded by a symbol of insanity as cast by a 15th level wizard, with a DC 25 Will save to resist.

E2 is the ship's fo'c'sle, which houses a retriever.

E3 is a bridge that moves from the ship's fo'c'sle to another ship's deck (G2).

E4 is a prison that houses PCs caught by the Crimson Fleet. It houses a near-death Crimson Fleet Captain that mutinied, who is all too happy to tell PCs that heal him that the Crimson Fleet has just delivered a bunch of black pearls for free, they were stored belowdecks on the G ship, and that Vanthus took Cold Captain Wyther's ship and activated the wakeportal on it to head to the Gaping Maw. He can tell the PCs there's another wakeportal belowdecks on the Two-Faced Wretch.

Captain Ratline Sid has the same stats as Le'shiv, and tries to run away, or if kept around til fighting Cold Captain Wyther tries to stab the PCs to get back into Wyther's good graces.

E5 is the forward hold, and houses nothing of interest.

F1 is the Black Sprite, once the ship of a half-fey Pirate named Avlash Redlegs, but was Cold Captain Wyther's first conquest. It has 2 Scuttlecove Thugs on it at all times. If the Wreck is on alert, then there's 12.

F2 is another rope bridge that leads from The Black Sprite to the Two-Faced Wretch (H1).

F3 is the Galley and has 6 Fighter 4/Rogue 4s.

F4 has 4 more of them in the Barracks.

G1 is The Anger, which serves as living quarters for any Crimson Fleet Captains who don't currently have a ship.

G2 is the Anger's fo'c'sle, which has a ladder leading up to the crow's nest, which has a rope ladder to H1.

G3 is the Ballista deck, which has two ballistae. The one in G3A can fire anywhere from D6 to D10, while G3B can fire from D8 to E3.

G4 is a guard room that has 4 Captains, who share stats with Longshanks Le'shiv.

G5 is Cold Captain Wyther's personal shrine to Demogorgon, and the statue holds a metal orb that, with a proper Disable Device check, can be unfolded to contact Demogorgon as if using commune with other planes, asking 10 yes/no questions. Each one adds a cumulative 10% chance for Demogorgon to notice the statue being used, and if he notices he alerts the Crimson Fleet and tells the PCs "I know you. You seek to oppose me. But you are mortal. I shall be with you soon. You shall know my wrath!" and then the statue explodes for 10d6 Fire and 10d6 Acid, with a DC 20 Reflex for half. It also blows a hole in the hull, forcing a DC 15 Reflex or fall 60ft to the Fortitude's deck (E1).

Using the shrine to learn something about Demogorgon's plans is worth a CR 16 reward.

G6 is the war room, and there is no fighting in it. Instead it has ledgers! 35 different cities have received shadow pearls, but no exact locations. Also possibly the first time the PCs hear the event described as the savage tide, and that it's coming soon, but no exact date. Isn't that always the way? Apocalypse Cults never ever give you a firm date for Judgment Day.

G7 is the chamber of an Orlath demon named Ziovayne who likes to fuck. No. Really. There's a 50% chance that his plaything, Captain Bilgerut Norah, is there with him, and she shares stats with Le'shanks. Once she's below 40hp, Ziovayne joins and assumes his real form to hit people with scimitars.

Orlath are described in the Appendix. Stock, it's a CR 15, 16 HD outsider with the chaotic, evil, extraplanar and shapechanger subtypes. It has 26 AC and 16 Touch, +17/+17/+16 saves, SR 26, and can call a retriever to its location with a minute of concentration. This thing is basically a two-bodied snake-Marilith expy, with the head of a monkey, with each body having 6 arms. Its left head has a continuous True Seeing, and it has a gaze attack that deals 1d4 points of Vile Charisma damage on a failed DC 22 will save. If you get drained to 0 Charisma you rise as a dretch under the thing's control. Also the right head has constant x-ray vision.

So, its full attack routine is 11 +1 scimitars at +22, and 2 bites at +17. The scimitars each deal 1d8+2 with a crit of 15-20, and deal an extra 1 point of vile damage.

SLAs are at will detect thoughts, discern lies, dispel magic, fly, locate object, locate creature, sending, greater teleport and unholy blight, 3/day glibness, move earth, prying eyes and stone shape, and 1/day demand and greater scrying. The art for it is actually sort of neat:

Anyways, it's a melee beast at a point where that sort of thing gets shut down, so he's not really any threat - his SLAs are all bullshit crap that doesn't apply.

H1 is the deck of the Two-Faced Wretch, and is a cluttered deck that serves as difficult terrain.

H2 is Cold Captain Wyther's ready room.

H3 is Wyther's quarters, and we finally get our first look at the head of the Crimson Fleet himself. Yes, it's laughable.
A male lemorian rogue 2/fighter 4/scarlet corsair 4/dread pirate 6, +3 init, -1 listen, -1 spot, 29 AC, saves of +17/+20/+7, SR 26. He has some nice gear for the PCs if they care; gauntlets of ogre power +6, bracers of health +6 (as amulet of health), amulet of natural armor +3, cloak of protection +4, boots of speed, ring of protection +4. ANd he still doesn't add up to a CR 19 appropriate threat. He apparently comes in if the PCs are "on the ropes" or 1d4 rounds after the PCs engage Ziovayne. He's so very much not a threat; he's another melee beast.

H4 is the treasury. It's guarded by an advanced yagnoloth, which is a 26 HD outsider with a 2d6 round stun breath weapon, a 1d4 energy drain as a full round action vs DC 29 Fort save to remove the negative levels later, and a DC 29 Fort save or be stunned for 1d8 rounds on its claw attack. This thing is more dangerous than Cold Captain Wyther, and I think kind of earns its CR 18 due to being encountered in an enclosed space, being a closet troll, and having some stuns and energy drains. If this thing was involved in the fight with Captain Wyther he might be worth the fight.

Anyways the treasury contains a trapped chest with a puzzle, which has some treasure; 6 black pearls worth 250gp each, a gold crown with emeralds worth 1200gp, a dozen bags containing 500gp each, and a Hope Diamond expy worth 25,000gp (the Athrinod Ruby). Also, the chest contains the spare wakeportal, which turns out to be a magical gemstone that attaches to a ship's prow or figurehead, and allows one to sail a ship from a Prime ocean to the Abyssian Ocean in the Gaping Maw.

There is also 300,000 cp, 110,000sp, 28,000gp, 1,300pp, 10,000gp worth of gems and jewelry, 8,000gp of masterwork weapons and armor, 4,200gp of silks and furs, 5,600gp worth of clothing and tapestries, 6,000gp in alcohol, and 16,000gp in gold and silver bars, adding up to a total of 104,800gp for the non-chest stuff.

I1 is the Baledictum, which is an ex-slave galley, and is full of corpses because the mutiny started here.

I2 is the Crow's Walk of the Baledictum, and is the highest point of the Wreck. It has 3 Sisters of Lamentation.

I3 is a lookout with a ballista that fires from E3 clockwise to D8.

I4 is Vanthus' lair. Somehow Vanthus got away with kicking out a level 15 Wizard to take this room. Bullshit. Anyways Vanthus kept Lavinia here and she scrawled a note in her own blood. A DC 30 Search check finds it. It reads:
"Vanthus lives! Back from death! He's taken control of the fleet and says he wants to make me into one of them, to take me to Demogorgon's realm wher"

You know there's a lot of correct grammar for someone writing in their own blood and in a hurry. I guess nobility shines through?

I5 is The Glad, and has the leader of the Seventh Coil on it. Said leader is named The Seventh, and is a yuan-ti anathema, a 22HD Huge aberration accompanied by 3 Seventh Coil assassins. She has a 1d4 con/1d4 con DC 30 Fort poison on her 6 bite attacks, and has Regeneration that is only penetrated by adamantine weapons and Force effects. She has some interesting SLAs, including a 1/day Blasphemy at CL 22, which hopefully the PCs are beyond instant-death range at this point. She has no way of escaping despite making an attempt at under 50hp.

Once the PCs have killed most of the remaining Captains, Crew and Cold Captain Wyther, the adventure is over. It suggests that finding out which 35 cities the black pearls went to is impossible but that the PCs need to go to the Gaping Maw and end it at the source.

You know. This scenario fucking blows chunks. If it's not for the immature handling of mature subject matter - that was just as fucking laughable in Porphyry House Horror where Scuttlecove comes from - it's for the bullshit expounded again and again with bringing Vanthus back from the dead, with Lavinia being kidnapped, with the only truly strong female character being reduced to a rape victim who becomes useless after her experience in the Birdcage, and the other would-be strong female character being reduced to fucking uselessness by her build and then broken by harpies.

Fuck this scenario. It's the worst fucking thing I have ever fucking read, even worse than the filler of Sea Wyvern's Wake and Here There Be Monsters. The cognitive dissonance involved in all of this is fucking staggering - not only does it expect us to believe that shitheel Vanthus, whose build has NOT improved (spoiler!) but only taken on a couple of templates has been able to muscle out a 15th level Wizard, but that not just one, but FIVE points of independent strength in this adventure path (Harliss, the Jade Ravens) are little more than emotional 'fuck you's if you decide to give a shit about them.

Beyond that, this is seriously still treating the game as it did at level fucking ONE. While Into the Maw is starting to approach level TEN in terms of scenarios, you could seriously run this as a level 1-5 scenario and NOTHING WOULD BE LOST. This is absolutely shitty design.

[fbmf]

*ahem*

Game On,
fbmf

[RelentlessImp]

*ahem*

Game On,
fbmf

It's hard to tell what you're objecting to with just a digital clearing of the throat.

[Orion]

To cement the horrible of this choice, Harliss Javell gets an art DOWNGRADE.

I seriously can't see any difference.

[fbmf]

*ahem*

Game On,
fbmf

It's hard to tell what you're objecting to with just a digital clearing of the throat.

I posted this as a bump to remind you to work on it. Apparently I should have refreshed the thread before I did so. My bad.

Game On,
fbmf

[hogarth]

By the way, here's my reaction when we finished the 8th adventure in the Age of Worms path:

"Now that we're level 17 and we're tossing around 9th level spells, the campaign must be nearly over and HOLY BALLS WE ARE ONLY AT THE 2/3 MARK! You mean there's four more adventures worth of this? Groan..."

[RelentlessImp]

Yup, and the 9th scenario posits that you'll reach level 18, 19 if you lay the smack down on all the little demon princes in the Gaping Maw.

[hogarth]

I remember scoffing when Paizo came out with "Rise of the Runelords" because it only went up to level 15/16. But after playing "Age of Worms" up to that level, I was definitely ready to quit by then.

[fbmf]

Let's try this again.

*ahem*

Game On,
fbmf

[Blasted]

Must say up until that last entry I was pretty interested in running it. Now, not so much.

[mlangsdorf]

The first 5-7 adventures of Savage Tide make for a decent narrative arc: the PCs work for Lavania, travel to the Isle of Dread, save Farshore from Vanthus, and possibly destroy the Savage Tide production facilities and stockpiles. If you deliberately underlevel the PCs a bit, the lousy optimization of the later adventures will be balanced by the PCs fighting nominal EL12 encounters when they're only 8th level.

Serpents of Shuttlecove needs to die in a fire, though.

The last 3 adventures (Wells of Darkness, Enemy of my Enemy, and Prince of Demons) can possibly be adapted into a reasonable high level adventure: you need to destroy a very high CR extra dimensional threat, and the only way to do that is talk to various planar prisoners and such that might know his weaknesses. I'm not super fond of that fact that you have to kill Demogorgon, and thus have to cut deals with demons and devils (which screws over paladins), but mind caulking everyone involving into faeries or some such isn't impossible.

That leaves Into the Maw as the odd man out. Narratively, it's the sequel to SoS: having discovered that Vanthus isn't in Shuttlecove, the PCs track him to one of Demogorgon's prisons that has been taken over by the inmates. I think it's a decent adventure, but I don't think it's a decent high level adventure. Again, it's probably simplest if the PCs just track Vanthus straight to the prisoner and skip SoS.

So I wouldn't put the fact that Lightless Depths and Serpents of Shuttlecove suck put you off the entire adventure path. Odds are pretty high that you'll never get to them anyway.

[RelentlessImp]

Scenario 9: Into the Maw
by Robert J. Schwalb

You might recognize Schwalb's name as of late, as being the front man for D&D in its most recent incarnations, also known as the only man getting any fucking work done. This was meant to be Sean K. Reynold's scenario, and I can only assume Schwalb took some fever-dreamed bullshit from SKR and tried to make it coherent. The reason I can assume this is because SKR has tried to do the planeswalking thing before - Ghostwalk, for instance, which was co-written with Monte Cook. He's also tried to do the high-level thing before in the FRCS. Both are failures from a fluff-meets-mechanics perspective, and in a lot of cases never make it past mechanics before failing hard. This scenario has all the hallmarks of having been theorized and conceptualized by Shitlord K. Reynolds, with the bad writing credit left at Robert J. Schwalb's feet, who I can only assume at least tried to make it less shit, but failed miserably. Spoilers.

Part One: Into the Abyss
So the opening text crawl tells us that this scenario is broken outright, as it's meant for people who are throwing around 9th level spells yet expects them to give ANY fucks about the ship they got at level fucking FIVE. That's right, the wakeportal they received at the end of Serpents of Scuttlecove just doesn't work unless it's attached to a ship, nevermind that plane shift has been a thing for the last EIGHT levels for the Clerics, and FOUR for the wizards. Furthermore it expounds this horribleness by suggesting the PCs are now X number of the highest-level adventurers the mortal plane has to offer and says that taking the Sea Wyvern into the Gaping Maw is easier than casting a standard action spell. It continues to fap to the fact that a ship provides a "portable fortress" and "home base" despite rope trick having been on the fucking table for FOURTEEN LEVELS NOW. Besides, when you think ship, you don't fucking think 'fortress', you think 'method of conveyance' because that's what it is. You can't turn a goddamned ship into a fortress without a lot of fucking magic, and none of that is actually codified in the goddamned rules unless you're talking replacing the cabins with portable goddamned holes and permanencied Mordenkainen's private sanctums and shit.

Anyways, it tells us a bit about the Abyssian Ocean which is a ribbon of water that somehow connects the various levels of the Abyss. there are the Maw's Teeth, which is where the Abyssian Ocean intersects with the Gaping Maw, and a DC 35 Knowledge (geography) check to set a course, which Knowledge (the planes) 5 ranks or more gives a +5 synergy bonus to. Using Commune or Contact Other Plane to ask questions about how to get in gives a +15 circumstance bonus to the check. Discern Location just doesn't work. Divination gives a +10 circumstance, and Find the Path cast once per day for the 1d4 days it takes to navigate in makes the check automatically succeeds.

What's that? Why yes, it is silly that they say a spell the PCs have access to just completely fucking obviates the goddamned word salad that they spent to tell us how hard getting into the Gaping Maw is. They did that a little bit ago when they said plane shift means fuck this noise.

Furthermore the PCs have a chance to hit a real high-level magic item shoppe here, as there is a ship called Sapphire Griffon (what the fuck is the obsession with low-CR creatures) crewed by 10 tiefling guards and five mercanes. If you're not familiar with mercanes, they're basically Deveels from Robert Asprin's Myth series. No, really. No, it's not a mistake that they're in the Epic Jokes Book. Well, yes it is, but it's not a mistake that in the OGL they're under the Epic Creatures & Obstacles section. They actually say these guys "stand out in the most crowded bazaar".

So on the ship itself, this supposedly EL 19 encounter despite mercanes being CR 5 creatures in the most laughable book of 3.5's entire fucking run. Maybe their bodyguards are supposed to have levels we give a shit about? No, the mercanes, nine in all, are all 13th level wizards, and their bodyguards are Rogue 4/Fighter 4 which makes you wonder why the fucking bodyguards are necessary at FUCKING ALL. So right off the bat the PCs can find anything of 800gp or less with a total inventory worth 12,000gp, but they can sell and buy up any items up to 200,000gp in value - it just means the mercane have to plane shift somebody back and forth to their off-planar site. As they're 13th level wizards the 5d% is just a teleport away.

Of course we waste word space telling us that Dragon #356 has more details on these mercanes and some bullshit items the mercane might try to offload on the PCs. You know, in case you feel like dicking your players over for making them pay money that stopped meaning anything several levels ago for the honor of taking on bullshit.

This leads to
Part Two: Gaping Maw
Oh jesus fucking christ we're still fapping to ship-based travel meaning fucking anything. Okay, so, reaching the border of the Abyssian Ocean and the Gaping Maw intersection means the PCs have to start making DC 30 Profession (sailor) checks to get through the Maw's Teeth, three of which have to be succeeded on. Failing checks first prompts a DC 10 Balance check or fall prone. Then a DC 15 Balance chekc or fall prone. Third failed check at DC 15 Reflex save or go into the sea and lose 1d4 sails from the rigging and -4 to your check. Then a DC 15 Reflex save or take damage and -10 to your check. The fifth means a 50ft tall wave rashes and capsizes the Sea Wyvern, causing it to sink in 2d6+10 rounds.

At which point we get more shit telling us that control weather with a DC25 caster level check, miracle or wish can make all this fucking pointless. Getting through the Maw is worth a CR 15 experience reward. If the PCs just fly over it I guess it's free XP.

After getting through the Maw the PCs wind up in an EL 17 encounter that start with DC 20 Spot checks to notice a vessel riding low in the water near them with flickering light in the middle like a bonfire. The light turns out to be an "enormous floating cloat of blood and meat stretched over a bony frame", in which is a cage that has a fallen angel in it. Then two demons attack.

The "angel" is an advanced elite palrethee, and the demons are advanced blood fiends of Orcus. 2 CR 15 closet trolls in the fucking open that can drain levels with their claw attacks (+15, 4 of them) at a DC 23 Fort save, who can at-will gaze for a dominate monster effect at DC 23, a bite attack that deals 1d4 Con damage with no save and assume gaseous forms. They do have an 80ft (perfect) flight speed and at-will fiendish greater teleport, but come on, they're fucking closet trolls without pounce. Of course, its tactics are fucking illegal, where it greater teleports to the Sea Wyvern and uses blasphemy or its dominating gaze ON A FUCKING CASTER to make him leap into the sea, but fuck.

If they go below 30hp they teleport back to the ship and cast desecrate and fight to the death.

So the palrethee, once rescued, turns out to be a font of information. Named Azael, who was a servant of Orcus, who was sent to spy on Demogorgon and failed, who doesn't even fucking know what Demogorgon's plan with the shadow pearls are beyond spreading madness through the material plane. He can lead them to Divided's Ire, where Lavinia is being kept captive, which maths out to a +4 circumstance bonus to Knowledge (geography).

So why's it called Divided's Ire? It's the planes, it doesn't have to make sense, but it's a pair of islands ostensibly connected, with the eastern island being kind of a paradise and the west island being a shithole. They're literally called Paradise and Penance. Penance is, of course, volcanic, because EVIL! Paradise, meanwhile, has a 20% chance per 8 hours on the island for eight vrocks to notice the PCs and try to kill them - or worse, WRECK THEIR SHIP! (gasp)

Penance, on the other hand, is covered with a 20% concealment poison mist that every minute forces a DC 25 Fort save or be poisoned (1d6 Wisdom/2d6 Con) and every 10 minutes there's an 8% chance of a random environmental effect, reduced to 4% with a DC 20 Survival check made every 10 minutes.


Our fraternal twin islands, Paradise to the east and Penance to the west. Because of course.

[RelentlessImp]

Part Three: Divided's Ire
So we get not one, not two, but THREE pages of inconsequential backstory that means precisely fucking NOTHING to the PCs because it goes into details about the inhabitants of this fucking place we're about to go who are just going to try to kill the PCs anyways.

For the first time, I'm going to put in some musical accompaniment for this review. Why? You'll see.

So Divided's Ire actually refers to the prison that is connecting the two islands, which was originally meant to be Demogorgon's bachelor pad where he keeps his concubines and fucks them, probably against their will because again, EVIL! Let's just get this fucking place over with, okay? Here's our godsbedamned map.

I would rather talk about my vape than go into this clusterfuck of awful. For instance, I get my e-liquids from a semi-local place staffed entirely by attractive women who are knowledgeable, friendly, and make you feel at home. The lady who owns the place is hot as FUCK. I'm currently sucking on my vape filled with a flavor they call Unicorn Milk, which is a buttery, vanilla-scented wonderland that tastes like a vanilla candle smells.

What? Nobody cares? Fine.

1: Is a hole in the wall that has an invisible quasit who runs off to tell a kelvezu demoness that the PCs are here.

2: The chasm drops you 2,000ft into the water. That's still 20d6 damage, average 70, and the PCs aren't level fucking five any more and fly isn't a couple-times-a-day thing. It wants you to care about the wall here, which is made of rubble, flagstones and body parts and a DC 15 climb check gets you up it, but if you weigh more than 150 pounds you auto-fail and a 10ft section of the wall collapses inwards. The eight vrocks lair in 3, but patrol here along with a Greater Lemorian Golem (remember that thing from way back on the Isle of Dread and the bar-lgura's "trap"?) which is a 30HD version of the old Lemorian golem with 4 tentacles at +29 and the same Constrict and Rot (DC 25 Fort or take 1d4 Con damage) and is still a closet troll wit no fly speed. The eight vrocks should be fucking speedbumps at this level.

3: A forty-foot-square building with an opening on the south side that is the lair of the 8 vrocks.

4: The aforementioned kelvezu demoness makes her home here, who wants to kill the PCs for her own reasons that the PCs will never learn about because she's abandoned an intricately detailed plan in favor of sneaking up with greater invisibility on one of the PCs and full attacking them. She has 6 attacks, with a +2 keen wounding scimitar in the manhand at +22/+17/+12/+7 and a +1 wounding sickle at +21/+16 which each have a poison of DC 23 Fort (1d6 Con/1d6 Con) and 9d6 Sneak Attack which, if all her attacks hit, averages 186 damage. She's a blackguard 4 and thus has spells that have long since been useless, and at-wills of deeper darkness, desecrate, detect good, detect law, greater dispel magic, greater invisibility (self only), read magic, suggestion (DC 18), greater teleport, tongues (self only), and unhallow. A continuous see invisibility and detect magic effect is on her. So she maybe kills a PC and dies with her 188HP at 16HD.

5: This is a rather creepy building, twenty feet tall and has a carpet of worms in a slurry of pink jelly. There's a small statue of Demogorgon here, which allows S'Sharra (above) to cast sending once per day to communicate with Demogorgon, which she's already done before the PCs arrived. So the third of the page it takes up in its column is basically pointless.

6: Despite the "amusing" coincidence of this place being turned so that north is to the left so they line up as 666, these things are torture chambers that have an open lock DC of 35 and the key is on the prison warden, Kululblax.

7: These are holding cells, each suspended a foot from the floor and being 20ft cubes, and the doors are magically treated adamantine cells with hardness 40 and hp 320 and break DCs of 58. 80% of the cells hold prisoners, mostly fiends, and there's a table that gives you what they should be - ranging from CR 7 Succubi to CR 20 Balors, even a CR 19 Lich, the highest of which start out Hostile and attack if freed. The cells have a forbiddance effect cast in their area to stop teleporting out. There are 8 Hezrou that patrol this area who make themselves useless with a 5 point power attack on a charge.

8: A forty foot wide corridor that has four twelve foot tall iron statues and have continual flame braziers. There are 2 Babaus here who run away to tell Kululblax that the PCs are here once they arrive.

9: The Warden's lair. Kululblax is a glabrezu Barbarian 3/ranger 2, who attempts to use reverse gravity to slam PCs into 1d4 spikes on the ceiling and then attempts power word stun on a spellcaster then rages and fights to the death. You can bargain with him for Vanthus and Lavinia's location, but they have to kill S'Sharra first. He's supposedly at CR 18 encounter but come on, no fly speed, closet troll stats, 17 HD for 286 hp, saves of +26/+13/+12, SR 21 and a 15ft reach.

10: "Tower of Sighs". Yeah, you could build one out of mine. Kululblax's watchtower. Apparently it's a safe place to hole up because nobody uses it anymore.

11: "The Watch". Also known as a fucking balcony. There are 3 nycaloth fighters here, who are marginally better fighters than the fucking warden as they havce a fly speed and slightly better attacks, and a specific grapple attack that lets them immediately ascend with someone they've grappled, on which they can drop PCs into the drink. They're willing to negotiate with the PCs too, and want Vanthus dead (he certainly engenders that sort of emotion, doesn't he?) and are even willing to help the PCs kill him if they make their attitude helpful. Killing or getting an alliance is the same CR reward.

12: Bridges that go between Paradise and Penance.

13: Some ledges. They hold 4 nabassu who join the fight with the nycaloths 1d3 rounds after the fight begins. They're stock nabassuses. Nabussi? With a negative level gaze that turns people into ghouls under their command if they die from it. It's written weirdly; Fort save DC 25 that if failed immediately kills a person, or somehow bestows 1d4 negative levels. What? They have regeneration penetrated by good-aligned wepaons and a summon of 2d4 babaus or 1d4 herzrou at 70% and a glabrezu at 30%. They have a link ability that, on a failed DC 23 Will save, deals the same damage to the creature or duplicates spells cast on the nabassu even if the spell fails to penetrate their SR 26. These things can be kind of difficult to kill, with their at-wills of darkness, enervation, ethereal jaunt, greaterdispel, greater teleport, hold monster (DC 20), obscuring mist, silence (DC 18), true seeing, unholy aura (DC 24) and unholy blight (DC 20) and 3/day blasphemy (DC 23) and energy drain (DC 25). So far they're the most legitimately dangerous creatures - if the PCs don't have soulfire armor. (They do.)

14: The volcano caldera, and the lava hides a CR 21 fiendish advanced magma drake, who doesn't wake up unless someone of Gargantuan size falls into the caldera or someone casts meteor swarm, earthquake, storm of vengeance or whirlwind on the surface of the lava. 30HD, 495 hp, Dragon type, closet troll stats, 60ft fly (poor). If he's awakened he goes on a fucking rampage, attacking anything he can find - he can't see invisibility, so you can set him on a rampage against anything left alive.

15: A bridge that crosses the caldera. Falling off deals 20d6 falling and 20d6 fire per round once you're in the lava. Unless you have at least 1 point of fire resistance.

16: The Hall of Horrors. Opening the door to this fucking filthy ass chamber alerts the demon sentries in 19 who investigate in 1d4 rounds. Opening the door discharges a bunch of crap that deals 10d6 acid damage (DC 20 Reflex half) and a DC 25 Fort save once you're in the area or be nauseated as long as you're in there and for 1d4 rounds afterwards.

17: THe Chamber of Delicious Treats. This is an execution room where people are killed by crushing courtesy of the two dozen 2000 pound blocks onto victims one link at a time every few hours. It was used with great glee by Kululblax, because EVIL!

18: A watch station occupied by 3 kelubar demodands, who aren't even closet trolls with 2 claws at +18 and a bite at 1+16 that deal 1d6 acid damage who can summon more demodands and a DC 19 Stench that nauseates. 13 HD and SR 25 wit saves of +11/+9/+10 and are supposedly CR 13.

19: "The Imprisoned". Once Demogorgon's throne room and pleasure den where Demogorgon made whoopie with Shami-Amourae. ANyone sitting in the throne in here takes a DC 30 Will save or take an insanity effect to the face. An advanced shator demodand named Belshamoth is here, who can be made helpful by bringing S'Sharra here to be his fuckslave. Because EVIL!

Anyways this guy casts as an 8th level sorcerer with amusing DCs starting at 19 and going down and his spell list is babby's first sorcerer again; phantasmal killer, fireball, haste, bear's endurance, mirror image, scorching ray, expeditious retreat, grease, mage armor, magic missile, true strike, acid splash, arcane mark, dancing lights, ghost sound, mage hand, mending, open/close and ray of frost. He has at-will detect magic, clairaudience/clairvoyance, fear, invisibility, spider climb and tongues, 3/day cloudkill, fog cloud, quickened ray of enfeeblement, stinking cloud, 2/day dispel magic and 1/day mass charm monster. His claws and bite have a paralysis for 3d6 rounds on a failed DC 24 Fort, which he can spit within 30ft. He can summon 12 shators at 30% or 1d4 kelubars or 1d6 farastus with 70% chance. If anything in 18, 20 and 21 are still alive, they come to his aid. If reduced to less than 30hp he begs for his life. As a fight, he's also better than Kululblax, with a +4 speed guisarme at +30/+30/+25/+20/+15, 2 claws at +26 and a bite at +24. Saves of +16/+15/+15 and SR 30, immunity to acid, cold, fire, mind-affecting effects and posion and DR 15/good. He's CR 18 and feels more like a 15 or 10 with his 20HD and 31 AC.

20: The Chamber of Delights. More mention of Demogorgon and Shami-Amourae fucking.There are three filth demons, beliarons, which are CR 14 Outsiders that have 21HD and regeneration 10 pierced by good weapons or sonic damage. These things are more dangerous than Belshamoth. Why are these CR 14 and Belshamoth CR 18? Okay they only have 2 slams at +24 and a bite at +19 that adds Filth, which is a DC 27 Fort save or be sickened for 10 rounds and a DC 35 caster level check to cast any spells with good or law descriptor, and any cure spells heal mminimum damage. They have a DC 25 Fort Stench that inflicts -4 to attacks, damage, savies, ability checks and skill checks while in the area. They have an SQ of Contamination that poisons 10 cubic feet of water each day to a maximum radius of 100ft per HD, and the poison of choice is blinding sickness at DC 25 if you come in contact with the water. The art for these things put me in mind of a love child of the Golgotha and Cthulhu.

21: The PIts. Two more filth demons and a nalfeshnee named Radglath. You can ally with Radglath just by killing Belshamoth, and improving it to friendly leads the PCs to Vanthus. At helpful he warns them about a later demon named Lillianth and gives detailed information on her forces and the quickest path to area 26.

22: The Hall of Knives. Lillianth's cohort is here, a babau rogue 10 who alerts Lillianth to anyone entering this place and then attacks and makes a fighting retreat to 23 or 25. Yawn.

23: MORE CELLS! There are six more hezrou patrolling these halls.

24: Lillianth's private chambers, currently occupied by Lynnara, Lillianth's lover. Who is a spy. If the PCs' presence becomes known to her, she takes the form of an old gnome who introduces himself as Nurt Bilgeflower who attempts to get the PCs to kill Lillianth. If they see through the disguise she runs away and stops mattering to the plot. Even so she's a succubus bard 8/thrall of Malcanthet 8, which I can't tell you what it does because I don't have Dragon #353 to hand. She has a draining kiss that can inflict 2 negative levels instead of 1 three times per day, and gets Cha bonus as a Deflection to her AC. She can reflect any enchantment spell that she saves against back at the source, and can read the minds of anyone she meets the gaze with as per detect thoughts and concentrating 3 rounds, with a DC 31 Will save. She has Arcane Strike.

Nothing saves her from being a fucking unoptimized Bard, but she has a +48 Bluff and +48 Diplomacy, +50 Intimidate. So she can improve your PCs' reactions to Fanatic.

25: The Accursed is a room with a missing floor and a 20ft drop to lava. Lillianth is here, a marilith fighter 2/legendary leader 4, with 22HD and AC of 40, SR 25, saves of +31/+22/+23 with heroic success (auto-succeed on a save once per day). She has a +2 keen halbered at +29/+24/+19/+14, a +2 unholy whip dagger at +29, at +2 wounding heavy pick at +29, a +3 keen scimitar at +30, and a +4 short sword at +31 plus tail slap. She's a closet troll again, who calls any of her allies still alive to fight with her - six hezrous, Lynnara, and Jariaxer (the babau rogue). If the PCs are winning, Lynnara uses arcane strike and full attacks Lillianth, who then attempts to kill Lynnara over the PCs.

Lavinia is imprisoned here, and she's not in good shape. Her mind's fucked because they've been using illusions to fuck with her head, but she at least recovers once she's convinced they're real and is ready to go kill Vanthus. Lavinia, in the intervening period, has become an aristocrat 2/swashbuckler 7/duelist 6.

There are also a trumpet archon and ice devil imprisoned here. If freed, the trumpet archon needs to have his insanity cured or he throws himself into the lava. If cured he joins the PCs til they leave. The ice devil just tries to escape unless attacked, which he only attacks back to try and escape.

26: A small bridge that has a 1,000ft drop to lava. Ten feet across, 40ft long. There are six advanced elite shadow demons here who deal 2d6 vile with their 2 claws at +19 touch. Fleshless creatures are immune to the attacks. In bright light they take a -4 penalty to AC, attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, and skill and ability checks. They have Pounce. They're ... basically that really FUCKING WEIRD category of Outsider that are basically Undead with Con scores. They're not super dangerous or anything.

27: An antechamber that has the corpses of the crew of the ship Vanthus stole from Cold Captain Wyther. There are 8 Dread Wraiths here, one of hwich warns Vanthus the intruders are here. They focus on Clerics and Paladins.

28:Vanthus is here. Oh lordy lordy, Vanthus is here. He's a Lemorian death knight aristocrat 1/rogue 5/fighter 4/tempest 5, and his will save of +5 no longer matters because he's undead. He has a +4 flaming burst longsword at +25/+20/+15 and a +2 flaming burst sickle at +23/+18. He has 3/day charm monster (DC 19), command (DC 16) and unholy aura (DC 23), 1/day dominate person (DC 20), fear (DC 19), mass charm monster (DC 23), mass suggestion (DC 21), suggestion (DC 18), and unhallow. He's just as fucking disappointing as he's always been, but his conversion to undead with 15HD leaves him with only 97 hp. Hell, if you give Lavinia gear she can probably kill Vanthus in a straight up one on one fight.

He does something cute in which he tumbles past the PCs, runs to the bridge, summons his nightmare and flies around throwing his spell-likes at the PCs, but he's unlikely to live long enough to fucking do that. He's accompanied by 3 of those advanced elite shadow demons. Lavinia even debuffs him, screaming rebukes at him that inflicts at -4 penalty on attacks, saves, and weapon damage. He tries to kill himself and Lavinia at the same time if convinced he's going to die (which he should do immediately once the PCs show up) with his Abyssal Blast ability, which deals 15d6 damage that is half fire, half unholy, with a DC 22 reflex for half. Somehow this guy is CR 20. I don't fucking buy it. Plus he's illegal; Death Knight can only be added to evil HUMANOIDS, and as a Lemorian he's a fucking outsider.

CAN WE GET PAIZO A COPY OF THE FUCKING RULE BOOKS PLEASE?! Or maybe a clue-by-four lodged in their idiot fucking skulls.

So, Vanthus is disappointing - again. He goes down like a fucking chump. Again. Never once have I been convinced Vanthus is an actual goddamned threat, and he's come back to life TWICE now - once when the PCs inevitably kill his ass in their first encounter, then again after the defense of Farshore.

So I think this sums up why Demogorgon is the one that's present in so many fucking adventures as someone to kill. Demogorgon is fucking stupid. He keeps bringing Vanthus back to life and Vanthus keeps disappointing him. Jesus christ.

Okay. Moving on. There's more dungeon.

29: Hall of Weeping. There are two Fallen Trumpet Archons here that can be dealt with peacefully. They can lead the PCs to someone named Saureya. Can you tell how many fucks I give at this point?

30: The Shrieking Pillar. It's a pillar of iron in an odd chamber with lots of doors. It's a trap. Coming within 60ft of the pillar (which is shrieking) inflicts a DC 25 Will save made at a -4 penalty if they hear the shrinks that draws the PC one square closer per round he fails the save. Once reaching it they put their face against the pillar which makes all the hooks and barbs on it flense their face away, dealing 2d6 Con drain and 2d6 Charisma drain, then a DC 25 Will save at -4 if they hear the shrieking or be driven permanently insane. The pillar is a CR 10 trap and can be disabled with a DC 40 Disable Device check.

31: This is the home of Saureya, a beautiful man with silvery hair and sad features. He's a fallen astral deva mountebank 8, who can be redeemed with a DC 50 DIplomacy check and or an atonement spell - which makes him let them coup de grace him. He's got 20HD and a +3 keen shock greatsword. Saves of +18/+22/+13, Outsider, and there's othing interesting about this guy. He's got a bond with an infernal patron (Demogorgon) which lets him use displacement and alter self at will and let him make a Charisma check vs Sense Motive if someone tries to detect his alignment to choose what alignment they detect. Also Mass Beguile, a 30ft burst at a range of 180ft for a DC 22 Will save or become beguiiled as per his beguiling stare DC 22 ability, which causes a character affected to lose Dex to AC, -2 Will, -5 Sense MOtive, as a standard action gaze attack.

This is beautiful? Goddamn at least get deviantart to draw a fucking femboy or tranny or something.

32: Altar of the Sibilant Beast. It's a giant statue of Demogorgon surrounded by four statues - one of Orcus, one of Graz'zt, one of Miska the Wolf Spider, and Obox-ob - lower than him to symbolize him being the Prince of Demons. It's the focus for the forbiddance and sympathy effects that blanket Divided's Ire. It's an artifact that can maybe be destroyed with Mordenkainen's disjunction. Or you can splash blood from the four demon lords (What) onto the statue which destroys it. Destroying it alerts a Demogorgon who sends a molydeus demon named Zarvab to investigate.

33: Orgosh's Realm. Occupied by a bullywug lich necromancer, a wizard 16 who is accompanied by 3 blood fiends, 8 bodaks, 10 dread wraiths, 24 greater shadows, 20 mohrgs, and 23 spectres. The undead can't attack unless Orgosh lowers the suppression which takes an hour. Basically, he wants Vanthus killed, and will gladly give the PCs information on Demogorgon's weakness - or rather, information on who they can get it from, Shami-Amourae, who is imprisoned in the Wells of Darkness. If the PCs help Orgosh by killing Vanthus, he telsl them to find the succubus Red Shroud of Broken Reach, who can lead them to Shami-Amourae.

On concluding the adventure, Orgosh's motivations are revealed - Demogorgon has his phylactery and distracting or destroying Demogorgon will give him a chance to retrieve it. Orgosh's art is kind of cool, though.


Bring out ya dead! Bring out ya dead!

So how does this stack up? IT FUCKING BLOWS. This thing is FUCKING TERRIBLE. Especially as an adventure for people capable of casting NINTH LEVEL SPELLS. This is, at best, a level TEN adventure, and you'd have to go down a bit lower to make any PC give a flying fuck about the wakeportal and the Sea Wyvern. The concept of this as a 17th level adventure is dumb, the execution is worse, and no sane PC will ever ally with a fucking demon because they don't fucking honor their deals because they're CHAOTIC FUCKING EVIL. Orgosh is the only one who I can see the PCs even giving a fuck about because he's on their level, and he doesn't try to kill them or get them killed.

This has Shitlord Reynolds' hallmarks all fucking over it. I salute Robert J. Schwalb's attempts to make this coherent or something beyond a low level adventure, but he FAILED. The schizophrenia inherent in this thing is in full fucking force in this scenario, and it's just fuckawful. I would never again insult my PCs by pretending this thing is a real level 17 adventure. Ever. Goddamn is this fucking hideous. Scrap it and write your own fucking adventure, even if it's your first time as an MC you'll do better than this. Fuck.

Were you listening to the music? Then in closing, Voltaire handles being Evil "Because" more maturely than "professional" writers. This has all the subtlety of Death, Death, Devil, Devil, Devil, Devil, Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil Song without having the saving grace of being funny.

[RelentlessImp]

So, GTA Online has been sucking up my time, and I've been having fun in it. However, it's time to take the reins on my rage once more and delve into this crap. Let's get going, with:

Scenario 10: Wells of Darkness
By Eric L. Boyd

This time around, we only get about 3/4ths of a page of inconsequential bullshit backstory regarding Shami-Amourae and Demogorgon fucking like bunnies and Abyssal politics. Spoilers: They're going to interact with precisely 10% of this. Which is actually better signal-to-noise ratio than the rest. The ten percent they care about is Shami-Amourae being imprisoned because she wanted to use Demogorgon to kill Malcanthet, but Malcanthet just had to tell Demogorgon that Shami-Amourae had betrayed him and he flew into a rage.

...Ugh. Say it with me kids: Chaotic Evil is not Chaotic Stupid. Yet writers continue to act as if it is. Fuck. Anyways we get a brief sidebar about how Lawful-aligned characters take -2 to Cha-based checks in the Abyss, and Lawful Good characters take a -4, and points us to the DMG page 160 about the Abyss' planar traits. I'm gonna crack it open and list 'em here:
Normal Gravity, Normal Time. How does a Hell work if Eternity isn't stretched out by being out of sync with real time, anyways?

Divinely morphic. Anything with a divine rank can alter the Abyss, while anything else is playing by D&D's metaphysics as if it were the Material Plane.

Mixed elemental and energy traits. Every layer's got something different here. We have infinity playing up again.

Mildly chaos-aligned and mildly evil-aligned. HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE RIGHT HERE. Why is the Abyss, described as "all that is ugly, all that is evil, and all that is chaos" only mildly aligned to chaos and evil? Thanks for throwing in 'ugly' with evil, though. That's WotC though, not Paizo, and their terrible is pretty evident if you pay attention, but Paizo was long regarded as being BETTER than WotC about this shit. Wanna see if it's true?

(You already have. Demogorgon hadn't been betrayed yet believed an EVIL QUEEN OF THE SUCCUBI that he had. Evil = Dumb.)

Anyways, you're supposed to roll randomly for elemental planar traits per layer of the abyss. No, they don't give it a set of elemental traits, so I guess you're rolling, despite it being a fixed location. Fuck me. Moving on.

Part One: The Palace of 1,000 Closets
Imelda Marcos would love this place. So this goes into the Savage Tide drawing near with "no set time". Fuck you. The PCs should officially be on a fucking clock at this point with some 35 cities having shipments of shadow pearls. Lavinia is written out of the story at this point with an assumption that she is returned to Farshore (and not, for example, Vanderboren Manor) to serve as the colony leader, but she can totally become a hench-chick at this point if you want, "If your group needs one more person along to help". Yeah, sorry, they're fucking near-epic, her build is laughable, and she can't cast spells. She's basically chaff, numerically, and if she's part of a romance plot then she should be somewhere safe because she can't hang out with the big boys any more than a Fighter 20 can.

Finally, fucking finally, the scenario says that the wakeportal is straight up useless; the Abyssian Ocean doesn't touch the first layer of the Abyss, Pazunia, where they're going. Speaking of, if something's infinite, how the fuck can you tell where it starts? That's the very definition of infinite. There should be no 'first layer' it should just be 'Layer #Randomlol'. But finally the PCs can fucking dump the Sea Wyvern.

Somehow, if the PCs can't plane shift into the Abyss, Tyralandi or Kedward Bone, whom they could meet during Serpents of Scuttlecove (funny, I don't remember Kedward Bone being mentioned in Serpents; he was an NPC integral to Porphyrry House Horror, but not so much in Serpents) can send them there if they're friendly. The disguised gnome-succubus Lynnara, if she wasn't fucking killed for being a betraying piece of shit, is still with them, then she can lead them to Broken Reach once they reach Pazunia.

Here, and only here, do they mention they've moved away to fapping to the Book of Venereal Disease and are using Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss, in which Pazunia comes from. Now, let's be honest: the Book of VD is the only reason about half of this adventure path exists. It's the only reason Scuttlecove exists due to Porphyrry House Horror. The Book of Bad Touch is the ONLY fucking reason this thing came into existence.

I like the Book of Vile Darkness, personally, because it brought us some cool shit like the Emperor who goes around with enslaved children chained to his armor but is totally just a dude who buys and sells magic items and doesn't fuck with anyone til he's fucked with. That's a decent character. It also brought us some interesting metaphysics - okay, they're stupid, but if you start injecting them into D&D's existing shit and extrapolating it's a fun mental exercise.

So when I say that Savage Tide actually makes me wish Book of VD didn't exist, you know the depth of my loathing that an in-depth look has garnered.

So, on to the Fiendish Codex to see... oh. Pazunia's only defined trait is that it's self-contained. Okay. Rolling randomly, then, I guess. I'm guessing that Pazuzu, Aldinach, and Baltazo, described as inhabitants of Pazunia, aren't going to show up in this.

Anyways, at least this book says goodbye to the Sea Wyvern and the wakeportal bullshit and acknowledges the PCs have ways of reaching the goddamned Abyss that don't fap to a goddamned SHIP somehow being an impenetrable fortress of solitude. If the PCs have no spellcasters that can conceivably cast planeshift, how the fuck did they get this fucking far? Use your fucking heads, writers.

Anyways, reaching Broken Reach, the city in Pazunia, requires first plane shifting to the Plain of Infinite Portals, also known as Pazunia, then greater teleporting to Broken Reach. Easy. In case you're having problems remembering why they're going here (I sure as hell am, and I reread Into the Maw before doing this), it's because Shami-Amourae holds the secret to killing Demogorgon, who imprisoned her, and the secrets of Shami-Amourae's imprisonment is in the head of a succubus named Red Shroud, who makes her home in Pazunia, Plain of Infinite Portals, having built or taken control of Broken Reach and making it her domain. The adventure is centered around finding her and getting her to tell you how to reach Shami-Amourae.

Broken Reach is a Small City with a population of 1,245, has a 40,000gp limit, 2,490,000gp assets, and a population density of 70% demon, 18% tiefling, 8% human, and 4% assorted others. I bring this up because apparently it has a thriving marketplace for 1,245 people, somehow.

This market doubles the cost of armor, weapons, single-use magic items, and charged magic items. Anything else magic has a 25% markup. Poisons can only be bought from Red Shroud for some fucked reason despite most demon types carrying with them IMMUNITY TO FUCKING POISON yet Red Shroud claims that market share as her own little monopoly. What fucking good does it do her, I ask. Information brokering is also her monopoly. Just. What?

Asking around shows that Red Shroud doesn't take audiences unless you pony up a 10,000gp reward which seems like piddly shit. Skipping ahead, we see Red Shroud is a Succubus Sorceress 11/Fatespinner 4, which gives her access to 7th level spells. She didn't take any of the planar binding spells for some reason, which shows why she wants money. Honestly she should just go level up one more time and replace one of her spells with planar binding and use her Charisma of 38, but I digress.

So going to the market on the Abyss involves a random encounter. Of course it does. It consists of a male elite advanced guecubu from Fiendish Codex. It's an incorporeal ghost-thing that likes to possess humanoids. Funnily enough, my group of Warforged never encountered this guy because they're not humanoids. D&D really needed to diversify its types, enough that "Humanoid" and "humanoid" were more distinct, because it leads to silly shit like this. Also, this guy is a moron, because he prefers possessing melee characters.

Anyways, he basically does nothing if he possesses a PC. He just hitches a ride from them to the Material Plane then jumps into someone else to go commit serial murders, leaping from body to body and causing chaos. This is just... christ. Okay, this is a problem for people LOWER LEVEL to handle, as it's once again bullshit insulting to think people that can cast ninth level spells give a fuck. Hell, a sufficiently demented PC will gladly give them a ride to the Material Plane and let them go do their thing because it's not their problem. Somehow this thing is a CR 13. Presenting it as a problem these PCs need to handle is just insulting as fuck.

Anyways, getting an Audience with Red Shroud is apparently an EL 20 encounter. It's not even all that hidden, people will point them to her underground chamber. They have to check in with the nalfeshnee secretary (no, I'm not joking) who communicates with Red Shroud telepathically, who sends them away if they're "crass, rude, argumentative, or violent" but happily admits anyone who pays up front.

There's a blurb about how attractive Red Shroud is. She has a Charisma of 38; most Gods have ability scores near 40, so it's kind of deserved, yet fuck they never knew what Charisma meant at WotC so nobody else did either. Red Shroud's throne room is kind of crowded; it has Red Shroud, 4 Hezrous, a wispling rogue 6/gatecrasher 5/shadowdancer 2 named Shadowfire (Red Shroud's newest sycophant), and Ygrax the Secretary Skullbiter, a nalfeshnee.

She turns hostile if she's not paid. Telling them what they want inflicts a -20 to their Diplomacy. Every 2,000gp in bribery adds a +1 circumstance. Any poisons used to bribe her are worth 10 times their value.

The Diplomacy check again has the possibility of fucking the PCs over. If they get under 5, she turns hostile and orders a Ballroom Blitz. At 5, she's unfriendly, and tries to tell the PCs that Malcanthet can help them. At DC 15 she is Indifferent, and reveals information in the Wells of Darkness and Shami-Amourae sidebars. At 25, she's Friendly and also reveals everything in the Overlook Lore sidebar. At 40, she becomes Helpful and she also adds the Ahazu Sidebar, AND she lifts the taxing on the marketplace for them.

So... is everyone ready for the biggest fuck-you this adventure path has handed out yet? I sure fucking hope so, because it's a fucking doozy. Here are the sidebars she gives information on:

Diplomacy, DC 15.

DC 25

DC 40

That's fucking right. We just wasted SIX PAGES on an elaborate blind of KNOWLEDGE CHECKS THE MOTHERFUCKING WIZARD CAN MAKE IN HIS SLEEP. Just when you thought, hey, this opening is actually steps above what the previous adventures had, they go and WASTE PAGE SPACE IN A MORE EGREGIOUS MANNER THAN EVER BEFORE. FUCK. ME.

That's something fucking special right there. What you really want is to lift the goddamned taxes but you can just fucking plane shift back to Sasserine for an IDENTICAL MARKETPLACE WITHOUT TAXES.

Oh my christ, this is too stupid. I'll cover up the other two parts of this piece of shit later.

[Longes]

So, is there any particular reason for the PCs to bother with diplomacy and bribes, instead of just killing everything that moves and then asking questions to the survivors?

[RelentlessImp]

Not a single fucking one. The rest of the adventure is "Go here and kill shit, free Shami-Amourae by striking a bargain and/or killing her gaoler". The only thing the interaction with Red Shroud gives you is a way to get to the layer Shami-Amourae is kept on, and you can find that out yourself with a Knowledge (the planes) check.

And when I say identical market in Sasserine, I fucking mean it.

Broken Reach (Small City): Monstrous; AL CE; population: 1,245; 40,000 gp limit; Assets 2,490,000gp; Mixed (70% demon, 18% tiefling, 8% humanoid, 4% other races)

Sasserine (Large City): Conventional; AL NG; Population 15,650; 40,000 gp limit; Assets 31,300,000 gp; Mixed (77% human, 6% half-elf, 5% halfling, 4% gnome, 4% dwarf, 2% elf, 1% half-orc, 1% other)

The only time the PCs have been permitted to spend more than 40,000gp per item was with the mercane merchants in Into the Maw, where they could spend up to 200,000gp. Funnily enough, you can purchase rings of freedom of movement in Sasserine and probably have enough gold to before you leave it, so all the "difficult terrain" sections can go fuck right off.

[maglag]

Finally, fucking finally, the scenario says that the wakeportal is straight up useless; the Abyssian Ocean doesn't touch the first layer of the Abyss, Pazunia, where they're going. Speaking of, if something's infinite, how the fuck can you tell where it starts? That's the very definition of infinite. There should be no 'first layer' it should just be 'Layer #Randomlol'.

Actually, there's plenty of things that are infinite and do have a starting point in the real world. It's a very important concept on Mathematics and Physics and allows you to solve stuff like the paradox of the runner trying to catch up with the turtle over an infinite number of time divisions.

Long story short, having a starting point in an infinite allows you to subtract two infinite amounts and get a finite number. It's a really fascinating field of research, but I won't blame you for not knowing it, since it took a lot of very smart people centuries to figure that out.

[RelentlessImp]

Believe it or not, late 90s, early '00s Bible Belt high school math did not cover mathematical paradoxes, much less Zeno, and I never had an interest beyond scoring an A in high school math before moving on to subjects that interested me more.

[RelentlessImp]

Part Two: Seeking Shami
So, with the party's access to the Wells of Darkness, they are officially ready to begin the hunt for Shami-Amourae. The Wells of Darkness, the seventy-third layer of the Abyss, is a finite space within an infinite void known as the Shattered Night. The Wells are literal Wells, which serve as windows - mostly into the Shattered Night, but also to look at various Abyssal lords, godlings and failed commanders of the Blood War entrapped in the Shattered Night. No spells can communicate with the trapped people or reach into the Shattered Night.

We've got a map here, and it's different.

We've also got some random encounters while the PCs are fucking around in here. An Abyssal ant swarm, a CR 16 diminutive swarm. 1d4+1 custodians, which are large Bodaks, advanced and elite, for a CR 14 encounter. 2d4 ancient abyssal ghouls (CR 12) or 2d4 advanced chasmes (CR 12), thralls that are basically exposition mouthpieces, or 4 varrangoin berserkers, CR 14 rager varrangoin barbarian 4s. If you've twigged onto the fact that these things are statted in the same pages because you have fixed encounters with them later, congratulations! You have the reasoning skills of a trained orangutan, native of Bhangbhangduc.

There's some pages on the Prisoners, who are labeled on the map. I ... don't really want to go into them. Suffice to say the vast majority of them are locked in here because Chaotic Evil people are Chaotic Evil and are treated like dumbshits.

Some of the more interesting ones are Echidna, the greek Mother of Monsters, and Dahak, a three-headed dragon god of the Anurian pantheon. Well, interesting to me; they were both parts of plots of Hercules the Legendary Journeys, which was my youthful introduction to mythos, so it's always nice to see their names bandied about.

Anyways, there are three main Wells the adventure path itself concerns itself with; the Well of Arlgolcheir, the Well of Debased Eros, and the Well of the Seizer, primarily because these are the three wells the PCs give a fuck about. The Well of Arglgolcheir is where the PCs arrive if they take the pit portal from Pazunia to get here. They are greeted by 4 Ancient Abyssal Ghouls and 4 Advanced Chasmes and get replaced in 2d4 hours when they get slaughtered.

The Well of Debased Eros is where Shami-Amourae is imprisoned. Knowing this is a DC 30 Knowledge (the planes) check. It's guarded by 4 Corrupted advanced gorallons for CR 14 Huge aberrations, and once they're dead the PCs can advance down the well to encounter the Warden of the Well, a Variant retriever, a CR 17 Gargantuan construct with 30HD and 255hp. It has an Eye ray at +23 for 12d6 fire, cold, electricity or petrification effect. At the bottom of the well lays Shami-Amourae, imprisoned in the Shattered Night, and anyone in physical contacct with the window at the bottom of the well can communicate with her via Shami-Amourae's limited telepathy, making DC 25 will saves to receive/express single thoughts.

Basically, Red Shroud has been looking into freeing Shami-Amourae, and if she's dead or ignored, Shami-Amourae points them to the other dweller of this place - Ahazu.

This is... kind of boring. Once again random encounters are meant to spice this shit up, along with reading out backstories to your PCs. Ugh.

[Username17]

Is there any reason to actually care about breaking Demogorgon's spurned lover out of cooties prison? Seems like a rather pointless detour. She's still evil, right? Why would any group of PCs take the time to break her out instead of just trying to figure out some other way to stop the pearl shipments?

-Username17

[hogarth]

Is there any reason to actually care about breaking Demogorgon's spurned lover out of cooties prison? Seems like a rather pointless detour. She's still evil, right?

James Jacobs gets a GM boner whenever PCs are forced to team up with baby-eating baby-rapers.

[RelentlessImp]

Is there any reason to actually care about breaking Demogorgon's spurned lover out of cooties prison? Seems like a rather pointless detour. She's still evil, right? Why would any group of PCs take the time to break her out instead of just trying to figure out some other way to stop the pearl shipments?

-Username17

Demogorgon has plot armor that Shami-Amourae knows how to bypass. Stopping the Savage Tide at this point is about robbing it of power by killing Demogorgon. The pearl creation is broken (Tides of Dread and Into the Depths) and distribution destroyed (the fall of the Crimson Fleet in Serpents of Scuttlecove) so you COULD just go to the 35 cities they were shipped to and not bother with this at all but that carries a lot of time and maybe losing several cities to the tide. Also with Demogorgon doing it all again further down the line.

But that last point is probably something that will happen anyways, so you could just straight up have a denouement, after Serpents of Scuttlecove or Into the Maw, of the PCs just going to the 35 cities (which they have a list of after Serpents of Scuttlecove) and, being some of the most powerful assholes in existence, just destroying them and stopping the Savage Tide that way. The post-18 game doesn't have to happen at all, which means the last 3-4 adventures are completely and utterly fucking unimportant.

[RelentlessImp]

Part Three: Audience with Ahazu
My interest in continuing this review is waning pretty hard. I don't see the point of the whole "take the fight to Demogorgon" any more, as you could literally have ended the adventure on Serpents of Scuttlecove or, if you really wanted Vanthus to have a final showdown, with Into the Maw, with a denouement of the PCs just stopping the Tide by destroying/containing the pearls that got shipped off to 35 other cities after breaking the creation and distribution processes.

Oh well. Ahazu the Seizer has the key to every well of darkness, including Shami-Amourae's, except a key for his own to let him escape. Finding his ass is basically "ask questions of thralls" or making a Knowledge check or having it made for you by Red Shroud earlier.

So, getting to Ahazu means going to the Overlook - see it on the map? No? I don't blame you, I had to look a couple of minutes myself. It's the same-color-as-the-background-building in the middle of Apep, Dahak, Cabiri and Anstif's Wells. It's a dilapidated fortress atop the tallest tor (a word that has fallen into disuse except for privacy, sadly), and was once the stronghold of Ahazu's cult. It's basically full of 20 or so undead rager varrangoin barbarians. Two flocks are in it at any point the PCs approach, meaning 8 CR 14 rager varrangoin barbarian 4s can swoop at them in groups of 4.

In the corner of the fortress is a giant tower, which anyone non-chaotic evil that enters has to make a DC 28 Will save vs a CL 20 forbiddance effect covering the inner chamber. Inside, it's basically a giant shaft leading down to Ahazu's Well of Darkness, which can be a 'fuck you' to the PCs because the door is the floor and can be opened with them standing on it - if they're not flying permanently by this point, though, they do kind of deserve it. This room is protected by 4 Nightwings.

The Well itself is the Well of the Seizer, which contains Ahazu. Also three swarms of Abyssal ants and the Keepers of Ahazu; 3 CR 16 Arcanist varrangoin lich binder 3/anima mage 2s who have 6th level spells. They have some 'fuck you' abilities; they get a free displacement spell any time they take damage and have a permanent globe of invulnerability. On a side note, that sort of shit screws psions more than it does higher level casters, as most psionic damage powers are third level or lower and are just augmented.

So, I've been leaving out treasure. There is an artifact here - the Demonomicon of Iggwilv, a treatise on the Abyss and the demon lords who rule the realm. It's actually a seventh copy of this book. The bearer of it gets +5 CL to spells with the [evil] descriptor, +5 on Cha checks for planar binding purposes if they're binding a demon, and a +3 bonus if it's any other type of evil outsider.

...They give you this thing. THEY WANT YOU TO FUCKING PLANAR BIND THINGS.

Anyways, the first five pages are suitable as the focus for magic jar, minimus containment, and trap the soul, or any other spell that binds souls or whole forms to them. They're not destroyed when used as material components and can be used multiple times. The highest HD creature in the Demonomicon can use dream on the bearer of the tome or anyone who's touched it in the last 24 hours. The trapped beings can be contacted and conversed with through spells like telepathic bond or detect thoughts.

There are three people trapped in them when you get it; a malebranche named Agalmnar, an ancient drow vampire bard named Lirr-Uvati, and a bitter lilitu named Avanilara. This copy contains some true names; a rutterkin named Ruskirhs, a bar-lgura name Aorkalor, a babau named Iomyn, a succubus named Veirvalara, a succubus named Arivestrix, a yochlol named N'mosk, a ulezau named Echaklak, a shadow demoned named Ovoros, a hezrou named Temesmad, a lilitu named Ilariandi, a glabrezu named Tresvilaz, a nalfeshnee named Magortu, a molydeus named Nermanghax, and a minor demon lord named Voroxid. It also has spells wizards can learn - dolor, ensnarement, exaction, torment, minimus containment, imbrue and implore, all of which are Paizo-created bullshit in Dragon #336.

That was pretty pointless, really. There's also a spellbook for each of the varrangoin lich, and a bunch of spellbooks belonging to Ulricon the Necromancer. Combined, they contain every PHB Wizard spell, excepting illusion or Enchantment - oh hey, an NPC Specialist who banned schools that are worse at high levels.

Anyways, once everything's dead and looted, the PCs can talk to Ahazu. Ahazu's Well is actually a planar tear, and to free Shami-Amourae the PCs have to form a demonic pact with Ahazu. You need to have the ability to communicate with Ahazu, a DC 40 Diplomacy check, and to agree to Ahazu's minimum requirements. You can talk to him the same way you can talk to Shami-Amourae, but at a DC 30 Will save and it's a freer exchange of ideals than with Shami. Failing means the person gets to get drawn into the Shattered Night, but can be saved with his friends rushing to his rescue with a DC 25 Strength check, dispel evil or dispel chaos on the pool. Getting sucked in joins their essence with Ahazu, who is doing just that to ascend to godhood and break his own imprisonment. People killed like this are just gone short of a wish or miracle.

DC 40 Diplomacy check. Sealing the pact means that he wants a replacement prisoner. A replacement that is CR 24 or higher. They get to free Shami if they agree, but only have 66 days to bring a dead or alive CR 24 creature to reside in the Well of Debased Eros. Basically "Any of the CR 24 creatures between now, and including, Demogorgon himself". Otherwise, if the PCs still have the Tooth of Ahazu from WAY BACK WHEN when they were talking to the volcano god, if they give it back to Ahazu then he lowers the CR requirement to 19.

Once the pact is done - no, you don't get to just kill him, sorry, fuck you Paladins or anyone with a code of conduct that prohibits peaceful contact with EVIL - you get the key to Shami-Amourae's imprisonment, which is a Book of Infinite Spells with one page left, and that page is... freedom.

Which means the PCs COULD HAVE JUST FUCKING FREED HER THEMSELVES. Which means, fuck you, you have a demonic pact now for no good reason.

Part Four: Prison Break

Despite what it says, this is really not much of its own part. You get to go free Shami-Amourae. Unfortunately, Shami has a fuck you embedded in her - a chokesnake, who takes control of her body if she fails a DC 43 Will save on being freed. She's a HD 22 Outsider so she has a +17 Will save, so it's likely she gets taken control of. At which point Shami-Amourae becomes an opponent for the PCs, and htey have to kill the chokesnake without killing her. Or they could just kill her and use True Resurrection or Miracle or Wish or something to bring her back to life.

Once she's freed, Demogorgon's last contingency kicks in. The PCs have to get one mile away from the Well of Debased Eros, because a Dimensional Lock spell has just kicked in for a mile around it. The waters of the River Styx hits anyone under the rift. A DC 30 Reflex save avoids it. DC 17 Fort save or be amnesiatic (as if feebleminded) and making the save still steals your memories for 8 hours.

Finally, four bar-lgura mounted on retrievers come to kill the PCs and Shami-Amourae. The bar-lgura are Lemorian Bloodscouts, wihch are Advanced bar-lgura bloodhound 3/fighter 4s, for a somehow CR 15 creature, and 4 bog standard retrievers.

So, in ending, the PCs get a chance to talk to Shami-Amourae. Her "advice" on killing Demogorgon is "Distract him in multiple locations for maximum confusion" because his two heads are always in contrast. That... that was really fucking helpful.

After she gives them her oh so important advice ("Hey, invade the Gaping Maw with multiple armies because he has two reactions for every situation, usually in contrast"), she invites the PC with the highest Charisma to her secret lair to help her rebuild her empire. A "wise character refuses her offer" because apparently being evil she just wants to suck his life force out, not, oh, use her 22 Int to figure out a way of using a nigh-epic spellcaster (it's Cha, it's likely your fucking Sorcerer) to help her rebuild her empire.

So, five minutes. Five minutes over the course of multiple adventures to find Shami-Amourae who gives you pathetic advice anyone could have fucking come up with after a Knowledge check on Demogorgon.

This adventure is absolute trash. It's boring. It relies on random encounters. The big reveal is something a toddler could have figured out. It makes Shami-Amourae, who has been referenced as far back as fucking SCENARIO 4 into another Chaotic Stupid individual. Furthermore, FUCK. THIS. PATH. This is yet another adventure that could have been done at LEVEL 10 and then you have a legitimate choice to make in making a deal with Ahazu, whether to deal with him or find another way to free her, not just LOAD UP FREEDOM AND CAST IT.

Good god, everything about the last two adventures would have been improved by being a level 10-12 series of scenarios. Abso fucking lutely everything. These people with ninth level spells are likely to bypass ALL OF THIS SHIT just by making Knowledge checks and launching their own assault on the Gaping Maw with tactics that they can come to pretty easily, probably with mass planar fucking binding that Savage Tide OBVIOUSLY WANTS YOU TO DO.

Fuck. More and more I'm in favor of this thing having ended with Serpents of Scuttlecove and Vanthus staying fucking dead.

[Username17]

Yeah... that's not even a thing. The PCs could have just montaged all 35 cities in a couple of days the moment the Wizard gets high enough level to cast greater teleport. None of these plane hopping adventures do anything, and the final big reveal is stupid.

-Username17

[RelentlessImp]

Yeah... that's not even a thing. The PCs could have just montaged all 35 cities in a couple of days the moment the Wizard gets high enough level to cast greater teleport. None of these plane hopping adventures do anything, and the final big reveal is stupid.

-Username17

Be honest - did you expect anything different out of Paizo, even pre-Pathfinder? They set up expectations of playing the game 1-20 as if you were always playing E6 or E10 o rsomething.