[Almost OSSR] Savage Tide Adventure Path

[ishy]

First, it suggests the DM just hand the PCs the map because they've been here several times by now. That's nice, the PCs getting an advantage of how to plan out their assault.

V6: There's a secret door here into V15 that you can discover with a DC 25 Search check.

V15 is a hidden armory accessed from the secret door in the trophy hall V6.

I don't think you can really call it a 'secret door' if it is noted on the map you just handed to your PCs. Though according to the map the secret door is between 14 and 15 instead of 6 and 15.

a prick named Vanthus Vanderboren, and if that name alone isn't enough to make you hate him and think him evil, the fact that he murdered his own parents by smuggling barrels full of alchemist's fire into their new boat and exploding it should.
They are then delivered a letter by a Venerable halfling woman inviting them to meet her mistress, Lavinia Vanderboren. (Are these names making you want to punch this society in the face yet?)

The surname sounds more Dutch than noble-douchey, although this family has been dicks since Shackled City.

More likely to be Flemish than Dutch.
In the Netherlands you'd write it as "van de[r] Boren".

"Van de" would be translated as "of the".
You'd probably translate Boren as drilling. Though you can also use it in the phrase [X] into the ground 'boren' (like, a ship into the ground boren (usually meaning: sinking a ship with cannon fire))

[RelentlessImp]

First, it suggests the DM just hand the PCs the map because they've been here several times by now. That's nice, the PCs getting an advantage of how to plan out their assault.

V6: There's a secret door here into V15 that you can discover with a DC 25 Search check.

V15 is a hidden armory accessed from the secret door in the trophy hall V6.

I don't think you can really call it a 'secret door' if it is noted on the map you just handed to your PCs. Though according to the map the secret door is between 14 and 15 instead of 6 and 15.

In fairness, this is the map that they suggest you hand to your PCs:

It doesn't show the secret door, and the text says it's between 6 and 15 so ... maybe the person who marked the map got it wrong? I dunno. It still shows the existence of the room, so the PCs are probably gonna spend some time hunting down the hidden passages. They have been including unmarked maps in the appendices to help serve as battlemats (I guess) but that doesn't excuse the one for Kraken's Cove.

[RelentlessImp]

Before I move on, I excluded a sidebar about the Jade Ravens and their continuing presence in the party. Basically, it boils down to a brief personality for each of the Jade Ravens. The 'vain, brash' leader of a Ranger may take interest in an 'attractive' female PC, while the sorceress you saved from becoming rust monster chow might take interest in an 'attractive' male PC. In two adventures we've run across not one, not three, but four love interests like it's a fucking Bioware game, only knowing my MCs in the past it wouldn't be anywhere near as subtle or well-written. From Lavinia herself, to Rowyn, to the ranger and sorceress, you also run into the Bioware problem of women not getting enough romance options.

It's like they cribbed Bioware's design notes.

Moving on, let's have a look at:

Scenario 3: The Sea Wyvern's Wake
By Richard Pett. Art by Ben Wootten and Warren Mahy.

So, right off the bat, I have a problem with this in the Adventure Hooks section. I'm going to go ahead and spoil it: You crash your ship. You don't just crash your ship, you get tangled in seaweed and have to fight the heart of the seaweed and THEN you crash your ship. To play Sea Wyvern's Wake as a stand-alone it suggests you have your PCs crash their ship whenever they're going from Point A to Point B. Which is... not bad, per se, but it's definitely one of those dick moves that you remember for a while.

Part One: A Modest Proposal
For once, the Adventure Background doesn't involve backstory of Vanthus being a dick. Instead it goes into the Vanderboren elders and why they established the colony of Farshore; primarily, Larissa is all about the unexplored, and her husband, the adventurer Verik, started establishing Farshore as a means to explore the infamous Isle of Dread.

So we open up The Sea Wyvern's Wake with a suggestion that the PCs have some legitimate downtime - it's the same advice given at the end of Bullywug's Gambit. We learn that our erstwhile adventurer-wannabe, Lavinia, has become an aristocrat 2/swashbuckler 2 in the intervening period.

So we open on the Vanderboren Estate, which has become super-busy as opposed to the sort of dead feeling the estate's had previously, as Lavinia has had people fixing what the bullywugs have done to the estate and hired a new waiting staff after the death of her previous servant at the hands of Drevoraz and Bua Gorg, so the Estate actually feels alive now. Lavinia has apparently washed her hands of hunting down Vanthus, and is looking to the future. Specifically, the future of Farshore; she sees it as her parents' last legacy, so she's gonna take the Blue Nixie out to Farshore for a resupply run. She wants the PCs to come along, but they need another ship for carrying supplies and would-be colonists.

I don't know how most people's D&D groups work, only having experience with my own, but my PCs when MCing (and I fall prey to it as a PC when I get to play) have the memory of fucking goldfishes. Even with the extremely lengthy description you're supposed to give The Sea Wyvern during the Kraken's Cove adventure any group I've played with will be hard-pressed to remember there's an untended ship sitting on the beach of the Cove - or they'll think that Harliss somehow managed to push it off the beach and left the Cove that way. Unless the PCs commandeered it in the rush to get back to Sasserine and save Lavinia, they might have completely forgotten about it.

As MC, I fully support whacking people over the head with the fact, but you could have just not had the Sea Wyvern aside and had them capable of finding another ship. Or hiring one.

One more thing I wanna point out: The trip is going to take three months. The PCs just came off a bunch of downtime, and now you wanna give them more. Fuck. Anyways, backpedaling back to Bullywug Gambit, I'm going to include the sidebar with the description of the ship:

The one surviving ship in the harbor is destined to play an important role in the Savage Tide Adventure Path. This is the Sea Wyvern. This three-masted caravel served as a pirate ship for the last twenty years. THe Sea Wyvern is a fearsome vessel. Her sails are decorated with stylized figures of a wyvern; its tail raised over its back as though ready to strike its enemies. Even its figurehead carries the motif; a powerful wyvern, its wings unfurled, crouches at the prow. This ship has seen plenty of action; her hull is scarred in many places by scratches and dents, and a single huge claw mark rakes across the starboard, deliberately left as a scar of battle. The ship's wheel is desgined to represent a dozen-headed wyvern.

The Sea Wyvern becomes central to the Savage Tide Adventure Path starting in the next adventure, "The Sea Wyvern's Wake." The PCs first glimpse of the ship is an important moment of this adventure - be sure to give them a powerful description of the ship. The ship itself can be crewed by a group as small as 7 individuals as long as one of them has ranks in Profession (sailor), but even if the PCs leave the shp [sic] in Kraken's Cove for the remainder of the adventure, it's securely moored. They'll be able to head back to collect it when they need it at the start of the next adventure.

So aside from the criminal abuse of the semi-colon, you better hope your PCs like wyverns. Me, as a PC, I'd rip down the sails and figurehead and replace them and christen it a new ship, if only to get rid of the bad juju associated with its previous crew and savage tide. So right here you kinda fail with the title of the adventure because it might not even be the Sea Wyvern any more once the PCs get their hands on it.

We have another Switching Sides sidebar and lord is it a doozy given what comes later.

If the PCs decided to go to work for Rowyn in "There Is No Honor," you'll need to change some aspects of "The Sea Wyvern's Wake." It's likely that by the time this adventure comes along, the PCs have helped Rowyn and the Lotus Dragons gain control over Sasserine's Harbor. After several weeks, Rowyn grows bored and sets her eyes on new targets. She approaches the PCs with a plan - during her time with Vanthus, she learned that his parents established a colony on a distant island. She's uncovered sea charts that lead to this colony, and plans on sailing south to see what can be done to plunder it - after all, the Vanderborens have proven to be an excellent source of plunder, and with the Sasserine harbor under Lotus Dragon control, she really sees no reason to stay in town all the time. Rowyn hires two ships, and places the PCs in charge of one. Her plan: to masquerade as a resupply convoy, sail down to Farshore, and usurp control of the colony. With a lock on the rare and exotic improts the Isle of Dread has to offer, the fortunes of all involved can certainly do nothing but swell.

If you run this version, the stowaway on the PCs' ship becomes someone else; it might be fun to make the stowaway Lavinia herself, driven to despair and madness by the ruin brought upon her by the Ltous Dragons and the PCs and now obsessed with getting revenge against them.

So, anyways, part one is consumed by the PCs finding a crew and retrieving the Sea Wyvern. The ship needs at least 7 to sail it, and can accommodate up to 30 people (including the crew). At this point it throws a bunch of NPCs at you but let's be honest, your PCs have access to third level spells now, they're probably using animate dead so they can make puns about skeleton crews. Lavinia already has the crew together for you, so let's have a quick look at them.

The ostensible Captain, unless a PC takes the chair, is Amella Venkalie, and holy fuck am I seeing the benefits of Paizo's art team at this point. I don't think I've liked as much art in any single WotC supplement or campaign as I am in this adventure path.

Don't worry, Ben Wootten beats the pants off Warren Mahy a little later.

She's a Rogue 4 which makes her better built than 90% of the NPCs involved in this adventure path, and has a total of +11 in Profession (sailor). If a PC takes the Captain's chair, then she tries to be your first mate. She's a widow, but she hates gnomes so she can fuck right off, I don't care if the reason she hates gnomes is because they killed her husband. PERSECUTE HALFLINGS AND DWARFS DAMNIT. Those little shits are responsible for about 40% of bad-shit in D&Dland. Also there's another romance line, bringing us up to FIVE of them, as at the MC's discretion one of the PCs can bear a more-than-passing resemblance to her late husband. If it were me I'd make it the gnome PC just to add a layer of mindfuck. She has an asterisk next to her name, so she needs to stay alive for later.

Father Feres, aka Conrad Horst, is a disguised criminal hiring himself out to the Sea Wyvern to escape persecution in Sasserine. He's an Expert 3 who's been hired out as a mule to deliver a package to Fort Blackwell on the way and is masquerading as a priest of Hieroneous. Well, maybe. It's another quantum detail - if someone in the party worships Hieroneous, you're supposed to change his cover identity to a priest that worships someone the PCs don't, ideally someone they've never heard of but has enough worship to warrant a shrine at Fort Blackwell.

Avner Meravanchi (also asterisked) is a "spoiled and despicable cur", but who is also the primary investor in this voyage. He's an aristocrat 3 so keeping him alive would be tricky. He's an unfoundedly confident man who doesn't know his daddy sent him on this trip to get rid of his ass. He's got two servants, two human expert 1s, who are meek and defer to his needs.

Skald is a "mysterious figure fleeing assassins from the northern port of Styes" meant to serve as a red herring as things go wrong on the trip for suspicion to fall on. He's a Feytouched Ranger 3, so he's actually supposed to be prettier than the rest of the crew yet they give him a "nasal voice and unsettling eyes". At least he's not a romance option, just a friendship option.

Urol Forol has another asterisk, and is a gnome naturalist (wait, I thought our would-be captain hated gnomes) who's studied the Isle of Dread and wants to stop at the city of Tamoachan during the voyage. He apparently enrages Amella quite a lot during the voyage so the PCs get to play babysitter to keep them from killing each other.

Lirith Veldirose is a Rogue 1/Fighter 2 meant to give the "PCs a little extra firepower" but she doesn't do anything that having access to 3 full spell levels can't. Her sidebar says that anyone who displays wealth and is particularly good-looking is likely to be in for "romantic intrigue" and ugh. Stop giving MCs an excuse to break out their romantic voice. That said, Lirith is the first of these now six romance options (aside from the non-option of Captain Harliss) that might actually be fun with the right MC, she's got that brash tomboy thing going on. And is a ginger. Oh and she's a secret noble.

If you're not switching sides, Rowyn Kellani is a stowaway who hides out and tries to kill the PCs.

Finally, Tavey Nesk (asterisked) is the cabin boy and has a bad case of hero worship for one of the PCs. Apparently his asterisk is "keep him alive til Here There Be Monsters", which I'm looking forward to tearing apart.

Anyways, the party has their crew, their ship, and an option of installing up to two ballistae or one light catapault on the ship, is carrying 60 tons of supplies for Farshore, 10 tons of repair supplies, and 10 tons of food, water and other shit for the passengers and crew, leaving 40 tons of space for the PCs to play with. If the douchebag investor throws a fit and brings along his fucking horse that takes 10 more tons of space.

And so we set sail for:
Part Two: Life on the Ocean Waves
Once the PCs get to meet and greet the crew and passengers, have made their peace with the cargo and the armaments, and said their goodbyes they sail with the dawn tide. And so we say goodbye to Sasserine permanently unless the PCs teleport back later on. The voyage is thus:

It suggests using It's Wet Outside's rules for naval combat, but has a quick-start ruleset for naval combat, too. That's nice.

It tells us the ship has three places for enemy ships to target, the rigging, hull and the ship itself. Each portion has its own sections in rigging and hull with its own hit points, and a hit on the ship has a random factor into what section gets hit. Specific sections have a higher AC than the ship, making them harder to hit. Hitting the rigging and destroying a section reduces the speed by 10ft. Destroying some of the hull reduces speed by 10ft and holes the ship, which the Captain has to make a Profession (sailor) check to avoid sinking at DC 15 + 4 per hole after the first and they have to make those once per hour to avoid sinking. Once it's failed the ship takes 1d100 minutes to sink unless it's lost a quarter of its hull in which case it takes 1d6 minutes to sink. Repairing the damaged holes takes a minute and a Craft (carpenty) check at DC 19 and for every 1 point past that you heal 1hp and seal the hole. A DC 20 craft check and a day of work repairs a destroyed ship and uses up a ton of repair supplies.

As you might expect it glosses over shit like make whole and mending. Can we get Nicolas Logue back here? He probably would have thought of this shit as part of the quick start rules after his surprising showing in Worm's Revenge.

So the Sea Wyvern is actually a pretty good ship. It's a caravel ship which it tells us to go look at page 98 of Stormwrack for full rules. So, moving on: The Sea Wyvern has some qualities. Seaworthiness gives +4 to Profession (sailor) checks to avoid foundering, sinking and other hazards that "large, well-built vessels avoid more easilly [sic] than smaller ones", and Shiphandling gives +2 to avoid collisions, to sail, and other situations that "small, swift vessels avoid more easilly [sic] than large and clumsy ones". A speed of 30ft, 3 mph in normal winds, 60ft in moderate, 90ft in strong. A 45 degree turning radius after moving 60ft in one direction and change its speed up to 10ft per round. It goes on to tell us that the sail, aside from two oncoming storms, is made in normal winds.

All in all, not a bad little vessel, but I'll leave it to other people more familiar with It's Wet Outside to comment. Also coming along is the Blue Nixie, which is the ship you raided in "There Is No Honor", and it suggests the PC stay on Sea Wyvern. The Blue Nixie carries Lavinia, the Jade Ravens, and several other NPCs who "have little role to play in this adventure or the next but become key characters once the PCs reach Farshore".

It suggests you use It's Wet Outside to chart weather, wind and precipitation. So on one page we have three distinctly different points that tell us to go buy Stormwrack but it provides enough information to run this section of the adventure. I don't want to call it crass advertising, but it comes off that way sometimes.

So, moving on. It says that normally you have to make a Knowledge (geography) check to navigate your course and arrive on target, but to assume one of the navigators did. Then daily Knowledge (geography) checks to astay on course. You have a +12 from Urol Forol and the Blue Nixie's nameless navigator, and your PCs having built for an adventure path probably don't have higher but if they do, use that.

So, there's some encounters in our way, after the book goes on to reiterate crew size, crew members, and passengers. Our first event is.. the douchebag, Avner Meravanchi. He arrives a half-hour late (personally I'd have left him behind, you fucking sail with the tide) and insists on bringing his horse along, which if you acquiesce to takes another half hour (bye bye tide!). And, big shock, this douchebag raises a stink about having to sleep in the forward hold with "commoners". So basically, every clichè about a spoiled brat wanting his way. He offends pretty much everyone. A DC 30 Diplomacy check is for convincing him that it might be fun in a "slumming" sort of way to sleep in the forward barracks. But any other solution leaves him bitter and an asshole who continually nderminds and countermand the PCs' orders.

My PCs straight up murdered him in his sleep and dumped his body overboard with silence and a CDG. They kept his horse and eventually gave it some horseshoes that made it into a flying mount.

The rest of these Events are spread out among the voyage.

Event 2 is a dinner with Lavinia, as she sends a message for the PCs to come dine with her on the Blue Nixie, along with the crew and Avner Meravanchi. It's basically here to let your PCs start potential romances or further them along, and to let them know not everything is hunky dory. Rowyn Kellani's been using disguise self and invisibility to move among the crew, and she poisons the pickled mephit and weakens the rope holding the net chair they used to cross between the ship. DC 25 Spot or fall in the fucking ocean, motherfucker. Then she releases the pickled mephit who isn't dead. It's just a basic Water Mephit. If it doesn't just die after engaging someone in melee after using its breath weapon, melf's acid arrow and stinking cloud, then it goes into the sea and has its fast healing heal it up, then flies away fater being reduced to 5hp twice. But those tactics don't matter, it's a water mephit, it dies to a group of 5th level PCs.

Event 3, "Father Feres" falls ill. After visiting Blackwell, he makes his delivery and winds up impregnated with a red slaad egg. Which produces a blue slaad that tears him apart from the inside out. remove disease kills the egg, a DC 15 Heal check locates it, and a 25 removes it. Otherwise they get to fight a blue slaad. It has at-will telekinesis, so you might actually lose a PC if there's a bunch of shit around for him to use it on. Whether save or kill, Father Feres/Conrad is out of the adventure; if he's saved he confesses his crime and the PCs get to decide what to do with him. My PCs keelhauled him for the rest of the journey.

Event 4, Rowyn's Vengeance. You can either have it be Rowyn, one of her sisters or a Crimson Fleet agent named Hannah Larn. So nomenclature failure again. Whoever she is, once per week she attempts to hurt the PCs. She poisons the food with arsenic (DC 13, 1 con/1d8 con) for 3 days or til she thinks the PCs are onto her. She does this under a disguise self to throw suspicion onto another passenger.

She tries to seduce a PC - if a PC is romancing an NPC, she uses disguise self and invites the PC somewhere private, then begins to dance and uses suggestion with Disguise Spell to suggest the PC strip down and go into the ocean for a midnight swim. At which point she uses an SNA III scroll to attack the PC with a large shark. Except... she should have to make a fucking UMD check because she's a bard with a +11 check vs a DC 25. Omitted.

Or she uses hold person and CDGs the PC with one of his own weapons. If she doesn't kill him she drops the weapon and runs away.

She can use invisibility to position herself to cut a yardarm rope or other beam onto one of the PCs for 3d6 damage but this should immediately expose her because it's invisibility, not greater. Unaddressed.

Any shipboard combat, Rowyn or whoever attempts to use disguise self or invisibility to sneak attack one of the PCs during the battle once, then runs away.

Eventually the PCs get to discover her and fight her, but she's the same character as in "There Is No Honor - Rogue 3/Bard 5, but without Gut Tugger, and she has a +4 Will save. By this point you have third level spells and she just fucking loses. She has no further part in the adventure beyond this point, so she can die or fuck off to parts unknown.

Honestly, this is just... really, really fucking weak. If you're not using It's Wet Outside and random encounters this is three months of MTP interspersed by the stuff coming in Part 3 and Rowyn trying to fucking kill you and failing at it. Okay, the naked PC in the water fighting a shark is cute and might kill someone, but other than that? This is just goddamned sad to turn 3 months of downtime into something engaging and to encourage your PCs to "care about the adventure beyond treasure". Fuck you, treasure is a fucking fine motivation and fuck you for attempting to denigrate the people who play murderhobos when you fucking encourage them to do just that in this adventure path up til now. Just fuck you, Richard Pett. Fuck you.

Rowyn got an art upgrade in her final appearance. It's the least she deserves.

[RelentlessImp]

Part 3: The Voyage South

This actually covers your three months of voyage and non-MTP stuff. It starts off with telling us that there's a 28% chance per day of an encounter. I don't know the math here, but fully half the journey is along the coast. 8% per day on the open sea. Encounters are 30% another ship (50% chance of being friendly) otherwise page 92 of the DMG encounter table or EL5 encounter for Warm Marine on page 216 of Stormwrack.

And then there are minor encounters with forts along the Amedio coast until Encounter E and are held by the Scarlet Brotherhood ('a sprawling organization of sinister monks and assassins') and are used as staging points into the jungle interior, which Lavina avoids. Only two are not held by the Brotherhood - Blackwell and Greenrock.

Furthermore, there are miles worth of spider webs clinging to jungle trees, and if you go near them you get to fight a lot of monstrous spiders. The Sacred Forest is ten miles of the coastline where a DC 20 Spot check lets you see tribal ornamentations and desiccated lizardfolk corpses. You get 3d6 gp of loot for searching with a DC 25 Search check over the course of an hour, and you might attract the (undetailed) tribe.

There's some ruins all around the place, but Lavinia doesn't wanna stop since she's already promosed Urol Forol a stop at the biggest one. Assuage the PCs with the same promise - bigger ruins are better.

There's a blackened valley along the jungle shore, which used to be a sacrificial pit into which "hundreds of what look like humanoid apes were thrown". (So, humanoids?) It's ten years old, it's of no interest other than setting fluff. There's a wyvern sighting that has six wyverns fly alongside the Sea Wyvern and generally just cavort about the ship and fly in formation with it, then fly off as long as the PCs don't attack.

There's an actual Sea Monster. It doesn't attack, just makes the PCs uneasy and is a big dark foreboding shape under the ship.

Here's our travel map again now that it's going to tell us what these letters mean:

A is Fort Blackwell, 13 days into the journey. It's a Small Town whose harbor is protected by a sea gate hung between two towers. Entering is delayed by having the Blackwell guards inspect your ship. Apparently peace and being ignored by the Scarlet Brotherhood and Crimson Fleet have made them less than good at their jobs so they just make a once-over search and let you go after 15 minutes. It's seven weeks before you can find another friendly port, so this is the final chance to stock up. It has some stuff to expand Blackwell - there's a cove once used by smugglers now inhabited by redcaps whose leader sneaks into Blackwell to be a dick - and the Cult of Slaadi worshipers using a Shrine of Hieroneous as a cover who give Conrad/the Father the gift of motherhood, not to mention spies from the Scarlet Brotherhood.

Another 9 days brings us to B: the mouth of the Havekihu River. After the ships take 12 hours to refresh their water stores, a thick fog assails them. Continuing on til it gets too dark to see each other, Lavinia calls for anchoring til morning. Sometime during the night a flotsam ooze (fiend folio ) which is basically an ooze that has shitloads of flotsam all over its adhesive body attaches itself to the Sea Wyvern. It has the most HP of anything the PCs have encountered at 117, but it has 14 AC. The biggest problem the PCs will encounter is engaging it as it's under the waterline and has a 50% miss chance while it's in water. Plus it automatically grapples anyone it hits, and a DC 12 Reflex save is to keep your weapon from getting stuck on it.

Once it's dead, you have a minute to make a DC 20 Search check to find some bony corpses wearing a ring of mind shielding and gauntlets of ogre power on them.

Another 14 days from that encounter brings us to C: the Tamoachan ruins, which is covered in Part Four later on. Lavinia asks the PCs to accompany Urol, who Lavinia promised could check it out. Who wouldn't wanna accompany him?

Pictured: the face of trust

Pictured: the face of an asshole

D: Another 4 days from Tamoachan, the PCs and the Blue Nixie have to go through Scarlet Brotherhood controlled waters, in which they've set up a blockade. And it's a trap of an option to think they can get through without being spotted: no matter where they go the Brotherhood sees them and attacks with a caravel more or less identical to Sea Wyvern. There's 9 CR 1/2 pirates led by a Rogue 2/Fighter 2, and the only real danger here is fucking up the naval combat. Of course, if your first third level spell is fly, then your group just goes across, boards and kills the crew. (Your PCs are probably approaching 7th level by this point after Tamoachan). The group is pretty desperate as they haven't achieved their quota of slaves and booty yet.

I long for more nuanced villainy.

Anyways, if the two ships go together, the Blue Nixie is accosted by a second ship, which it says to assume whatever the PCs do is mirrored by the Blue Nixie. Despite its lack of spellcasters. Okay.

E: Another 9 days from the Brotherhood Blockade we reach Fort Greenrock ... which has been burned to the ground. Lizardfolk fucked the place to death, leaving no survivors and no supplies. Oops. Lavinia informs the group that they can restock at Renkrue again. I hope they don't have an arcology.

F (mislabled in the text as a second E): 4 days out from Greenrock, the ships stop at the mouth of the river to restock their water supplies. Here there's a 900ft waterfall, in the pool of which an Aquatic seven headed hydra is just waiting for you. Everyone who's fought hydras know how fighting them in an open space goes, so let's move on. Once it's dead, there's a bunch of sunken ships rotting underwater that you can check out. A DC 20 Search check shows most of the cargo has rotted away, but with an hour you find 102gp and a suit of +1 chainmail on a dead elf, as well as a bright green cloak of the manta ray.

G: 2 more days from there, we reach Renkrue. The most advanced buildings are two wooden huts built by an ambitious priest of St. Cuthbert who had fever dreams of converting the island to his worship and intended them to be places of worship. He died shortly after they were completed, and they're now used as the communal hall and the chiefta's hut. We run into language barrier problems as most of the natives don't speak Common. You can buy up to ten tons of food using trade stock the Blue Nixie brought just to trade with them, and any potions, wands, scrolls not made from worked metal, up to 200gp. Which... pretty much precludes any wands or scrolls. If Avner isn't dead yet (why not?) he tries to buy one of the village girls from her parents and pisses off the village enough that they don't trade with the expedition til a DC 25 Diplomacy check is made, at which point Avner goes and pouts in his room.

I'll be honest, I had just started reading this part after running Tamoachan and laughed myself sick because my PCs let Avner live three days. They circumvented his assholeishness because they KNEW he'd wind up being a problem and lo and behold, he was.

The other NPCs basically piss off and do stuff during shore leave. The highlights are Lirith getting drunk and challenging one of the PCs to a sparring match, if Conrad is alive he retires here, and the Blue Nixie crew keeping to themselves.

H: 4 days out from Renkrue, and out on the open sea for the first time, the ships encounter a 'hidden peril' - the Pearl Current. Piloting checks rise to DC 21, 23 after a failed check, and 27 after two days of failed checks. And ... well, it's a death spiral, but three successful checks gets them out of the current. Nothing deadly happens to them unless they run out of food caught in the currents.

I: 2 more days after the Pearl Current, the PCs run across land. They might think it's the Isle of Dread, but in fact it's an uninhabited island surrounded by thousand foot high cliffs known as Ruja. You can stop here and explore and make up a weird adventure on an uninhabited island so long as there's enough food to last the last two weeks of the voyage. Its only import to the journey is their southwestern cliffs are the last landmark for five hundred miles.

J: 4 days out from Ruja, there's a storm. The Blue Nixie gets lost in the storm here, but Lavinia's standing orders are to meet up at Farshore.

K: 4 days after the storm, the PCs encounter "Journey's End", covered in Part Five.

L: 5 days out from Journey's End, we get another storm just as they come into sight of the Isle of Dread itself. It's a fucking monsoon. No matter how well you make your checks here, you wind up shipwrecked on Masher Reef, 25 miles northeast of the Isle of Dread. You get to fight a Masher, which is an 8HD eel with a +2 will save that dies to color spray. DC 20 Profession (sailor) gets you off the reef, but every minute that passes is 20% of another color spray having to kill something.

M: The Sea Wyvern is fucked and is taken out by a bow tide, and the PCs go overboard. The scenario ends here with a fade to black.

So yeah. This is the general path the PCs take there, and it ends with "fuck you, you're gonna get fucked". Let's wheel back a bit and go back to C, Tamoachan. Yes, this is the order shit is presented in the adventure path.

Part Four: Tamoachan
So Urol Forol the gnome wants to explore this place, and Lavinia wants the PCs to accompany him. It's an overgrown city that contains towering ziggurats and stone buildings. You've got a day to explore. Urol himself is only interested in the ruins because, a week before the expedition, he came into possession of a map from a peg-legged sailor who claimed to have been given the map by a dying elf fished from the sea. Apparently, the fishbait elf had been part of an expedition into the ruins and found a previously unexplored section of the city but his party was attacked by basilisks. Well, it says "eight-legged lizard with glowing eyes that turns those who see it into stone". If your players don't nope right the fuck out then and there, Urol gives them the map and accompanies them into the ruins. He's also got two doses of stone salve, but he tries to tell the PCs he has lots of doses.

Unfortunately... well, the entire story is a fabrication. The one-legged sailor was, in fact, a disguised agent of Malcanthet, Demon Queen of the Succubi. Oracles have led her to the PCs, who are trying to (unknown to them) interrupt the Demogorgon's plans, and as she sometimes shares a bed with Demogorgon (...euuugh) Malcanthet wants them on HER side, thus the subterfuge.

It takes about an hour to get to the unexplored ruins. There's only ten rooms. Let's get through it.

Room 1: This has a pretty cool bit of backstory. Apparently basilisks were kept as pets by the decadent rulers of this place, who fitted them with helmets that blocked their petrifying gaze and could removed at length with a hooked pole so they could turn people to stone. Now it's a chamber full of statues. And a basilisk. It's a bog standard basilisk. There's a statuette of a reclining humanoid figure worth 78gp and a small silver pyramid worth 3gp as treasure.

Room 2: This is the home of a gibbering mouther. It's got a huge statue of a man in decayed skins and cracked skulls with a mouth large enough to swallow a halfling. There's a well to the south. And a gibbering mouther named Xochiquetzal. The well is full of bones from his meals, and some treasure; 300gp worth of turquoise gems, a +1 dagger, an ivory fan worth 180gp and a platinum bracelet worth 230gp. And 140gp.

Room 3: This place was used to prepare the dead for burial and overlooks Room 4.

Room 4: Winding passageways through the collapsed rubble that makes up the room. Three rounds after the players enter, a wall of fire appears along the southern wall and advances north at 15ft per round. Three rounds later, if the players are still there, another one appears. It's a wall of fire as cast by a 9th level wizard so can hurt. Escape is in a natural tunnel that is room 5.

Room 5: This is a tunnel opened up by an earthquake.

Room 6: There's a metal wall here made by a (DC 25 Spellcraft) Wall of Iron spell and can be broken down. There's a will-o'-wisp here that makes this room its home that might check out Room 4 if the PCs make enough noise. It follows the PCs out of curiosity and hope that it can get into the rest of the chambers, viewing this place as its empire.

Room 7: This room has a scale model of the city that isn't damaged (room 6 had a badly damaged one) that is actually a scale model of their necropolis. There's a trap in the central pyramid, which is actually a sarcophagus. It's a mummy rot trap. Anyone within 20ft of the pyramid when opened has to save vs mummy rot at DC 16. A mummified priest corpse is in it that has a strand of prayer beads with a bead of blessing and bead of healing. Urol wants to stay here and investigate so he can make sketches of the carvings and sculptures.

Room 8: This room is the home of a lesser varrangoin named Sutolore that fought with the will-o'-wisp and triggered a wall of iron trap that trapped him in here. It's a magical beast with a will save of +1. Color spray and beat to death, as it only has SR 12. If the PCs haven't found and killed the will-o'-wisp following them, it joins the fight against Sutolore. Once Sutolore is dead, it turns on them.

Room 9: THere's a pair of big statues that served as the trigger for the wall of iron trap that trapped Sutolore in here. It's not a resetting trap.

10: The final room is a massive shaft disappearing down into gloom. The shaft is full of niches holding the bones of heroes, priests, kings, queens and mythic warriors. The topmost body holds a golden bat idol with rubies for eyes and pearls for fangs, which a Knowledge (religion) check identifies as a representation of Camazotz, an ancient god of bats and the nights. The idol itself is worth 2,500gp, but it radiates faint transmutation magic and an identify spell reveals it as a key of some sort. Urol is sad when he has to leave, but then he gets reminded that there's plenty of mysteries awaiting him on the Isle of Dread and he cheers up.


Part Five: Sargasso
Also known as Journey's End to sailors. It's a floating graveyard that floats the ocean, hunting for more ships to add to its collection. It's the sargasso of the Mother of All.

So, as a reminder, this is 4 days after the storm that causes the PCs to lose the Blue Nixie, 14 days after Renkrue.

I'm not going to cover this in great detail, as it's basically just a ship graveyard that moves with the party. The Mother of All unleashes a vine horror on them every 3 days they're trapped in it until the PCs kick her ass and free the ship. Normal Vine Horrors are Plants with 5 HD and +2 Will. The Mother of All is a Huge 10HD plant who basically creates a bed of seaweed that traps shit in it and grows at a rate of 1 square mile per year. Once per minute she can transport via plants as a free action anywhere within her Sargasso. She can creates a vine horror every 3 days and can emit a cry of distress that brings all her vine horrors to her. One of her more interesting qualities is that, as she's constantly producing vine horrors, there's a gnashing and wailing that emits out 60ft from her that interferes with spellcasting, requiring spells to be cast with a DC 15 (+1 per spell level) Concentration check.

On her death, her sargasso begins to fall apart from the center outwards, taking the wrecked ships with it. The Sea Wyvern is safe and reclaims the PCs.

So as stated earlier, after the Mother of All, a second storm comes and fucks the Sea Wyvern up. A bow tide flips the ship and the scenario ends with a fade to black.

If I had to sum up this scenario in one word, it'd be: Boring. Of course, there's three months of travel going on here, but do you know what else happens within three months in D&Dland? YOU GO FROM LEVEL ONE TO TWENTY. The entire escapade literally takes as long as any other campaign by the DMG. The encounters are uninteresting, the NPC interactions spelled out are there to piss you off, and the storms are obviated by 2,275gp in the form of a scroll of control weather, none of which is taken into account and yet my players were intelligent enough to purchase because it's a fucking sea voyage, you might think they want to hurry it along via gust of wind and control weather.

Augh. This scenario just pisses me off because it doesn't take any of the players' actions into account, it's a straight up fucking railroad the entire way with the ocean serving as rails. The only thing even remotely creative is the Mother of All and the fight between the will-o'-wisp and lesser varrangoin. Any hint of acceptance that the PCs might find ways around it is soundly ignored.

I don't even hate Richard Pett for writing it this way, it was clear from the outset that this was a filler scenario that had to end at the Isle of Dread. That doesn't excuse it from being lazy, but there is a hint here and there of some actual creative thought going on in his head.

We close out with a first-person narrative:

Richard writes, "And there I was, thinking the second time would be easier... where's that ladder? Which tree to hide in now - ah! The big horrible one Vaughan and Logue are climbing...

Big thanks to Eric Boyd and that scoundrel Steve Greer for the long discussion on breathing life into a classic D&D cover. May I humbly suggest that before you run the sargasso you treat yourself to a viewing of one of my favorite films, Aliens and learn from the classic "against the odds" monster movie."

As an aside, our hypothetical PCs are at 23236 experience and thus sixth level. I'm ... just going to let the next adventure speak for itself on the existence of third and fourth level spells.

Buckle up, boys and girls. Next time is what I'm sure some of you have been waiting for: Here There Be Monsters, by Jason Bulmahn. It's gonna be a ride.

[name_here]

Me, as a PC, I'd rip down the sails and figurehead and replace them and christen it a new ship, if only to get rid of the bad juju associated with its previous crew and savage tide.

According to sailor lore, you should never ever do this, it'll curse the ship nearly as badly as if the bottle fails to break during the ceremony, which is a class that contains the Titanic and the K-19 nuclear sub.

[RelentlessImp]

Me, as a PC, I'd rip down the sails and figurehead and replace them and christen it a new ship, if only to get rid of the bad juju associated with its previous crew and savage tide.

According to sailor lore, you should never ever do this, it'll curse the ship nearly as badly as if the bottle fails to break during the ceremony, which is a class that contains the Titanic and the K-19 nuclear sub.

I would rather purge the ship of its old identity and give it a new one rather than risk the fate associated with it catching up to me down the road.

EDIT: Reading ahead, I forgot how much pants-shitting rage is involved in the advice. Bulmahn quite clearly has always subscribed to Gygaxian bullshit when the PCs try to go off of his rails.

[mlangsdorf]

I actually like Sea Wyvern's Wake quite a bit, but then again I'm running it in GURPS which has different magic power levels. So I adapted it pretty heavily and got rid of a lot of the bullshit.

The first point of bullshitness is that the Sea Wyvern travels at 24 miles/day. It moves through 3 mi/hr for 8 hrs/day and then stops for the night or something. I don't really know where that particular error crept in D&D, but it's clearly nonsense and tripling the travel speed cuts the travel time to a more reasonable month or so.

As part of that, I also ditched all the stupid "refill the ship's water" encounters because there are low level spells that purify water in GURPS and D&D. Also, those encounters are stupid trap monsters.

Avner is the kind of NPC that players love to hate, and it's worthwhile to make some effort to keep him around. My players are somewhat goody-goody, so it was easy to set him as a plurality shareholder in the expedition and therefore someone they were at least somewhat obligated to not kill. That meant he could do annoying things, and they could browbeat him and display ingenuity in humiliating him. As long as he doesn't cause major problems, my players tolerated him (by which I mean "shaved him bald and dyed him blue").

I kept Tamachaon mostly as is, and my players enjoyed interacting with the crazy gnome naturalist. Maybe they should be more aggressively murder-hoboing, but that's not a game we enjoy.

The Sargasso Sea, as written, sucks. I turned the Mother of All into a proper puzzle monster with hints and clues and stuff[ (see http://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com/20 ... o-sea.html for details), and my players really enjoyed figuring out what combination of wacky metals and weird ingredients they needed to murderize her.

I mostly ditched the shipwreck. It's too easy for the PCs to avoid, as was pointed out numerous times on the Paizo forurms. Instead, I had the Blue Nixie get wrecked, and Lavinia and the JR set off to Farshore such that the PCs had to follow them. I really think that SWW should have be written that way from the start, but apparently Paizo really wanted a shipwreck in the adventure. Fuck them, it's awful, and if you really want a shipwreck, the one at the start of Serpent's Skull is much better since the PCs are level 1 for that one and surviving a shipwreck and doing the Robinson Crusoe thing for a while is a legitimate challenge. Too bad the rest of Serpent's Skull is complete ass.

Anyway, it's a good review of the adventure even if we have different opinions on its quality. I'm looking forward to HTBM, even though that's one of my less favorite parts.

[RelentlessImp]

Avner is the kind of NPC that players love to hate, and it's worthwhile to make some effort to keep him around. My players are somewhat goody-goody, so it was easy to set him as a plurality shareholder in the expedition and therefore someone they were at least somewhat obligated to not kill.

Did I forget to include that? Avner's father is investing heavily in the voyage and sent his son along to get him out from underfoot. So daddy's a plurality shareholder, while Avner is there to, ostensibly, oversee that his investment doesn't go bad. I don't think his father would mind him going missing forever, though, they way it writes about their relationship.

I kept Tamachaon mostly as is, and my players enjoyed interacting with the crazy gnome naturalist. Maybe they should be more aggressively murder-hoboing, but that's not a game we enjoy.

Harliss, Urol and Amella were the only NPCs up to this point my PCs took an interest in engaging, aside from Lavinia who they treated okay but her status as a quest giver was pretty firmly entrenched in their heads no matter what I did. Personally I like that a gnome was finally in a rather prominent position in an adventure path, but I'm an unabashed gnome fanboy. I even protested their exclusion from 4E's base races despite not playing 4E. Urol is one of the nice points of Sea Wyvern's Wake and the high point of Here There Be Monsters... maybe the only high point.

As to the Mother of All, I actually like the imagery of a ten square mile pile of seaweed controlled by a vine monster. But horror elements like it's supposed to be are really difficult to ever pull off in tabletop, so your approach is probably the better one overall.

[ishy]

Room 1: This has a pretty cool bit of backstory. Apparently basilisks were kept as pets by the decadent rulers of this place, who fitted them with helmets that blocked their petrifying gaze and could removed at length with a hooked pole so they could turn people to stone. Now it's a chamber full of statues. And a basilisk. It's a bog standard basilisk.

This always pisses me off. Here is a backstory that is totally irrelevant and the PCs can't interact with in anyway for no reason other than padding.

If your backstory doesn't add anything to the game, you should scrap it.

[RelentlessImp]

Room 1: This has a pretty cool bit of backstory. Apparently basilisks were kept as pets by the decadent rulers of this place, who fitted them with helmets that blocked their petrifying gaze and could removed at length with a hooked pole so they could turn people to stone. Now it's a chamber full of statues. And a basilisk. It's a bog standard basilisk.

This always pisses me off. Here is a backstory that is totally irrelevant and the PCs can't interact with in anyway for no reason other than padding.

If your backstory doesn't add anything to the game, you should scrap it.

This is the reason I'm leaving out the occasional time-out it takes to give you backstory in about a full page. Like the Isle of Dread in Here There Be Monsters, which will be finished soon, it spends two columns in three-column format telling you all about the Isle's history.

[hogarth]

Avner is the kind of NPC that players love to hate, and it's worthwhile to make some effort to keep him around.

[..]

I kept Tamachaon mostly as is, and my players enjoyed interacting with the crazy gnome naturalist.

Interacting with the NPCs was definitely the most interesting part of this adventure for me. We had Avner to drive us crazy (my PC insisted on keeping him alive until the destination, even though one of the others wanted to set him adrift) and Urol to laugh at (even after he got petrified by a basilisk, it was still fun dragging a garden gnome all the way to Farshore). We even had (tasteful) romances with Lirith and Amella.

The funniest part was when our annoying Oracle PC jumped off the boat to go after Rowyn. Unfortunately, she had the Clouded curse, so she was unable to see more than 60' in any direction. Good luck getting back to the ship when you're blind and alone in the middle of the ocean...

[RelentlessImp]

Scenario 4: Here There Be Monsters
By Jason Bulmahn
Alright, first off, we get a background that is basically just the filler highlights from last time. Our adventure hooks for running it as a stand-alone this time involve being Farshore colonists or explorers of the Isle of Dread - retreads of the two main quests of playing it as part of an adventure path. That sure stretched it, didn't it.

Part One: Terror Bird Jungle
We cut in to see the PCs and the survivors from the Sea Wyvern waking upon the shore they were mired away from. Anything they weren't carrying personally is still on the ship, battering itself to pieces on rocks 200 feet away from the beach. Out of your 23 legitimate passengers, the only ones who survive are Amella, Avner (if your players haven't killed him yet and oh christ why haven't they), Tavey Nesk the Cabin Boy, and Urol Forol, the gnome. And... moments after everyone's awake and got their bearings, a MOTHERFUCKIN' T-REX! walks out of the surrounding jungle and goes for a snack.

So the Isle of Dread is basically Jurassic Park. Good to know.

Anyways, it charges and attacks the nearest PC and attempts to swallow them whole. When it reaches less 40 HP it tries to run away with its dinner, but if it's not gotten to swallow someone whole it fights to the death.

So after that, if Avner is somehow miraculously alive this is probably where most PCs will straight up kill him because he comes in furiously accusing the PCs of being the cause of everything wrong and demanding to know what they're gonna do about their safety. Tavey still has his case of hero-worship on one of the PCs, and he'll probably help you dispose of Avner's body. Amella's morose over the loss of the ship and Urol is distracted by finally being on the Isle of Dread. These personality traits will continue.

We come to a point where the PCs have to gather shit for their journey; I feel it necessary to point out now, of all places, that Urol Forolis a Druid 1/Expert 3, because when they start talking about food and Avner starts whining about not wanting to eat things gathered from the Island, Urol pops a soft-shelled crab into his mouth that he picks up from a nearby water pool. He turns green and is nauseous. Purify Food and Drink is a FUCKING ORISON YOU MORON.

Furthermore, the PCs are apparently obliged to gather up supplies from the ship. This is a third level spell. The PCs are 6th level, approaching 7th. Furthermore one casting is enough to feed all of them, even if Avner's horse is still with them. Never addressed. Never even suggested. It's "gather all the fucking supplies you can, you're obligated to act like you're level 1".

Anyways, Urol can figure out where they are, and in an hour comes up with a map, presented here:

Minus any landmarks.

He plots out a course that will take them along the mountains and south the 150-some-odd miles it will take them to reach Farshore. So they set out, ignoring scavenging food and shit from the Sea Wyvern. The first night out, the PCs are ambushed by a group of 3 terror birds, CR 4 things from Fiend Folio. They have a Will save of +4.

Halfway through the jungle the PCs are stampeded by six terror birds chasing a diplodocus, which makes Urol hulk out - I mean, makes him scream for the PCs to save the dinosaur. They can ignore the diplodocus's plight, or more likely they'll kill the terror birds. And maybe the diplodocus, but they get CR 8 experience for helping it escape anyways.

Near the end of their first day of travel the PCs find some ruins of a fallen civilization that used to rule the Isle of Dread and an empire expanding from it. It was an outpost at one time, but the buildings are basically falling apart. An aranea named Lithira comes from the ruins and attempts communication with the PCs in human form, in the dead civilization's language, then Sylvan, which Urol also knows. Mostly she just wants to know about the PCs and then the world outside, and for giving her a good storytime she tells the group about something hunting them or watching them, and that there's a mountain pass that will make their travel easier through the mountains. She then turns into a spider and leaves. CR 7 reward.

It takes 2d6 hours of searching to find the pass, interrupted every hour by 1d4 terror birds. There's 3 more terror birds at the entrance to the pass along with a CR 7 advanced elite terror bird. The advanced version has a Will save of +5. I'll start pretending the encounters are interesting when they start having Will saves with better than 50% odds of saving against a Color Spray cast by a level-appropriate wizard and challenge them for action economy.

Part Two: Dark Mountain Pass

It's a uniform path, it's all with 15ft high ceilings made of stone decorated with bands of geometric designs and carvings of animals. So the reason their civilization died was because all their high level casters were Geometers.

Room 1 has a big fountain that's half-full of stagnant water and a throne that has a ribcage pinned to it by a spear. The spear is a +1 longspear, the water causes DC 15 Fort checks against 1d2 Con damage, and the fountain contains a red stone rod and a necklace worth 500gp.

Room 2 has water off the side and has two gargantuan monstrous centipedes living in it who attack the PCs. Will save +2 but mindless, so they get a pass on the color spray wins everything, but they have 33hp and 16AC so. The only thing dangerous about them is they come down the walls and retreat upwards when they grapple someone.

So Room 3 has doors that are stuck, and require a DC 28 Strength check to open. Is anyone else just ... constantly staggered by the numbers for Attribute Checks and Skill Checks seeming to be swapped most of the time? DCs under 20 for skill checks and DCs over 20 for attribute checks are just ... fucked. Even with aid another.

Anyways once they get in here, either by going around or going through the door, a DC 22 Search checkfinds their secret door. There are corpses in this room that, if disturbed (or if the secret door to 4 is opened), cause the three mummies guarding the skeletal dog and human representations of the Olman god of death and undeath, Mictlantecuhtli.

They're normal mummies, so 3 CR 5 undead and a chance of mummy rot. Hooray. They were interred with necklaces worth 500gp each.

Room 4 is the tomb of an Olman shaman, and opening his coffin causes spears to shoot through the room - 1d6 per person in the room, a CR 6 trap. They're coated in greenblood oil, which is a C DC 13 Fort save for 1 Con/1d2 Con. The corpse is holding a blue stone rod and a masterwork silver dagger, and a golden medallion inset with a pearl of power 3.

So Room 5 is why you have the blue and red stone rods; there's a giant water door here built to stave off the tides, and the mechanism that caused it to open/close in response to water level is broke, but the pillars that let one manually open them, one blue and one red, are still standing. Guess what you're supposed to do. The doors have DC 50 Break checks and 1,440hp - so you COULD grind your way through them. It'd just take a while even with maximum Power Attack.

Room 6 was once a dining hall. The doors leading into here from 2 are ALSO stuck, and require the same DC 28 Strength check to open. A corner of the room's crumbled to reveal a stagnant pool from which oozes a black pudding. So, know how I was bitching about the rust monster earlier? Yeah. Bigger dick move for it to be way, way out here away from any reasonable resupply.

Room 7 lets the PCs out and into the open air again. There are tide pools along their path revealed at low tide, and out of them crawls 3 CR 4 Large monstrous crabs. Killing them gets you 90 pounds of food. Mm, crab.

Room 8 is actually a cliffside path leading to the next area.

So, what's wrong with this half? Aside from the fact that Bulmahn tends to ignore the existence of any spell beyond first level and plays up how fucking dickish Avner is and pretends your party, now faced with an actual survival situation, isn't going to kill him for endangering their lives by being loud and annoying... well, it feels a lot like The Sea Wyvern's Wake so far, in that it's kind of boring filler. The aranea is a legitimately interesting encounter, but the only thing that's going to keep your party interested so far is how well you're playing the surviving NPCs. A brooding Captain mourning the loss of her ship, a distracted and excited gnome naturalist, a cabin boy with a bad case of hero-worship, and a dick of a noble.

This isn't a bad thing, in and of itself, mind you. Bulmahn's mentality in writing this makes itself known in the worst way possible in the following sections.

[RelentlessImp]

So since I'll be playing Pillars of Eternity here in a couple of hours, I'm gonna go ahead and finish up Here There Be Monsters.

Part Three: Cliffs of Dread

So, after leaving behind the fucked-up city path through the mountains, the PCs find themselves on a series of cliffs in the mountains themselves.

Before I get into it, I'll be honest. I hate this section of the adventure path. It's full of railroading and bullshit that discards die rolls and has Mister Cavern just say "This happens" at points, otherwise the final quarter of this is completely skipped. Trains are pretty but only when they go where the people on them want to go, otherwise it's a kidnapping.

So. As I'm sure you've seen there's two different ambushes going on here. Once on the cliffs, Urol maths and says it'll take six days to cross the cliffs. There are a couple of 'flavor' things that can happen while you're crossing the path. One of them is straight up asshole foreshadowing, in which while camping a pebble with a darkness spell cast on it is dropped into the camp twice in one night, casting the camp into darkness for an hour.

Another is that there are six bird corpses arranged just outside the light range of their camp come morning. A pack of food goes missing - I wonder how if you're using spells for nourishment. There's a rockslide and a scene from Apocalypto in which a native of the Isle is standing on a cliff above them, plunges a dagger into his chest, and throws himself into the water. Basically all of this is a bar-lgura fucking with the party.

We've got some more space-wasting with background that just tells us there are gargoyles about. Sometimes I like this stuff but sometimes it just feels like wasting space - you could get the same point across with just saying that gargoyles have made a nest in the cliffs after killing natives that fished in the bay rather than waffling on about how nice and serene it is.

And here's some Gygaxian bullshit: There were settlements here and it addresses in a sidebar that the PCs might want to use the run-down buildings to build a raft and just sail into Farshore that way rather than taking the long way through the cliffs. Basically it says that, sure, let them, but attack them constantly with monsters while building the raft, then attack them constantly with aquatic monsters while they're sailing. If they don't get the point, then let them get into Farshore but pull some bullshit that makes them traipse back into the other shit in this adventure path or insert the crap that goes on in Part Four into the next adventure. Because by god, we made this material, force your players to fucking do it even if they've found ways around it.

Now I'll admit as an MC I've been pissed off on occasion that my players have gone off 'the rails', so to speak, as in they walked away from the shit I had planned out to do something else. This is better served by asking the players to either cooperate or to give you an hour to plan something new - hell, half the shit my players remember best is from frenzied planning sessions where I asked for a time-out to plot. But I never threw an unending wave of monsters at them for doing it.

So back to the cliffs, the party is actually following an ancient roadway built by the original inhabitants of the Isle of Dread. 24 miles away from the Dark Mountain Pass Exit we run across A: A Gargoyle Ambush.

Four Gargoyles swoop down on the PCs out of nowhere, and a neat little touch they've carved geometric shapes into their bodies reminiscent of the Olman geometers. Anyways these gargoyles are pricks, they try to Bullrush people off the cliff face. Killing three prompts the fourth to attempt fleeing to call in an airstrike from its kin.

B: There's a lift with ancient vine-ropes and pulleys and shit that offers access to the continuing path. Here there's a mention that hey, levitation and fly exist, maybe you'll use those instead of attempting to use a centuries-old lift that is probably completely and utterly fucked by being left alone in a jungle atmosphere. Anyways, the lift is a CR 6 trap that destroys the lift, the bar-lgura that's been fucking with the party has weakened the vines supporting it so that it breaks and falls.

C: Second ambush, no matter whether you let the first fleeing gargoyle escape, a Gargoyle Barbarian (CR 7) leads a warband of 3 more gargoyles to kill the PCs at this point. They also try to bull rush people off the cliff. So at a +6 Will save and +8 while Raging, the Gargoyle Barbarian is actually not more than likely shut down by color spray (DC 16-17 around this level) and he has a fly speed, making this one of the more dangerous encounters you've got so far.

D: After killing the gargoyles, there's another 18 miles, where you find a narrow pass that leads to the interior of the island. Urol marks it but suggests the PCs continue on to Tanaroa. Avner wants to go inland instead to avoid being attacked by more gargoyles. Going inland leads to part 4, but oh wait, the pathway is completely fucking eroded further onwards so you have to go back and follow the path inland.

Which leads into

Part Four: Fogmire
Once the party reaches the end of the path they find themselves at a rather thickly grown edge of the jungle with a lake barely visible beyond the treeline. It's full of creepy animals warped by the fact that this place is more or less coterminous with the Abyss. It's a DC 25 Survival check to not get lost in the jungle. Eventually they come to some old ruins that don't resemble the Olman architecture at all. There's a creepy cross that bears an upside-down Olman corpse with a gaping wound in his chest that's been dead for a while.

Except it starts speaking when the PCs get near it. The corpse basically tells them they're going to be here forever. He's Xan, predicting doom and gloom forevermore til the party blows up the corpse, which is just a 1HD zombie. Another creep-out tactic from the bar-lgura that's been fucking with the PCs since the mountain pass.

At this point, any attempts to leave Fogmire leads them right back to this place from the opposite side in 1d4 hours, even if they try flying out. You know those annoying puzzles in video games involving identical screens with only one true path through? That's basically what the PCs are in now til they kill the Lemurian Golem in Demogorgon's Shrine.

Once the PCs try camping in Fogmire, the bar-lgura, Olangru, and his friends attack. Olangru attempts to abduct Urol at this point with his abduction ability which is basically DC 20 Will save or get teleported with the bar-lgura. He's also a Scout 4 with an impressive set of saves (+13/+16/+8) and it's assumed that he gets away with Urol or one of the NPCs. He's a CR 9 encounter with 2 CR 5 bog standard bar-lguras. Olangru likes to make use of his Pounce and Skirmish abilities so he draws lots of AoOs in the fight.

So I don't even know how this is supposed to go down. Apparently they teleport away once they've taken some damage and are clearly meant to be a recurring theme. Every night they're in the Fogmire, they attempt abducting one of the NPCs til they start abducting PCs. But they're rendered useless by BFC so I don't know. Also they're rendered completely impotent with their ambush tactics if your party's been sleeping in rope tricks. My PCs locked them down with Evard's black tentacles and proceeded to kill them; even with at-will greater teleport, the bar-lgura don't have Concentration. Olangru might beat your caster with his +17 Grapple check vs their likely ~+16-17 Grapple on tentacles, but he didn't with my players and went down like a fucking chump.

Anyways, even if Olangru is killed in your first straight out encounter, the PCs still have to deal with the fog keeping them in the jungle. There's some DC 15 Search checks in conjunction with detect chaos and detect evil to bullshit something about 'currents' that the plants and animals are writhing in to lead them to the Shrine of Demogorgon.

One more thing about Fogmire; sleeping here causes Wisdom damage, 2 points every time you fail a DC 14 will save. Elves and other creatures that don't sleep are immune.

I wanna talk for a moment about the group I ran through this. They were all Warforged, because you Warforged if you're in an adventure path because you can do shit at 3 times the speed, and consisted of a moderately optimized party. They mowed through this shit so hard, but your mileage may vary on what PCs do here.

1: So here's the PC's first mention of Demogorgon - a DC 30 Knowledge Religion or Planes checks lets them know the twin faced statue guarding this place is a reference to Demogorgon. The open mouths of the statue are different paths into the place, but only 3 is safe.

2: Going into the cave on this path leads to an 8d6 rockfall trap with a DC 15 Reflex half that buries people in it. But even if you go in the other way if you approach that section outlined by white dotted lines you still get hit with the rockfall trap. All going into 3 does is give you a chance to avoid it.

3: This doesn't exist because it relies on Urol being abducted and your characters are before this point capable of 4th level spells and your arcane spellcaster, seeing what way this is going, took black tentacles when they leveled up and thus Olangru fucking died. Anyways if somehow he didn't, there's a bloody gnome-sized handprint on the wall here, as this is where the bar-lguras appeared after stealing away your gnome.

4: There's a shrunken corpse of a starved-to-death Olman hunter here, who left a message in blood in his own language. It's your standard "I'm dying and hope I die before I get sacrificed" message.

5: Shouldn't exist, but if Urol got kidnapped this is where his gear is.

6: Creepy statues that drip blood from their tongues. There are doors here that require a person to take hold of each statue's tongue and twist them in opposite directions and take 2d4 damage, but the doors are hardness 10 with 90 hp. I might be biased, but all my players take adamantine weapons so doors without hugely inflated HPs usually don't get opened, they get tunneled through.

7: This is a shrine with a blood-caked altar of green stone (orichalcum? Or what's that Fiendish metal that's green?). There are mirrors on either side. It's a trap-puzzle combination that deals with lighting candles in the right order and touching the mirrors. If done right, the mirrors turn into portals that teleport you to area 8 - doing it wrong triggers a DC 19 Will save trap and turns the PC touching them into a monster that attacks his friends from a dominate monster effect. It's a CR 7 trap but it also relies on narratively describing a puzzle and hoping your PCs figure it out. You could bog down here pretty fucking easily. Or you could disable the trap and then touch the mirrors which lets you go to 8.

8: This is, ostensibly, Olangru's harem, and if you didn't kill the three bar-lguras (which were female) earlier then they're here. Honestly, the bar-lguras in a set up like this are kind of like aboleths in that they use lots of illusions to fuck with the PCs and could be a fun encounter, but they died to Evard's hentai in the first encounter. They can leave this place via a locked door or to the south, leading to:

9: There's some stairs here that lead to the upper level that have two unlocked doors. The northern one leads to 10, while the southern to 13.

10: This room has a stone throne, and the throne covers a DC 25 Search secret passageway that leads to 12. It's also full of fiendish baboons. This uses the really silly Mob rules from DMGII, and counts as a CR 8 encounter. It moves into someone's square and automatically deals 5d6 damage and using SoDs inflicts negative levels to represent the individual creatures in it dying. It's a Gargantuan creature so it's probably hitting all of your PCs at once. This could legitimately kill them if they're confused about the Mob rules. Hell, I'm not that familiar with them. It still dies easily enough at AC 9 and 165 HP, but it can really put a hurt on the PCs.

11: This leads to a pit full of bones, flesh, blood, rags and viscera and gore and everything you expect something Chaotic Evil to keep as a feeding pit for a mob of baboons.

12: Here's the secret area from earlier underneath Olangru's throne. There are two chests that are engraved with flames. The left one is trapped with an 8d6 Fireball with a DC 14 Reflex save. For finding the place and opening the chests the PCs get 2000gp, 3000sp (oh fuck you), a left-handed ape paw made of iron, a +1 buckler, and a wand of aid with 50 charges. The paw is a key to get into 15.

13: There's a bunch of bones in here that somehow raise Balance and Tumble DCs by 2. It's the lair of a spirit naga that knows lightning bolt instead of fireball. She disguises herself as a zombie naga to make the PCs underestimate her. At DC 19 she can probably charm a few members of your party but then attacks the people that resist, which probably breaks charm person anyways.

There's a trap on the valves connected to the naga's fountain, and it's an ice storm as cast by a 7th level wizard. Turning off the valves drains the fountain and it has a right-hand iron ape's paw on the bottom. There's a copper bone that turns out to be a lesser silent metamagic rod. A DC 15 search check gets you a +1 spell storing warhammer and a potion of haste.

14: Here's the two iron ape statues that require the monkey paws. the door's held with a hold portal cast at CL 20 (and has 160hp) that is dispelled when you put the paws on the statues who are each missing a hand.

15: This is a CR 1 trap. It's full of statues that start to howl once you enter.

16: This is your showdown with Olangru if he's not dead, and if he kidnapped Urol he's dangling above the firepit in this room. There's a statue of Demogorgon at the back. Olangru hides invisibly, and uses his telekinesis to start dropping Urol towards the fire pit at 5ft per round. He charges around at the PCs.

Once he's dead there's a three round period where the Lemorian golem animates and then attacks. I guess it's going haywire if Olangru's already fucking dead? The Lemorian Golem is a CR 10 Construct with 25AC and 96HP (12HD) who has 4 tentacle attacks at +17 with a rot added onto them that deals 1d4 Con damage at DC 16 Fort. This thing is ... kind of dangerous, actually. SR 18, Construct, Grapple of +21 with improved grab, a constrict attack, and a Howl that does shaken for 1d6 rounds at a DC 18. It has two heads, each one can howl once per day. Killing this thing disperses the fog that has your PCs running in circles.

So once that's done, the PCs can finally leave the Fogmire and head south and reach Tanaroa, then Farshore. Unfortunately, getting to Farshore, the PCs spot plumes of smoke and the sounds of battle. And the Blue Nixie is docked at one of the piers, and a ship from the Crimson Fleet.

So how does this stack up? Fuck. I mean, it's not bad, but there is a definite antagonistic tone to it, especially when it comes to the PCs straight up skipping Fogmire. The tactics used by the bar-lguras are stupid and shut down by black tentacles, which kind of removes any sense of urgency from the Demogorgon's Shrine. I mean they don't even have fucking Concentration to use their SLAs while grappled. And this scenario is meant to get them to 9th level.

Doing our due diligence, the PCs reach 8th level after the encounter with the Nest Mother, assuming the diplodocus got away, and level 9 after the spirit naga, bringing them from 23236xp to 37099xp by the time this is over. So it reaches 9th level.

The worst part about this adventure is the theme seems to be repetition - you encounter terror birds, then more terror birds attacking a diplodocus, then more terror birds with a nest mother. You get ambushed by gargoyles, then gargoyles led by a chieftan. Then you have repeating bar-lgura encounters with the SAME bar-lguras over and over assuming you don't just kill them.

Recurring villains are fine. Doing it THREE TIMES in one adventure is not. This is just full of fuck and the antagonistic tone doesn't fucking help it. Good job, Jason Bulmahn. Proving that even in 2007 you were an ass.

Closing out, I'll leave you with a picture of the cabin boy, Tavey Nesk:

He's at least past adult age as an Expert 2. He attaches to the character with the most Charisma. This is the reason I play Cha-based characters!

[ishy]

So Room 3 has doors that are stuck, and require a DC 28 Strength check to open. Is anyone else just ... constantly staggered by the numbers for Attribute Checks and Skill Checks seeming to be swapped most of the time? DCs under 20 for skill checks and DCs over 20 for attribute checks are just ... fucked. Even with aid another.

Well your basic steve probably has at least 18 strength at level 7. Using a crowbar and take 20, you're already at 26, aid another for another +2 and you're done.
If you can take 20 on a check there really is no point in checks below 20.

If your backstory doesn't add anything to the game, you should scrap it.

This is the reason I'm leaving out the occasional time-out it takes to give you backstory in about a full page. Like the Isle of Dread in Here There Be Monsters, which will be finished soon, it spends two columns in three-column format telling you all about the Isle's history.

I was a bit unclear, I meant if you're writing the adventure you should scrap it. If you're writing a review posting that they wasted space and your time on irrelevant bullshit is noteworthy.

[RelentlessImp]

If your backstory doesn't add anything to the game, you should scrap it.

This is the reason I'm leaving out the occasional time-out it takes to give you backstory in about a full page. Like the Isle of Dread in Here There Be Monsters, which will be finished soon, it spends two columns in three-column format telling you all about the Isle's history.

I was a bit unclear, I meant if you're writing the adventure you should scrap it. If you're writing a review posting that they wasted space and your time on irrelevant bullshit is noteworthy.

To be honest it's hard for me to comment as I've read so many modules that do this that my eyes just slide past it. It stopped being truly offensive or even noticeable to me a long time ago.

[mlangsdorf]

The paizo forums are gaga over HTBM, fapping over how scary and creepy the bar-lgura tricks are. It's the kind of thing that makes me despair over the Paizo forums, since Hercules and Jason and the Argonauts and other 7th-9th level characters are not scared by this kind of low grade demon bullshit.

As I was running this in GURPS, I had to modify it a lot, because GURPS allows for called shots to the eyes and natural critters with eyeballs but without ranged attacks get blinded and murdered in short order in GURPS at the power level we were at. Which really isn't much different than using glitterdust against things with +1 Will saves. The point is, the terror birds had to go. As did a lot of the rest of the crap.

Another major change I made was moving the naga sorcerer from being alone in the room of bones (even disguised as a zombie, that sounds like a bad plan) to being another player in the final temple. It didn't help much in practice, but every bit helps.

I also toned down the golem a bit (melee monsters work differently in GURPS, etc) but made him unkillable as long as some artifacts where in the temple. So when he went down the first time, that just meant that the PCs had to play Calvinball with the artifacts to get them out of the room. Fun, crazy stuff. Big melee monsters, even powerful big melee monsters, are usually boring and need something to spice them up.

Overall, I really don't like HTBM. It's a boring travelogue from the unnecessary shipwreck to the awesomeness that is ToD. It'd actually work better as part of ToD, since the PCs are legitimately moving around the island and getting trapped in Fogmire would be inconveniencing. Paizo should have expanded having some alternate paths in the AP, but whatever.

[spongeknight]

I've got a small complaint about your otherwise fantastic review: you keep assuming for some reason that the PCs are competent spellcasters who target will saves. That's, like, a vanishingly small percentage of even the "optimization" community, let alone players who seriously buy and run adventures straight out of the box. I've played DnD for a dozen years straight and for the first eight or nine years I don't think anyone I played with ever played a disabling wizard. Most of these fights won't be "color spray, next" they're going to be slogfests where the dual weapon ranger, halfling rogue with a bow, blaster wizard and two hander fighter throw their numbers against bad guy numbers and try to eke out a victory. In that case, most of the early encounters go from cakewalks to actually pretty deadly. There's either lots of DM cheating or a fairly high death rate among unoptimized parties for this, I would assume.

[K]

I've always had a soft spot for Savage Tide because it re-uses the "vile" mini-setting that Dungeon put out in actual sealed pages (not just packaging) when the BOVD came out. Still my favorite issue of Dungeon.

[hogarth]

I've played DnD for a dozen years straight and for the first eight or nine years I don't think anyone I played with ever played a disabling wizard. Most of these fights won't be "color spray, next" they're going to be slogfests where the dual weapon ranger, halfling rogue with a bow, blaster wizard and two hander fighter throw their numbers against bad guy numbers and try to eke out a victory.

I wasn't going to say anything, but while we're on the subject -- I found the repeated comments on how Color Spray is awesome against boss monsters to be kind of strange.

In my experience, the very short range and awkward shape of Color Spray makes it hard to use without either (a) hitting your own party members, or (b) leaving the caster in position for a painful counterattack from the boss monster if it fails.

Now if we were talking about Glitterdust ending an encounter instead of Color Spray, I'd understand.

[RelentlessImp]

Anklets of Translocation help with the awkward positioning for color spray, and basically I'm denigrating the design philosophy behind "beatsticks good" that plagues this AP. When there actually is an interesting encounter, like the Lemorian Golem, I point it out, but it's usually in spite of everything going against the encounter designs. And yes, my personal experience of running this is coloring it because I play with moderate-to-good optimizers, and from what I remember color spray basically owned everything. If it wasn't color spray it was glitterdust or hold person. Mostly I'm just pointing out the laughable Will saves that comes from using stock monsters with Type HD - if they're not Outsiders or Dragons they just die to something that shuts them down via Will save. And that's a problem because it makes the encounters less interesting if one spell is ending the fight, whether it's color spray or glitterdust. The hilarity of a first level spell being capable of ending fights for people who have access to fourth level and now fifth level spells just appeals to me. I can lay off of it, though.

What doesn't help is how binary the encounters are, though. Either you own it with a Will save or it's immune. There have been some exceptions, like Harliss and her halfway decent saves and a build a PC might use, but overall it's "shut down by one spell" or "grind it down". Even some of the "grind it down" encounters lose to grease instead of color spray (most of the savage creatures).

EDIT: One thing to keep in mind, though, is that I'm assuming a person runs this as-is, out of the box, without changing things. While that's not necessarily true, I'm judging this thing on its own merits and its writing and its encounter design as-is. Yes, you can change things, but that's the same thing as reading comments on recipes from allrecipes.com or a similar site and seeing people say "This was great, but I changed (30-50% of the ingredients) to (something else)". Either it stands on its own or not, and so far, aside from Scenario 2, it really isn't.

EDIT 2:

I've always had a soft spot for Savage Tide because it re-uses the "vile" mini-setting that Dungeon put out in actual sealed pages (not just packaging) when the BOVD came out. Still my favorite issue of Dungeon.

I've been pondering whether or not to comment on the Isle of Dread stuff that was published in Dungeon in 2004 that was used more or less whole cloth for this path. There's a lot of references to it, and it had a lot of encounters with the Olman natives - basically people wind up playing would-be colonists in it, wiping out natives and establishing colonies. I'm not sure if it would add anything.

EDIT 3: One thing I keep forgetting to mention is the Isle of Dread was originally a blue-cover module for D&D Expert, X1, which was taken, expanded and updated by Paizo. So about 70% (from what I can tell) is lifted from a module older than people who were read Paizo's take on it. Hell, it's five years older than I am.

[RelentlessImp]

Alright, people. Here we are:

Scenario 5: Tides of Dread
by Stephen S. Greer and Gary Holian

This adventure path is talked about fondly, just like Red Hand of Doom. It uses a similar set-up - time limits and Victory Points determining how things come about in the final battle. Also it features beating the everloving shit out of Vanthus Vanderboren, assuming he didn't die in the first encounter with him. Since then, the PCs have gained 8 levels (and will have gained 9 or 10 by the end) and he's still the same, only with a type change - or, if you ran this before you had access to Tides of Dread, he was probably around the same level as Lavinia was so he went down easier.

Now, while some people will happily compare this to RHoD, Frank pointed out that RHoD is designed to be a slow grind down of the PCs that ignores a lot of things that the monsters are capable of doing and sets it up like a World of Warcraft Instance in which things wait for you to come and kill them rather than acting like intelligent creatures. The black dragon and the swamp is a perfect example of that.

This is also where Avner comes into play more strongly. I cannot see anyone letting him live this fucking long, given how it encourages you to make him out to be a colossal douchebag in situations where he is an active detriment to the party by being loud and whiny while there are motherfucking dinosaurs in the jungle.

One thing missing from the last Scenario was a Switching Sides sidebar - it's back in force. It doesn't come into play til the PCs have driven off the pirates, but once they do they find that Rowyn is already there and is arrayed against the Meravanchis (Avner's family). The Vanthus encounter plays out pretty simply by changing his desire to convert his sister to his desire to bang Rowyn.

So we open up with half a page of adventure background that doesn't mean a fucking thing to the PCs or to this adventure - basically the Isle of Dread's been a magnet for shipwrecks and one guy managed to plunder riches from it, yadda yadda yadda fucking yad-da.

The adventure hooks are characteristically weak - either the PCs are Farshore colonists (who would have to be pretty badass to survive in what is essentially Jurassic Park) or have been sent by the Affiliations last mentioned in the Savage Tide Player's Guide. It goes on to suggest that you could use this as a first-level adventure. I'm not buying it. There are fucking t-rexes and smilodons in the goddamned wilderness, first level characters going here are off the map. But it does suggest that you use the Farshore Backdrop accompanying it to make it an urban adventure for the first few levels... in a colony with a population of about 240. Yeah, that'll be really fuckin' great.

The art in this is, on the other hand, characteristically good; there's a full page spread of dinosaurs drawn by Wootten and Mahy.

Before I get into it, this is also one of the longest Scenarios and has seven parts in contrast to the four parts of the others and five parts of the sailing expedition. I'm going to try and cover it in two posts still.

Part One: The Isle of Dread
We get half a column of more backstory, which then goes on to explain things we already know about the Isle of Dread being surrounded by dangerous reefs and islets and being a jungle island. They actually give us a temperature range for the Isle of Dread, which might have been useful while we were exploring it. 64 degrees fahrenheit at the lowest, usually over 90 degrees.

We've got three different random encounter charts for Island and Peninsula Encounters, Aquatic Encounters, and Mainland Encounters. There's some encounter locations. Basically, Part One is what you refer back to once the PCs start exploring the island during this scenario, so it doesn't really add anything. Random encounters are the surest way I know to piss people off; while it works in something like Storm of Zehir, it tends to irritate people who have limited time at a gaming table being filled with percentage-based chances of having to fight shit rather than advance the plot. It's hack-n-slash grognardism that suits certain playstyles but Paizo has already, in this adventure path alone, denigrated that playstyle three times directly.

So since Part One is nothing more than "Here's some flavor and some random encounters with percentage based chances", let's move on to:

Part Two: Raiders from Rat's End
The column following the header is half a page of backstory your PCs are never going to know. The header of Defending Farshore that follows it is also shit your players are never going to know but marks a return to form of Vanthus being a dick, taking up the rest of the space. The final paragraph on the next page says the PCs come to Farshore with the attack well under way. One thing I left off from the last Scenario is that, at the end, the PCs encounter some Olman natives at Tanaroa who guide them the rest of the way to Farshore, but it's about 300 words and doesn't add much, if anything. Ostensibly, the PCs are approaching Farshore from the water in canoes, which the raiders are more or less ignoring the waterfront.

So, to save the colony from its current attack, there are five encounters the PCs have to succeed at, a lot of which are on timers. This is, as has been noted, the only way you inconvenience PCs, especially at this level - time is the only non-renewable resource the PCs have, after all.

On the other hand, they have had a day or two to play with their new fifth level spells, so they probably did binding and are now a lot stronger with their new +5 inherents to all stats. If you're like me, you pretty much said that's all that binding does that has lasting effects and that PCs can only have one bound creature to help them fight ever, otherwise this scenario just straight up breaks as chainbinding completely overwhelms everything ever.

For once, time is not a quantum factor, and the clock starts ticking the moment the PCs hit the shore. Here's the map with the following encounters:

1: Within two rounds of landing, the PCs need to break into a burning building to save a commoner 3 who tried to use some alchemist's fire to drive off pirates. She has to make Fort saves to stop herself from choking on the smoke, going unconscious, and eventually dying. DC 22 Strength checks and DC 15 Reflex saves to avoid being burned breaks the door down and saves her life. Saving her is a CR 2 reward.

2: A Wizard 5/Expert 2 is in his laboratory, who took an unlucky crit from a pirate and is unconscious. Putting aside the fact that 5d4+2d6+(Con bonus*5) (average 19+Con) HP puts him out of lucky crit range, he's stabilized but every five rounds after landing he has a 20% chance of being noticed as still alive by a passing pirate and getting stabbed to death. Saving him is a CR 2 reward.

3: We have a church being attacked by five pirates, two of which are breaking windows and taunting the people inside while three are using a battering ram to hammer down the door. There are twelve colonists, but the Church's keeper is a Cleric 6 who is off with Lavinia and the Jade Ravens in a prolonged fight with the pirates so they need the PCs' help. Every other round after the PCs hit shore, the pirates, with aid another, make a +9 Strength check vs DC 24 to knock down the doors, and once they're inside they kill one colonist every 1d4 rounds. The Pirates are Rogue 1/Fighter 1s for 5 CR2s, and saving all of the colonists is worth CR3.

4: There is a pirate chasing a woman around a building. 3d4 rounds after the PCs arrive, the woman stumbles and falls and is assaulted. She hits the guy with a piece of wood, and one round later the pirate (another rogue 1/fighter 1) kills her. Supposedly this guy is the first mate of the pirate ship.

5: There's a pirate surrounded by swordsmen, dual wielding a rapier and punch dagger. This is Slipknot Peet, the Captain of the pirate ship in the harbor and ruler of the pirates. We get some more of Slipknot Peet's backstory detailing him as a pirate that raided Sasserine, was captured, escaped, yadda fucking yadda. Once the PCs find him he and his men cut down the last of the colonists they were murdering and turn to face them. He's a Rogue 6/Dread Pirate 3 with a Will save of +2, and he has 6 more Rogue 1/Fighter 1s with him. And since they're all described as standing close together, they all get taken out by a 2nd level spell.

6: This is the Hall of Records and has been put to the torch. There are colonists screaming for help as they try to save the records, led by a Wizard 2/Rogue 1. And it's the return of Spells That Might Help You Save The Building, with quench, pyrotechnics, sleet storm putting out the fire, or haste or summon monster helping the bucket brigade, or resist energy or protection from energy making it less dangerous for the colonists to save the stuff. As was noted in Worm's Revenge in Scenario 2, having notes that help less-experienced MCs is great, as is acknowledging that magic can be useful outside of combat. Putting out the fire is worth a CR 3 reward.

So once the PCs do these six encounters in their immediate area, you're meant to make note. If they managed to do five out of six, nothing changes. If they didn't, then you subtract 500 Victory Points at the end. It plays this off as Lavinia and the Jade Ravens mirroring the PCs' success, so defending Farshore in this area is met with equal success in the rest of it.

Once that's all said and done, Lavinia and the Jade Ravens appear, who greet the PCs happily. As a note, Lavinia, like Rowyn, has gotten an art upgrade:

She's also now an aristocrat 2/Swashbuckler 6

Not long after she and the Jade Ravens show up, Avner's uncle, Lord Manthalay Meravanchi, wearing mithral chainmail (when was the last time you saw someone wearing that?) shows up. Avner greets him if alive, and a DC 20 Sense Motive check shows Manthalay's surprise is tempered with frustration and anger. So, not only does Avner's father want him out from underfoot, his uncle doesn't like him either, but the uncle is willing to accept him on the basis of family.

What follows is a roleplaying session in which Lavinia, the Jade Ravens, Lord Manthalay, and their NPC accompaniments return to the Chapel to get a report and discuss the attack. During this, Lavinia gives the PCs a big head by calling them her personal heroes as she introduces them to the town council, and explaining that the PCs are the cause for repelling the attack. This, of course, sets off lots of bad feelings among the NPCs, especially Lord Manthalay, who arrays himself against them politically - more on that later.

So the council ends as a bunch of NPCs burst in waving sheafs of paper that detail something horrible on board the pirate ship bearing the Crimson Fleet's colors - the Crimson Fleet is coming to attack Farshore.

Further, one of the pirates was captured and the PCs get to interrogate him. Meet Lefty the Pirate:

The awkwardness of the 'clean' picture meant I had to take the screenshot of the in-line picture, but this is Ben Wootten's art.

So in humorous irony Lefty the Pirate is called Lefty because he's missing his left hand. This is on par with calling a giant Tiny and a gnome Stretch. As such, it doesn't have to actually be funny. He starts out Unfriendly, and getting information out of him is a Diplomacy check, but suggests Intimidate or magic can make it easier.

At a DC 4 or lower, Lefty starts swearing at the PCs and threatens to kill them.

At DC 5 he remains Unfriendly and unresponsive.

At DC 15 he becomes Indifferent and starts begging for his life, saying he only went with the pirates because he was a coward. He responds to the Crimson Fleet by saying that they'd better not be there when they get there.

At DC 25 he becomes Friendly and admits the pirates came from Rat's End, and nobody is left to be a problem there, as Slipknot Peet (Rapier-PunchDagger) brought everyone on the attack. Unfortunately, old Peet had been in contact with the Crimson Fleet "somehow, magic" and they had promised the pirates a place in the Fleet if they scouted out Farshore. Apparently the Fleet is coming on "other business" and were planning to ransack Farshore anyways. Apparently when Peet set up the attack he said they had two months toloot and pillage and run.

At DC 40 he becomes Helpful, reveals all that, and "honestly regrets his wicked life". He begs for mercy and becomes a loyal henchman if you grant it. As to what is done with Lefty, Lavinia wants him kept alive to redeem himself if he was Friendly, or failing that, imprisoned so he can be taken back to Sasserine to answer for his crimes. Manthalay wants him executed.

So everyone is pissing their pants over the approach of the Crimson Fleet and want the PCs to help them make Farshore more defensible. For once, I am getting out the Dragon Magazine that accompanied this (#352, better known as the interview with China Mieville) to detail the improvements, as it's sort of vital here:

Now, I've been shitting on Affiliations as presented in the Savage Tide Player's Guide, but Dragon has been keeping pace with affiliation updates every so often, but they usually include an RP session between an affiliation's representative and the PC with that Affiliation and include, much like Shadowrun Missions, solo tasks that improve your Affiliation score. I've been skipping over this shit because Savage Tide has more than enough stuff going on it in as a review and going into detail on all of this would create an unreadable morass, which I'm just barely avoiding making it in the first place.

Moving on, the defensive improvements detailed in Dragon #325 are not given any hard and fast rules for interaction; those are covered in the supplement in the same Dungeon. Thus pointing people to Dragon is kind of... weird.

The Chapel needs some repairs and a Cleric-type to help pull some pressure off the Cleric 6.
The Harbor's approach needs defenses, like submerged traps.
The Infirmary's efficiency can be improved by a week of work from an experienced healer.
The Palisade could be improved by an engineer.
Building two more watchtowers would really help, one to watch the northeast and the harbor.

Further, there are efficiency improvements that could improve Farshore as a trading post.
The Wizard 5/Expert 2's lab could use someone with organizational skills, and a caster with craft feats could improve the Wizard's knowledge.
The Cemetery needs a hallow spell cast on it to defuse worries about undead.
The Clayworks needs an experienced potter to improve its efficiency.
An experienced farmer could fix up the colony's farms.
The mines south of Farshore need an experienced miner to provide some oversight.
Sellis's Woodworks and SMithy needs someone with Craft (armor) or Craft (weapons) or Craft (carpentry) to talk to the proprietor and offer advice.
Trade Routes need to be established, more importantly a convoy sent back to Sasserine to share trade goods, sea charts, and come back with supplies and more merchants. It's a six month proposition, thus outside the scope of this scenario, but it's important. No suggestions on teleporting back and arranging for people to come out.

There are then some hazardous work missions.
There's a lost village that Jeran Emrikad wants to be found.
Skinning dinosaurs and native creatures to the Isle of Dread could really help out with the tannery.
There's a band of troglodytes causing problems; wipe them out and you can get some lumber and exotic fruits.
Finally, someone's been stealing from the warehouses - put a stop to it!

Further, they want help from the Olman natives encountered at the end of the previous path that I forgot to include, at Tanaroa, and want the PCs to go on a diplomatic mission to gain their aid. Aside from them, there's other humanoids on the island and want the PCs to engage their aid - a tribe of Phanatons and a group of catlike humanoids called "rakastas" (I fondly remember saying 'Rakasta' and seeing my PCs connect the dots and say 'Fuck that'). The Rakasta are likely dead, but they may have left caches of masterwork weapons around the island at their old temples.

Supplies are a problem. Lavinia wants the PCs to go back to the Sea Wyvern wreck and retrieve the supplies, or better still, repair the Sea Wyvern to give them more of a naval force along with getting the supplies.

The Isle of Dread also has its own resources - like a tar pit to help with the defenses and repairing the ships. More interestingly, a sidebar (way back at the start of the Rat's End section) details recruiting the dinosaurs with animal handling/wild empathy/charm monster spells. Of course, there's the antagonistic tone of having the dinosaurs go wild outside of the PCs' influence if too many are recruited, which is shitty, but at least they thought of it. CR 2 or higher dinosaurs are the only ones that make a difference and you're meant to award Victory points equal to (Total CR of Dinosaurs*2) if you go this route.

My PCs recruited four T-rexes and a complement of diplodocuses and the pirates wound up shitting their pants. But I digress. Helpfully on the sidebars of a lot of the pages in this section include reprints of dinosaurs that were printed in Dragon, expanding out some of the dinosaurs available. These include the allosaurus (a CR 7, 10HD), the ankylosaurus (CR 7, 9HD), dimetrodon (CR 2, 4HD), diplodocus (CR 12, 28 HD, colossal), parasaurolophus (CR 7, 14HD), pteranodon (CR 2, 5HD), and the stegosaurus (CR 10, 20HD, huge).

So once PCs have their marching orders, Farshore is a new home base for them. The rest of it is more or less setting up the four biggest plot threads: getting help from the Olmans in Tanaroa, getting access to the tar in the tar pits, the rakasta weapon cache, and the Sea Wyvern, finishing off with the assault on Farshore by the Crimson Fleet.

Since this is so large, I'll cover the four plot threads, then the Crimson Fleet attack in two separate posts.

What I will cover here is the Supplement that came with it, that further details improvements you can make, and is accessory to the Dragon Magazine stuff.

Upgrading the Docks is worth 50VP, and takes a Knowledge (architecture and engineering) check over the course of a week. Such improvements include ballistae or sniper posts, artificial sandbars or submerged traps at the natural chokepoint leading into the harbor. Two hours a day supervising the work, DC 20 check. Failing means you need to add another week of work, with each week adding a +2 bonus to your check.

The thieving of the warehouse is being perpetrated by an ethereal filcher. Killing it is worth 0VP.

Fixing up the Palisade is worth 50VP and takes another Knowledge (architecture and engineering) check at DC 25. Failing means another week of work, each additional week adding a +2 bonus to your check.

It takes 3 weeks to do each watchtower, and is worth 50VP per watchtower for a total of 100.

The South Gate is used by the mine. A DC 25 Profession (miner) check increases the mine's efficiency, which improves Farshore's assets by 10,000gp. Worth 0VP.

Casting hallow on the cemetery is worth 25VP.

Taking care of the troglodytes increases Farshore's assets by 5000gp and ups its GP limit by 1000gp. There's 20 Troglodytes. It's worth 25VP.

Recruiting people to the militia takes a week and a DC 20 Diplomacy check, increasing the militia from 18 to 23. The asshole ranger of the Jade Ravens is a member of the Militia. This is worth 25VP, and can be done 4 times over a month, bringing the militia up to 38, but each additional success is at +5 DC from the previous.

The Vanderboren Manor section is basically saying that there's an upcoming election for mayor of Farshore. There are 80 people (out of 240) who are undecided; campaigning for Lavinia is a DC 20 diplomacy check that gets 1d10 people to vote for Lavinia, with every 10 points past 20 converting another 1d10. Failure means you push people into Meravanchi's camp. They can do the same for Meravanchi. Avner, meanwhile, does it too, with a +9 Diplomacy check. Tool.

The Clayworks can be improved with a DC 25 Craft (potttery) check, increasing the assets by 3,000gp. No VP.

The Woodworks and Smithy can be improved with a DC 25 Craft (armorsmithing, carpentry or weaponsmithing) check, increasing assets by 2,000gp per check for a total of 6,000gp. No VP.

The Tannery can be upgraded by killing megafauna and harvesting hides with a Survival check of DC 10 + creature's CR. Anything under CR 5 doesn't do anything for the tannery. Each CR 6 to 10 hide increases assets by 250gp up to 2,000gp, and CR 11 or higher increase them by 1,000gp, up to 10,000. No VP.

The tavern and inn "upgrade" is worth no VP; basically, you use it as a trading post. You send Amella off on the Blue Nixie to start the six month round trip voyage. You can use the tavern and inn to make purchases as if you were in Sasserine (40k gp limit, 31.3 million assets), but it takes six months for your goods to get there.

The Chapel upgrade can be done by anyone who can cast healing spells and takes a week to aid the Cleric 6 in healing, maintenance, sermons and other spiritual matters. A DC 20 Knowledge (religion) check increases colony morale and is worth 25VP, and can be done 8 times for a total of 200VP.

The Hall of Records "upgrade" is the one that sends you out to find a lost village. It takes a DC 30 Survival check every 1d6 days to find the ruins, and involves killing six wights. You can recover some religious artifacts, which, once Amella returns from Sasserine, increases Farshore's GP limit by 1500gp.

The Apothecary shares space with the Infirmary. The Infirmary can be upgraded with a DC 25 Heal check, and is worth 50VP.

The Wizard 5/Expert 2's Laboratory can be upgraded by taking a week and having an item creation feat, and takes a DC 25 Spellcraft check, teaching Aldwattle time-saving techniques and increasing Farshore's assets by 5,000gp.

The Farms means you bid farewell to Tavey Nesk as he's taken to farm work, and a DC 25 Profession (farmer) check increases Farshore's assets by 5,000gp.

Finally, we get an update on the Jade Ravens. The Ranger is now a Ranger 3/Fighter 4, the rogue is a Rogue 7, the dwarf druid is a druid 7, and the sorceress you saved from becoming rust monster feed is now a sorcerer 4/favored soul of Rudd 3, thus removing her from ever being competent.

And that's Farshore. Next time I'll cover the major plot threads that lead up to the attack.

[RelentlessImp]

Now, assuming your PCs don't spend the two months leading up to the Crimson Fleet's assault using lesser planar binding to just create a veritable army of 6HD outsiders (which, assuming a Cleric and Wizard work together doing this, leads to ~240 lesser planar bindings in a sixty-day period - ~720 if they do a 20 minute workday each time), the following sections are meant to be the biggest and most meaningful affects to your Victory Point total, and also to push the PCs up a few more levels.

Part Three: Zotzilaha's Wrath
Now we get some information on the Olman culture, which is the first we've had in the mainline Savage Tide path, not including the 2004 Isle of Dread or the X1 module. Olmans have a culture that is halfway between Aztec and Voodoo; each village is lead by a male, but the command of the village is a female chieftan, and they are assisted by a Zombie Master (or Mistress). Animating "walking ancestors" is an important part of protecting the Olman's underground catacombs and smacks a bit, from this reading, of pop culture voodoo.

Furthermore, there are four Olman clans: Ape, Tiger, Boar and Sea Turtle.
Each one holds their Clan's animal as their spirit animal and emulates it best they can. The Boar clan are the builders and craftsmen, the Ape clan are farmers and entertainers, the Tiger clan are hunters and gatherers, and the Sea Turtles are fishermen and sailors... so it's more of a cross between Aztec animalism and Rokugan clans.

Tanaroa has its female chieftan as a female human ranger 6, and its zombie master as a male human cleric 6.

Upon arriving in Tanaroa, the village is in the middle of a ceremony. There's the beating of drums and dancing warriors wearing large masks depicting a bat. The villagers chant at a charred bat totem at the center of a flaming pyre erected at the foot of the village's central pyramid. They're chanting "Zotzilaha."

Within moments of the PCs arriving, the effigy flashes and releases a humanoid figure covered in fur with bat wings that shrieks at the villagers "Zotzilaha hears your sniveling prayers! You would appease the Great Bat? Then return whart has been stolen or burn!" Interestingly, the bat idol found in Tamoachan in Sea Wyvern's Wake lets someone understand the creature if they're carrying it.

Then the bat sends out 7 fire bats (CR 3 elementals who only take lethal damage from cold damage) and disappears while the nearby volcano has a minor eruption. The bats start tearing up the village til the PCs attack one, upon which they all start attacking the PCs. Or they can just wait for them to disappear, upon which you can scrap the rest of this because the Olmans aren't helping the cowards. Once the assault is taken care of, the female chieftan approaches the PCs and hails them with thanks. She can't spare any warriors while Zotzilaha is angry due to having an idol of him stolen from his shrine in the northern volcano. Apparently he'll blow up the volcano and kill them if it's not returned. Turns out the bat idol from Sea Wyvern's Wake is what was stolen - and revealing you have it sends the village into a frenzy that can only be calmed by a DC 15 Diplomacy check IF they promise to return the idol. Hope they didn't sell it in Farshore or send it with Amella to be sold.

The villagers happily escort them to the Zotzilaha shrine on the slopes of the volcano. The tunnel to the shrine is at minimum 110 degrees fahrenheit and we're left to wonder if the writers bothered reading about endure elements. Anyways, severe heat otherwise. After an hour of walking, they reach the shrine.

So, that demon bitch mentioned in Sea Wyvern's Wake that is Demogorgon's sometimes-lover stole the idol to force the PCs to come here. Within 1d4+1 rounds of the PCs reaching the shrine, Zotzilaha's aspect and 7 more fire bats come to attack them. It stops attacking if they show the bat idol, but starts attacking again in four rounds if they don't replace it in the niche on the northern wall that holds an eight foot statue of Zotzilaha with empty hands that once held it. It then offers them one item from its vault. The bat statue is in fact a hidden door that can be opened by knock, Zotzilaha's will, or a DC 30 UMD check - or you can bypass it with passwall or dimension door (have I mentioned how much I appreciate when writers include shit like this for less-experienced MCs? Cause I do).

The treasures they can claim are a small wooden coffer holding 500 ancient platinum coins bearing a serpent on one side and a crown on the other, an ivory crarving of an elephant-headed humanoid gripping a tarnished scepter encrusted with jade (worth 3000gp), a wooden carving of a tiger with small sapphires for eyes, a necklace with a dragon tooth, a masterwork buckler in the shape of Olidammara's holy symbol, a +4 mithral breastplate, a flame tongue longsword, a ring of invisibility, a pearl of power (4), a stone of good luck, an amulet of natural armor +3, or a rolled up strip of leather containing a long, thin fang. The last one is a freebie, because Zotzilaha doesn't recognize it and lets them keep it regardless.

If you try to take more than one thing (not counting the leather with the fang) or if you kill the aspect and loot the place, the person who takes more than their fair share has to make a DC 30 Will save or lose 6 points of their highest ability score as a bestow curse cast by a 20th level caster. Returning the treasure lets it be broken with a remove curse or break enchantment. Doing this "right" gets you the same XP as killing the aspect of Zotzilaha, a CR 12 creature.

The tooth is one of the teeth of Dahlver-Nar from Tome of Magic, and is specifically the tooth of Ahazu. Using it involves ripping out one of your teeth and replacing it with the tooth, and gives you a Bite attack. This specific tooth, once used for a day, treats you as one size category larger than your actual size for grapple checks. This is not nearly as good as the one that gives you the dwarf ability to ignore movement penalties for medium and heavier armor, but hey. It also has the added side effect of making you cold to the touch and the inside of your mouth black, and makes you want to steal small, precious objects whenever you can. You take a -1 penalty on all checks as long as you ignore it.

Securing the aid of the Olmans by making sure they're not blown up by a volcano is worth 250 VP.

Part Four: A Trip To The Tar Pits
This is part of repairing the Sea Wyvern, the Blue Nixie, and other ships in the Farshore harbor, the palisde and other buildings. There's a well-worn foot path between Tanaroa and the tar pits, but the island's oldest and angriest dinosaur has settled in the region. 1d4 hours after patrolling the tar pits the thing, Temauhti-tecuani, roars and draws their attention, along with shrieks of pain. There's a tribe of phanatons on the island, and they use the tar pits to weather-proof their roofs and walls, and a group of tar-gatherers are being attacked by the angry dinosaur.

Temauhti-tecuani himself is an elite advanced tyrannosaurus (and is male, even though I'm pretty sure the females were supposed to be the more dangerous), a CR 11 with 25HD. Once the dinosaur spots the PCs it goes for them. Its saves are decent at Fort +22, Ref +17, and Will +11, so it's likely your PCs are going to have to fight it straight up. Killing the T-rex lets you search it, finding hundreds of arrowheads, spearheads and other projectile weapons in its scar tissue, and a +1 keen cold iron kukri lodged in the folds of scales on its right foot. 1d4 days after killing the dinosaur, the PCs gain 100VP as they secure enough tar to do all the repairs.

Meanwhile the PCs can visit the phanatons, who will escort them to their village 45 miles away. The phanatons will constantly ask the PCs about their homelands, and they will be kender-like except they'll actually return shit they take, they just wanna look at it - no pouches for them to accidentally disappear into. The phanatons, once at the village, feast the PCs with a banquet of fruits and fried insects. Speaking as someone who's eaten fried insects, properly cooked insects are fucking delicious. During the feast, a DC 20 Diplomacy check or a DC 20 Perform check makes the PCs tribe-friends, and secures phanaton aid in the upcoming battle and gets them information about locations on the island.

For one, the phanatons point the PCs towards the Temple of the Jaguar, where they can find the rakasta's masterwork weapon cache. Phanaton aid is another 200VP.

Part Five: Temple of the Jaguar
So you can locate this place if you're within five miles, and a DC 30 Survival check. The phanatons used to trade with the rakasta, so they know where it is. It used to be a temple of the rakasta, who as it turns out are not mispronounced rakshasha but instead were a tribe of werejaguars who evolved into something new.

This is another quick dungeon, so let's dive right in.

1: The temple itself is a squat ziggurat, and a DC 25 Search check of the perimeter shows signs of battle; gouges in the statues, bones of catlike humanoids, and other remnants. There's an emerald anaconda (CR 10, advanced elite giant constrictor snake) that attacks the PCs.

2: A series of statues around the central platform depict wild animals in positions of rage and territorial defense. The array of statues and pillars here are in fact a permanent illusion at CL 15. Attempting to climb the pillars to examine something is a DC 25 Reflex save or fall into a pit. It drops them into a pit of water that exposes them to blinding sickness (DC 16 1d3 day incubation, 1d4 str plus blindness disease). Climbing out is a DC 25 Climb check, DC 20 once you're past the first 20ft of the water. This counts as a CR 6 trap. At the back of the room is a series of niches in the wall that form a ladder leading to 3.

3: A sloping tunnel that is lined with statues of jaguars with gemstone eyes looking down from their perches. The statues themselves weigh 50 pounds and are worth 150gp apiece. If you just wanna take the eyes, they're lapis lazuli worth 10gp each.

4: This is the inner sanctum, where the rakastas worshiped the couatls. There's still a couatl in here, who goes invisible and uses detect thoughts to determine if the PCs should be attacked or not. If they befriend the couatl he reveals the rakasta were killed by skinwalkers from the central plateau. If he's friendly he shows the PCs how to open the cache and retrieve the masterwork weapons, but he won't help with the Crimson Fleet; he's decided to return to the outer planes and seek atonement for his failure. If attacked, he tries to use charm monster and scorching ray, or plane shift people to outer planes that matches their alignment.

The stockpile itself has 40 masterwork warclaws (spiked gauntlets), 20 masterwork longbows, 600 arrows, 10 masterwork shortspears, 10 masterwork longspears, and 30 masterwork javelins, along with 3 magic weapons: a +1 wounding war claw, a +2 evil outsider bane longbow, and a +1 holy greatsword. Delivering the masterwork weapons to Farshore is worth 200VP.

Part Six: Reclaiming the Wyvern
So rather than trek back to the Sea Wyvern along the path they came, Lavinia lets them use the Blue Nixie to sail to it. Unfortunately, a kopru named Skephilipika and his elasmosaurus animal companion have claimed it as their home. Skephilipika himself is a kopru druid 8 which makes him CR 10, with a CR 7 animal companion in the elasmosaurus. Skephilipika has been working on creating a periapt of Wisdom +4. They both attack when someone approaches the Wyvern.

Basically he's meant to attack them then run away when reduced to 20hp, where he wildshapes into a squid and jets away in the water to return to kill them while they repair the Wyvern. He probably dies in the first encounter, encountering him in water or not, even with his 104hp.

The Sea Wyvern takes one day per hull section, 9 of which are destroyed. Apparently wood shape and make whole give a +5 circumstance bonus to the repairs. There are also three rigging sections destroyed but doesn't say how one repairs them, just the hull sections.

Repairing the Sea Wyvern is worth 200VP.

So this is all basic make-work filler stuff that is, thankfully, short enough to not overstay its welcome. Yet again we have the problem of needing to fill time like this, and by this point the PCs have been working on this adventure path long enough for two separate parties to have gone from level 1 to 20 and saved the world three or four times, one after the other.

Next up: The attack.

[RelentlessImp]

So, heading into this, I've done some XP calculations. Without the random encounters you're supposed to encounter while traveling around and repairing the Wyvern, our PCs have reached 46296 experience, which means heading into this they're level 10 - possibly 11th level if they had bad luck with rolls and kept getting attacked by CR-appropriate random encounters. Let's assume 10th as we head into:

Part Seven: Crimson Sunset
If the PCs aren't in Farshore when the attack begins, they lose 400 VP. There are five ships coming in, each with a full complement of pirates, and Vanthus himself is on the flagship Brine Harlot. There's a total of 150 pirates, but the only ones the PCs encounter are involved in the mini-missions determined by how they decide to defend once the ships are on their way in.

The ships attack in four waves; they start off with ballistae and catapults, and swarm the beaches and docks with longboats. A yuan-ti named V'sesslin leading a group of flesh golems he controls joins the fight. Then they push into Farshore and drive back the defenders while the yuan-ti is flinging fireballs at the colonists. Vanthus releases vrocks. Then their last push is lead by Vanthus, attempting to kidnap or murder Lavinia.

So let's get started with the "mini-missions" of the PCs against the fleet.

The first one is a group of six pirates on their own. 6 CR 4s, Fighter 2/Rogue 2s, worth 25VP. Then 4 Flesh Golems intent on dismantling the buildings they come across, worth 100VP. Then there's V'seliss, a yuan-ti pureblood Sorcerer 9, with a pretty interesting selection of spells, and his 3 halfblood bodyguards, remaining on one of the boats to provide artillery support. Killing them is worth 100VP and scuttling the ship they were on is worth another 100. But they have to deal with a Sorcerer who knows Enervate, Animate Dead, Fly, Haste, Lightning Bolt, False Life, Mirror Image and Scorching Ray and has an SR of 23.

Scuttling the other ships are worth 100vp each and each has 7 CR 4 pirates guarding it.

Killing the vrocks Vanthus releases into the place is pretty late in the game, but they attempt to teleport in and conjure more Vrocks in then do a dance of ruin. Vrocks are one of those demons that punch above their CR, with their at-will mirror image and telekinesis and ability to summon 2d10 dretches or another vrock at 35% chance of success. Their dance of ruin, if it goes off, is pretty goddamned devastating. Killing three of them brings the party to 11th level (55805exp).

And finally, we come to Vanthus himself. He's also gotten an art upgrade:

Should have stayed with the human look, man. Goddamn.

Yes, Vanthus has been turned into a lemorian for his services to the Crimson Fleet, which makes him... a pretty shitty final boss here. We get some backstory as to how the Crimson Fleet is pretty much headed by lemorians. He comes straight for Lavinia, and probably the PCs.

Let's talk a moment about Vanthus' suitability as a final boss to this. He's an Aristocrat 1/Rogue 5/Fighter 4/Tempest 2. He has saves of +12/+10/+3. He has Evasion. He has resistance to acid, cold, electricity and fire 10, and spell resistance 22. Beating his spell resistance with color spray is difficult but not impossible (rolling an 11 or higher). You see the problem here is the same problem with believing he doesn't get fucked by the PCs in their first encounter with goddamned charm person, only that one was exacerbated by his not having spell resistance yet.

So anyways, Vanthus starts off the fight attempting to dominate his sister. Yeah. His SLAs are charm monster 3/day, command 3/day, dominate person, fear, mass suggestion and suggestion 1/day. His DCs are okay-ish (15-20). He tries to use suggestion to make the PCs abandon Lavinia so he can abduct her. He stays at range with flight. And he still doesn't do much of anything to shore up his saves.

So once your PCs bring him below 10 hp, he pulls out a shadow pearl and attempts to unleash the savage tide on Farshore. Except: Getting the pearl is a move action that provokes AoOs, anointing it with blood is a move-equivalent action, and then drops it on the ground. You can try catching it, but really, let's be honest, he's basically stunned permanently for this fight, or blinded, or anything that hits his laughable will save. Assuming this doesn't happen though, and the PCs fail to catch it with a DC 20 Reflex save, the shadow pearl breaks and begins spitting out its savage tide. First in a 20ft spread, and then after one minute, a one-mile radius. DC 15 will or become a savage creature. Letting it explode is -2000 VP and dooms Farshore.

You can stop it from exploding with a dispel magic vs a CL 20 effect, or an antimagic field, or teleporting the shadow pearl somewhere else to explode. Other presented options include shoving it into extradimensional storage space, a bead of force sphere, or a really strong bag. Yes, it's the Flour Effect. Killing Vanthus ends the assault and rewards 300VP.

Depending on the total of Victory Points, Farshore is either saved or doomed. The following adventures assume the PCs got at least 1,000VP. At 2,400 or more VP, Farshore suffers minimal losses and the Crimson Fleet pirates are absolutely slaughtered. They gain 5,000gp and Farshore's assets increase by 20,000gp (plus 5,000gp for every PC who refuses the reward). The Crimson Fleet decide not to fuck with Farshore again. PCs get an additional CR 13 reward for this.

Between 1400 and 2399, it's a victory with more loss of life on the side of Farshore (population reduced to 2d20+190) and capturing of 1d4 unscuttled ships. The Farshore's assets increase by 5,000gp, and the PCs each get 1,000gp (increasing assets by the same amount if they refuse the reward). CR 11 reward for this result.

Between 1,000 and 1,399VP, the fleet is defeated and one unscuttled ship is kept. Several named NPCs are slain (except Lavinia) and the population is reduced to 2d20+100. Assets increase by 1,000gp, each PC gets 500gp (increasing assets by the same if they refuse reward). CR 8 reward.

Between 600 and 999VP, the Fleet defeats Farshore and takes losses of their own, sack the colony and burn the buildings, then run away to regroup and recover at Rat's End. Lavinia survives, as do 1d3 of the Jade Ravens and 1d4 other named NPCs. No experience. They beat feet onto the Blue Nixie and go back to Sasserine, and the Crimson Fleet claims Farshore in 2d6 more days as a colony.

At less than 600VP, Farshore is razed to the ground after they loot everything. Anyone not killed is captured and become slaves, any heroic people are executed. If Vanthus somehow survives, he claims Lavinia as his personal slave, otherwise she gets killed with the Jade Ravens and captured PCs.

The Recovery section says it assumes that the PCs get at least 1,000VP, otherwise it can continue if the PCs learn of other Crimson Fleet operations and continue to the next adventure. If they're victorious the next few days are full of celebrations and funerals and Farshore treats the PCs as their own personal Jesuses.

Lavinia is sad at the death of Vanthus but recovers into a stronger person. He's buried in the Farshore cemetery with a lonely plot marked only by a stake with the Vanderboren family crest carved into it.

Recovering papers from the ships shows that the Crimson Fleet's been here before, to meet in a cove on the northern coast with a group referred to as the Lords of Dread. The next adventure will be to investigate.

And that's Tides of Dread. It's... okay. It's a fun little romp reminiscent of both Red Hand of Doom and a 4X. It doesn't hold up to RHoD because it's a one-off while RHoD centers an entire story arc around this concept, but it manages to get its point in and across and doesn't turn completely stupid at points. The interactions with the Olmans and the phanatons are pretty believable, and the bit of religion with the volcano and everything is enjoyable, if ever so slightly hackneyed.

I'm willing to rate this as #2 here out of what I've covered, mainly because I really liked the way Bullywug Gambit was written, while this one falls vaguely flat. I mean, it has this exotic locale full of exotic shit and doesn't do anything with it other than throw a couple of dinosaurs at you and relies way too heavily on random encounter charts. Vanthus has the potential to be a COMPLETE fucking let down in terms of 'final boss' status. And once again we ignore the PCs calling in shitloads of help over two months with which to use Lesser Planar Binding which would produce results that completely and utterly fucking skew and probably destroy any semblance of verisimilitude if you stuck to the VP chart.

By the end, without random encounters taken into account, the PCs are at, assuming a victory instead of a slaughter, 59930xp - a total victory puts them at 61055 experience, so with random encounters in play, they probably end at just over 12th level.

In closing, I just want to reiterate that the entire time elapsed, from Sasserine to this point, has been just over five and a half months - which means the world could have been standing on the brink of destruction five or six times over while PCs guided by the DMG have reached level 20 after being shit-covered peasants three times over. Large time tables are completely and utterly fucked by this time scale, and once you leave Sasserine you have nothing but a large time table, then another. The experience, when it rolls in, is keeping about pace with that scale, but the lengthy periods of time just don't take that into account. It's fucked.

Finally, I leave you with a map of Farshore:

[RelentlessImp]

Here we are; the halfway point. We've entered into the point where the PCs have access to 6th level spells; will this be taken into account by the writers? Will we see references to Planar Binding and attempting to screw PCs over if they think outside of the box? Will this be better written than Bulmahn's tripe which, admittedly, is not a high bar to cross?

Scenario 6: The Lightless Depths
by F. Wesley Schneider and James Lafond Sutter

We start off with another Switching Sides sidebar. This is probably the last one; this is where the two paths converge and stop mattering whether you're backing Lavinia or Rowyn. Well, aside from a few points later on, but this is where the two storylines converge for good or ill; what's happening is endangering everyone so it's time to rise above petty grievances and put a stop to it.

Our single adventure hook is to lure the PCs here with promises of an unexplored underground city. It goes on to tell us that The Lightless Depths and the next adventure, City of Broken Idols, are swappable. It then says "the challenges that await the PCs in City of Broken Idols are deadlier than those waiting for them in the aboleth ruins" and...

Hold up. Aboleth ruins. Is that a giant glowing "Fuck you" I see? I think it is. For those unfamiliar with aboleths, I suggest picking up a copy of Lords of Madness. Basically they are aquatic mind flayers - for a weak parallel - who remember everything any of their forebears remember, stretching back beyond even the most ancient creation mythos. They live in underground or aquatic caves that have layered permanent illusion spells to mask traps and shit. They can spit a mucus that forces you to breathe water instead of air, rendering you dead pretty quickly if you encounter them outside of Con Score rounds of water.

This is also the point where the PCs can freely teleport between Sasserine and Farshore so they're probably spending all the wealth they've gained and created by getting level-appropriate and non-idiotic gear and probably ruining the iron economy completely. So those new ubiquitous fly speeds the characters are getting - the wings of flying, the phoenix cloak, the custom magic items of continuous fly - are going to be rendered somewhat useless. This also skews any travel times listed, which I'm okay with - the less you're inclined to listen to the thing telling you to roll on random encounter charts, the better.

Honestly, there's more downtime at the start for the PCs to "settle into life at Farshore" which means more time to use Planar Binding on shit. It's reasons like this I appreciate the Wish Economy in Tome from keeping things from getting completely fucked, but as said before I'm looking at this as if it were being run straight, right out of the box, and applying PC mentalities to it. The game has broken at this point, but we'll pretend it hasn't. Let's move on to:

Part One: Negotiating With Monsters
Before getting into this, there's a sidebar I want to address. Directing the Adventure directly points out divinations are a thing PCs might use to get information. That's great. No discouragement, only an encouragement that you use the information they get to encourage them to investigate the aboleth ruins first. And definitely no 'fuck them over' advice like Bulmahn advised. I'm giving these two a definite point in their favor. (Though suggesting PCs go into an aboleth-controlled anything is kind of a 'fuck you' bit of advice, but I'll let it slide for now.)

So at some point when the PCs are ready to continue the journey, Lavinia invites them over for breakfast. Basically Meravanchi (the Uncle) is trying to use the attack by the Crimson Fleet and Vanthus' involvement to destabilize Lavinia's power. She doesn't want that handled - instead, she wants the PCs to travel to the north coast of the island and negotiate with a giant CR 16 Dragon Turtle that the Crimson Fleet's bought off to leave their ships alone and get the PCs to strike a similar bargain - or kill him. Meravanchi refuses to negotiate with monsters, so Lavinia once again wins the award for most logical NPC in this adventure path.

Also, they've found out that the Crimson Fleet is meeting in the cove mentioned last time (Gallivant Cove) with someone called The Lords of Dread to purchase large quantities of shadow pearls, which Lavinia has put two and two together and links the name of the item with the thing that caused Kraken's Cove to go apeshit and the thing that Vanthus tried to fuck you over with last time.

There follows some questions and there's a suggested question of how much the PCs will be paid to do this and Lavinia offers 1000gp each - but come ON they're fucking eleventh level they can make their own goddamned wealth. Out of fucking nothing. They shouldn't even think of absconding with the wealth and treasures that Lavinia has gathered to offer him - fuck, they should be plane shifting over to the Elemental Plane of Earth and summoning xorns to ferret out priceless diamonds to bribe the fucker with. That's a better offer than the 16,000gp worth of treasure she wants to give to the turtle, a lot of which has sentimental value to her.

It wants you to take the ship around the island to the cove to bargain with the Dragon Turtle, Emraag The Glutton. The adventure goes on to point out that Dragon #144 has a Savage Tidings column that has a random encounter chart for the trip.

Another point for these writers is they suggest that if the party has teleport magic and portable holes they can say 'fuck it' to the ship and just go themselves. They don't go far enough, though - the PCs are literally shitting gold and priceless gems if they want to be, but no mention of that is made. Okay, you can't think of everything, but come on, this is D&D Crazytown.

There's a couple of encounters the Sea Wyvern can come across; a shipwreck that wants you to roll 1d4 to see if the PCs come across 750gp worth of supplies, two ghost fighter 5s, a 5d6 trap, or a random minor magic item or wand guarded by a giant octopus.

There's a roc that divebombs the ship for funsies. There's a school of six great white sharks (huge sharks) frenzying over a squid carcass with a dire shark waiting for more prey underneath them. And there's a pleiosaur who tries to abduct a PC and take them under so he can eat them in peace.

Reaching Gallivant Cove, Lavinia provided the PCs with a sea skirl, which is basically a digeridoo meant to be played with one end in the water. Playing it summons Emraag the Glutton. A DC 20 Perform check with this makes him start Indifferent, otherwise he starts out Hostile.

If he starts out Hostile the PCs have 1d6 rounds to bribe him and make a rushed Diplomacy check, otherwise he gives them 1d3 minutes, allowing one per minute. Friendly allows the Sea Wyvern to come and go, helpful allows Farshore's ships to come and go. There's a table of modifiers - the bribe's worth a +10, referring to it as tribute is another +5, flattering him is worth a +4, playing the sea skirl with a DC 24+ result is a +2, and every 5000gp they add to the tribute is worth +1. Suggesting he's not all-powerful is worth a -8, referring to the bribe as a bribe is worth -5, playing the skirl with a DC under 24 is a -2, and every check you make adds a -4 cumulative penalty. Assuming the PCs make him helpful, he lets the ships of Farshore pass for a year, with an option to extend with more tribute once that year is up.

If the PCs have more questions Emraag directs them to a tribe of degenerate troglodytes that the Crimson Fleet went to meet with, on the southernmost shore of Gallivant Cove.

If they fight Emraag he's an Advanced Dragon Turtle that is CR 16, with 25HD. Killing him nets you 90,000gp worth of treasure if you dive down and find it. It suggests developing it into a sidequest.

Securing safe passage or killing Emraag gets the same XP - a CR 16 encounter XP reward.

Part Two: Dread Descent
So basically this is going through tunnels about two miles down to reach Golismorga. Here's a map of the path they're meant to take:

A is where the Troglodytes live. They're infected with a disease at DC 19; failing it twice gives a person +2 natural armor as their skin thickens. Failing it the third and subsequent times adds +1 natural armor and -2 Dexterity til their overgrown skin suffocates them. The troglodytes are all infected, but they have a poultice that keeps the disease from progressing past their current infection stage (3 steps). In fact, the poultice stops the progression of any non-magical disease for 24 hours, but is pretty disgusting to make; slime and mold from the tunnels the PCs are going down has to be steeped in the corpse of a diseased creature. Blech.

Here's a map of A:

Let's get on with it.

A1: The pier is constructed of bones and driftwood. The spears (dots to either side of the pier) have human and troglodyte heads on them, and are used as torches burning with a mixture of mold, plants and troglodyte musk glands. Going with 15ft forces a DC 16 Fort save or be nauseated while within 15ft and for 2d6 rounds after.

A2: The entrance to the caves is barred by a hardness 10, 30hp gate that takes a full round to open or close. Beyond it is an advanced elite dimetrodon infected with vile rigidity (the aforementioned disease). It's a CR7 with 12HD that attacks if you move more than 10ft into the cave.

The dimetrodon 'barks' at the PCs until attacking them, and if they don't provoke the dinosaur, the troglodytes eventually show up. They apparently have problems telling one humanoid from another so they assume the PCs (if they haven't killed the dinosaur) are the Crimson Fleet, unusually early as they have just recently given shadow pearls over to the Fleet. So long as the PCs don't give the troglodytes any reason to believe they're not Crimson Fleet, the troglodytes will talk to them and give them information - like they've been doing this trade for two years, and are paid in drugs, trinkets, and slaves. Most of the slaves go below to the "Lords of Dread".

If the PCs piss off the troglodytes, blow their bluff, or kill the dinosaur, the troglodytes retreat to A3 and prepare to fight.

A3: Four Troglodyte Rogue 1/Cleric 3s for CR4. Three CR4s shouldn't be any problem for any level 11 party, which means the moment it turns bad against them - assuming they're not locked down by BFC spells - they run for A4 to alert the rest of the tribe. One interesting thing of the fight is there's a jar near A2 filled with green slime, and on the second round of combat they shatter the jar to coat anyone within 5ft in the acidic slime.

A4: Cave painting tunnel leading to B, the Troglodyte cavern-city of Laogroat. This takes us 180ft below sea level.

Here's a map of Laogroat:

So, B1 is basically all the rings of stones, each of which contains 4 troglodytes deep in the throes of vile rigidity, and they don't contribute to the defense of the cave, so the PCs can kill them or leave them be. This is a community of 50 troglodytes that is slowly dying, so taking out 44 standard troglodytes with no minimal resistance (only attack if attacked) probably shouldn't be worth much XP.

B2 contains a Troglodyte priest who has an entire page devoted to his backstory, which basically boils down to him not being diseased and being a pariah after being blackmailed by an ancient aboleth. B2 is ostensibly the troglodyte prison and the priest is visited daily to be yelled at for being healthy. There's also an Olman warrior here affected by feeblemind who is detailed in Dragon #354 but basically if you heal him of his feeblemind (and his vile rigidity) he escapes and promises to give the PCs some information once they return from the Lightless Depths. The Troglodyte priest (Irgzid Uzeye) is a Rogue 3/Cleric 4 who will lead the PCs to B6 if they free him, but probably draws the attention of the enemies in B5 while doing it.

B3 is the charnel pit, full of troglodyte corpses dead from vile rigidity.

B4 is the altar to the troglodytes' god, Laogzed. There are 6 Troglodyte Rogue 1/Cleric 3s here who attack once the altar is approached, drawing the troglodytes in B5 within 1d3 rounds.

B5 is the priests' warren, which is full of immobolized troglodyte clerics and 6 more Rogue 1/Cleric 3s attending their elders who attack the PCs on sight.

B6 is a lift that leads down further. If Irgzid is with them he tells them the source of the shadow pearls is down the shaft, leading to C.

C (510ft below sea level) is basically a chamber full of 40ft deep pools of milky liquid that, splashed on someone, deals 1d6 acid damage and being fully immersed deals 10d6 acid damage. Moving through the cave means people have to make DC 13 Fortitude checks or take 1 Con/1d4 Con damage from the inhaled poison.

There is also an elder black pudding who makes this his home that attacks anyone that enters.

D (960ft below sea level) has no map, but is a seventy foot wide cavern full of stalactites and a roper. The roper can be pacified with Diplomacy or Intimidate and 1,000gp in gems. Killing him nets you 43 platinum, 500gp worth of garnets, and a DC 20 search check gets one of: an ivory scepter worth 1200gp, a +1 disruption flail, a cloak of protection +3, or a staff of frost with 24 charges.

E (1,800ft below sea level) also has no map, and is actually described kind of prettily. Also kind of horrifyingly. I'll include the description:

The wall of light is the Cerulean Curtain, a shell of energy that encircles the aboleth city of Golismorga. Passing through it automatically dispels any mind-affecting effects, and it blocks Line of Effect for the same. It also stops freely flowing water from passing past a certain volume, keeping it from flooding the caverns. The Olman warrior spirits passing through it are those who gave their lives to erect the curtain.

F (2,100ft below sea level) also has no map. The path splits here into a 30ft wide passage to the south and a 20ft wide to the west. A DC 20 Survival check made by someone with Track ... is a typo, as it says "the amount of traffic heading down the 20ft wide tunnel is much more than the trickle heading west". Parsing that is beyond me right now. If Irgzid is with the PCs he explains the southern passage is where the troglodytes meet with the Lords of Dread for the shadow pearls and that the western path is a tangled maze that leads to a secluded settlement called Barbas, which is meant to be a friendly settlement to the PCs.

F2, once you get past the maze leading to Barbas, leads to one final thing before you get there: a group of 6 hook horrors that are the pets of Barbas who make an awful racket whenever anyone approaches Barbas and alert the people of Barbas who line the walls of the city. The PCs can talk the people into letting them pass, while killing the hook horrors makes them flee into their homes.

G is Barbas itself, 1,600ft below sea level. It has a map associated with it:

So, Barbas is basically a city full of mongrelfolk, that had originally been comprised of escaped aboleth slaves of Olman, lizardfolk, rakasta, phanatons and bullywugs. Over the generations they've sort of homogenized due to interbreeding. Also I'm assuming inbreeding. There are lizardfolk and troglodytes who arrived in sufficient number to keep breeding down the generations and remain lizardfolk and troglodytes, but the rest by this point are mongrelfolk. The leader of Barbas is a mongrelfolk expert 3/wizard 2.

G1 is the town hall, G2 is a store called Store, but Barbas has a 100gp limit so. G3 is a shrine to Mictlantecuhtli, the Olman god of death. The villagers worship him as the "snake father".

G4 is is a public hall used for public events such as funerals and weddings. A male lizardfolk expert 2 is the master of ceremonies here.

G5 is a community nursery where all the children are raised by mongrelfolk midwives and tutors til they're 14. This leads to a quirk of the citizens referring to their elders as "Mother" and "Father".

G6 is a communal forge.

G7 is a pond that is filled every day by the clerics of the city casting create water to refill the water supply.

So upon reaching Barbas, the PCs are drawn to talk to the leader Vertram, the mongrelfolk expert 3/wizard 2, who invites them to dinner. What he has to say basically boils down to hearing portents and whispers that Barbas is doomed (I guess because he's meant to be a diviner?) and he believes that the Lords of Dread have become active. Once that's done, he asks the PCs if they'd like to see one of the "demon fish", where he leads them to H. Once the PCs leave, they see the citizens gathering their things, preparing to leave; Vertram intends to lead his people out of the caverns and to the surface once the PCs are gone, as he believes Barbas is unequivocally doomed.

H (2,300ft below sea level) is one edge of the Cerulean Curtain, beyond which the PCs can see that it's holding back an unbelievable amount of water. There's a hibernating aboleth here that the PCs gain 0 experience for killing because it's defenseless, apparently.

I (4,000ft below sea level) holds the other half of Irgzid's backstory, as it's a flooded temple in which the aboleth blackmailing Irgzid makes its lair. It's also where the troglodytes meet with the Lords of Dread to trade for shadow pearls. His half takes up half a page, but basically he was trapped here when the Cerulean Curtain drove the water from the caves. Once the aboleth, N'glothnoru, becomes aware of the PCs, he uses veil to disguise himself as a ghostly troglodyte priest, then project image to manifest an image of its disguise atop the eastern balcony of the temple.

If Irgzid is with them, he moves to the center of the chamber and addresses the "ghost" saying that he brought the ones the aboleth asked for. It tells them the Cerulean Curtain needs to be destroyed, and that the anchor for it lays in Golismorga and is somehow connected to the Olman god of rain, Tlaloc - incidentally the first Olman god mentioned that won't cause you to dislocate your jaw trying to pronounce.

It attempts to bullshit the PCs or give them a portion of the truth of the Curtain's anchor or tries to convince them that flooding Golismorga is the only way to stop the oncoming onslaught from the inhabitants of Golismorga. I think this is the first point where the PCs learn that Golismorga is an aboleth city, but it's currently inhabited by kopru.

If the PCs attack N'glothnoru, he's an Elite aboleth who can't use his Enslave ability due to the kopru mastering aboleth glyph magic and applying a glyph of suppression to the temple to lock it away before they used a decanter of endless water to wake N'glothnoru. Actually talking to N'glothnoru and buying his bullshit and learning about Tlaloc's Tear (anchor for the Cerulean Curtain) is worth a CR 9 reward, as opposed to the CR 8 you'd get for killing him.

J (7,000ft below sea level) has a map associated with it again:

Basically a series of natural bridges that require a DC 12 Balance check to fight or run on, and failing by 5 or more causes you to slip down 40ft into pits full of rubble. There are six hibernating aboleth here... and three blackfang rhagodessa who attack the moment someone enters. They're CR 9 vermin, and are more or less just 9HD versions of the regular rhagodessa.

Augh. Descending is a lot of empty rooms, a shitty village, and an interesting idea in the Cerulean Curtain. The backstory is interesting but the PCs only interact with it peripherally with the hibernating aboleths and learning that Tlaloc's Tear is the anchor for the curtain. The village is actually kind of interesting in that it provided a group of mostly mongrelfolk who provide information but jesus christ there is so much space wasted in this scenario so far given over to backstories that are "centuries ago" that feels a lot like filler since it doesn't really come into play at all for the PCs outside of the hibernating aboleth and Galismorga as an abandoned city now inhabited by kopru - which could have been explained in maybe a paragraph rather than eating up page space with all of this shit. It's nicely written, don't get me wrong, but really?

[ishy]

This is Slipknot Peet, the Captain of the pirate ship in the harbor and ruler of the pirates. We get some more of Slipknot Peet's backstory detailing him as a pirate that raided Sasserine, was captured, escaped, yadda fucking yadda.

I hope his backstory was at least very metal.

The thieving of the warehouse is being perpetrated by an ethereal filcher. Killing it is worth 0VP.

Is that a typo or are the PCs bothered for a 22 hp creature for no reason?

If you try to take more than one thing (not counting the leather with the fang) or if you kill the aspect and loot the place, the person who takes more than their fair share has to make a DC 30 Will save or lose 6 points of their highest ability score as a bestow curse cast by a 20th level caster. Returning the treasure lets it be broken with a remove curse or break enchantment.

Wouldn't a break enchantment break the curse even if they did not return the treasure? Since that is what break enchantment is for.

The path splits here into a 30ft wide passage to the south and a 20ft wide to the west. A DC 20 Survival check made by someone with Track ... is a typo, as it says "the amount of traffic heading down the 20ft wide tunnel is much more than the trickle heading west". Parsing that is beyond me right now.

Yeah, I sure hope it is a typo. Requiring people to have track to see the road more travelled is just a dick move.