The Gaming Den

hyzmarca wrote:Here's a question that is sort of important. What the hell happens if you deliberately decide to let Cauldron flood?

The city suffers unspecified "extensive damage", but there's nothing in Flood Season that really ties in to the rest of the adventure path. It's pretty pointless. You can just skip to the next adventure (which is slightly more relevant to the main plot).

It's been nearly 2 years since I started this review. And guess what? I'm coming back to it, because I'm being forced to play Shadowrun 5E AND Pathfinder if I want any games, so I have some fucking vitriol to unleash. So, here we fucking go, right back here to Paizo's very first Adventure Path, Shackled City. I've reread what has come before, so I'm geared up and ready to go.

Chapter Four: Zenith Trajectory
By David Noonan

You guys PROBABLY recognize this guy's name. He was one of the Big Designers of 3E, and was part of the Flywheel team for D&D 4E, as well as one of the "eVoices" on WotC's D&D Podcast. He was "let go" from WotC in 2008 with the mass firings that were going on at the time. More recently, he worked on the westernization of Aion, and then moved on to be one of the lead creative writers for TERA. He has writing credits for a huge number of 3E and 3.5 books, as well as Kingdoms of Kalamar, the only "second-party" campaign setting published, and helped to design the steaming pile of fuck that was d20 Modern and Future. Also helped with one of the more reviled editions of Magic: the Gathering, 7th Edition (second-hand information on its reviled state - not actually being an MtG player myself, though a lover of the lore). You can find a complete list of the books he was credited on his Wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Noo ... _designer) ) so you can make up your mind whether or not this is going to be fuckawful.

Personally, I see Manual of the Planes, on which he did the editing and design work, as well as credits for Deities & Demigods, Complete Warrior, Planar Handbook, and Tome of Magic, all of which are worse than nothing, but also credits for some of my favorite 3.5 supplements (Races of series, It's Wet/Cold/Hot outside, Book of Vile Darkness, and Five Nations, which has my favorite most thematic PRC in the Bone Knight) so I am of mixed feelings as to how to feel about this man.

Oh wait. He was one of the core designers of 4E and one of the shills on that podcast. Hate. I have hate.

Starting up, we have about half a page of backstory setting the stage about how a Dwarven Defender (Zenith) took a small army of dwarves and marched into the Underdark, intent on saving them from evil. "But the Underdark didn't want to be saved" might actually be one of my favorite lines in any Adventure Path, ever. Anyways, losing friends to the typical Underdark threats - derro, illithid, etc - drove him insane, and his insanity granted him clarity - a vision from the Smoking Eye, that led him to march his army to a kuo-toan fortress where they were captured easily by the inbred fishmen. Apparently the vision gave him knowledge of how to speak kuo-toan, and him babbling like a lunatic in their language stopped them killing him, especially when he was prophesying the death of their leader, and lo and behold it came to pass not even 24 hours later.

Now, the insane dwarf is the kuo-toans' leader, gibbering insanely and directing them commit greater and greater atrocities, and his prophetic visions have made the fishmen venerate and worship him. But it turns out the Smoking Eye, giving him his prophetic visions, are actually the mad dreams of a sleeping demon prince named Adimarchus.

You know what? This is fucking metal. A. Fucking. Plus. I love the concept, I love the execution in the backstory, I love that the inbred fishmen are shown to be the inbred idiots that they are. I love the mental image of a raving, bedraggled dwarf, once a paragon of the dwarven race, reduced to a screeching madman directing around his inbred army through visions. Possibly while carried on their shoulders atop a throne of skulls. There are no more words I can layer praise on this idea, so let's move on.

The other half of the page is a quick high-level overview of how the adventure is meant to go and get the PCs involved. Vhalantru needs Zenith, but doesn't know it yet, and he hopes presenting the Shackleborn he's kidnapped to the Cagewrights and get favor from them when they open the gates to Carceri. Zenith is the thirteenth Cagewright needed, so Vhalantru decides to get rid of the PCs by sending them after Zenith for him. It's a win-win for the beholder; if the PCs succeed, he gets a massive bargaining chip in his dealings with the Cagewrights by having the final Shackleborn they need. If they die, well, fuck it, one less party of adventurers to threaten him.

Annnnnnnnnnd here we go again with some stupidity. Again. Vhalantru is a fucking advanced beholder with a 13th-level Transmuter at his beck and call. Buy her a fucking scroll of Shapechange or something, she can go Godzilla on the kuo-toa's asses, this can be over in like, an hour, tops. But maybe that's Plan B and he's more interested in seeing the PCs fail.

Anyways, Vhalantru's not just going to offer the PCs this job out right, oh no, they want them to go lean on a merchant not paying their taxes, and that eventually leads one way or another into the mission to fetch Zenith.

Anyways, before we get to that, we get a sidebar that says that "several weeks" should pass between the previous adventure and this one. It then tells Mister Cavern to dictate spell selections for the spellcasters for "a day spent running errands in town" but modifies that with "keeping in mind Cauldron hasn't been the safest place lately". Also there's tacit permission to use Leadership, as it suggests using the downtime as a way to work Cohorts and Followers into the story.

...I'm not sure I can do this, there's not enough to rip in to so far, but we'll see moving forward. Anyways, the adventure starts with roll initiative. Vhalantru's monitoring them and decides the very first action of this Adventure Path is to sic a fiendish umber hulk on them, smashing through doors and walls and charging right for the PCs. There's a map, but I can't be assed for a single set-piece of merchanting stalls and civilians and everything. Basically, it all boils down to: Difficult terrain (screaming, panicked crowd), potential for a Surprise round to take actions in (DC 20 Listen check, though fuck, the umberhulk's burrowed), and the umber hulk's more interested in smashing shit than engaging the PCs, thus them only requiring to make their Will saves at the start of their turns.

To be honest, this is not a bad encounter. Interrupt city life with a sudden threat of an honest-to-goodness threat that has a mildly interesting ability (confusion gaze) that can turn everything into a clusterfuck. It doesn't charge straight for the PCs to savage them, it wrecks shit, burrows into the ground at 35 and 15hp to emerge into other buildings to wreck shit before moving into the street again. It's solid. The tactics are good, the advice is decent, and there's even some city guard reinforcements worked into it.

Thennnnnn we get to some stupid. There's a seamstress with a newborn who screams for help from her second-story window, then she SETS HER BABY ON THE WINDOWSILL and runs into the apartment to hide. There's a chance of the baby working its way free of its swaddling and falling to its death on the cobblestones below. There's a fruit merchant refusing to leave his cart (believable) and the PCs can help him get his heavy as fuck cart out of the way of danger. There's a thief who uses the confusion to ransack some warehouses and steal some shit. And then there's the Magical Threats Agency, a recently-established group of wizards that the city leaders have put together in light of recent events. They run out from their nearby precinct, cast shield and blur while they assess the scene, then lay into the umber hulk with their wands of magic missile (no number after to indicate the level). If the PCs are being effective, they'll offer to buff them with scrolls of haste and fly, and try to coordinate with the adventurers to lure it into an alley so they can lock it down with web spells.

You know what? This encounter is fucking great. Aside from the stupid woman probably killing her goddamned newborn. Noonan, were you actually trying to make things better in the days of 4E? This 2003-you has impressed me with the first outing of this adventure path. Just... solid marks with one little ding. I'm sure the rest of this will be AWFUL, because it's still a Paizo publication, but goddamn.

Anyways, I'm calling it here, because I need to reset my fucking brain after how shockingly good this encounter was. I'll be back with your delayed vitriol after these messages.

Continuing on, after the fiendish umber hulk is put down, the city watch swarms and locks down the area like a modern police force. And I do mean exactly like a modern police force; they take a statement from the PCs, thanks them, and tells them a representative of the mayor's office will be in touch with them, "probably tomorrow". In the meantime they get to wander around, examine the crime scene, and question witnesses, the Watch allowing them to do this until they piss them off, and they're certainly not going to escort them to anyone who's left the scene so far.

Also, I read ahead quite a bit into this one, and I've got my rage back. Oh, dearie me, Noonan, I have my rage back. Anyways, the PCs can investigate the original place the umber hulk emerged, a warehouse belonging to a merchant named Maavu, who Vhalantru begins running a smear campaign on shortly afterwards since Maavu is nowhere to be found. Maavu is the merchant that Vhalantru hasn't been getting his TAAAAAAAAAAAXES from, so now that he's gone, he's just going to make sure the guy can't operate in Cauldron any longer.

Shortly after the PCs get all they want out of the rumormongering and investimagation aspect, they're approached by a "beautiful woman" identifying herself as Celeste, who gives them a card and asks them to dinner for a business opportunity. She refuses to answer any questions, and the card has calligraphy reading "Cusp of Sunrise/Obsidian Avenue Northeast". Turns out the 'Cusp of Sunrise' is an invitation-only dinner club and inn for nobles, and now the PCs have an invite. I guess they're supposed to care? They're sixth level, they don't, they sleep in rope tricks.

Spoilers time, Celeste is actually a ghaele eladrin, from back before Eladrin turned into "Elves, but better" in the way that elves are "humans, but better". Do you know what ghaeles are? They're 10HD Outsiders that automatically cast spells as 14th level clerics with a bunch of really fucking amazing SLAs. She's also a goddamned agent of an even higher-level archmage who lives to the North. Ostensibly, she's here trying to uncover the "source of corruption" in Cauldron, and she "thinks Vhalantru might be dirty", which is why she's undercover as one of Vhalantru's agents. And all that keeps her true nature from being revealed?

A disguise self spell. Now we're back to the stupidity I've come to know and love from Paizo APs. Ah, it's like a security blanket of failure. And we've got more coming up!

So the PCs of course go to the nobles-only, invite-only club to meet, because it's the only lead the AP gives them to follow up on what the fuck's going on. Because, honestly, the umber hulk attack out of nowhere, while a beautifully written encounter, doesn't lead to shit. They're left alone for a bit to browse what the place has to offer. Gambling with a terrible game called "gem-snatcher" that involves rolling 1s on increasingly larger die sizes until you reach 20 and the number you roll on that d20 is how many coins everyone at the table pays you, denomination determined by the table you're at (gold, platinum, and ingot, ingot being small ingots of platinum worth 100gp, which means you can get a couple thousand gold).

You can chat with nobles, you can play a harpsichord and... oh god. This is not the way skills work. DCs are supposed to increase for the difficulty of the task. Because the nobles are goddamned grognards who don't like anything new DCs for Perform checks on the harpsichord are increased by 4 and fuck that nonsense. At least it's masterwork? Ugh.

About the only thing you interact with that has ANYTHING to do with the plot is the club's library, which has a shitload of genealogical data, because the Cagewrights have been researching the family histories of those born with the Carcerian Sign (the maguffin-people) in case it's inherited. Anyways, once the players are done with all the bullshit they can ostensibly interact with, we get to the meeting with Celeste and an ancient, wizened dwarf. Who is actually a doppelganger rogue in disguise who's tagged himself with a wand of glibness so he can bald-faced lie with a +54 Bluff check.

Noonan. What happens when zone of truth beats his +6 Will save and the DC22 on the glibness effect?

404. Text not found. Sigh. I had high hopes. Anyways, a Q&A session follows in which the PCs find that the "ancient dwarf" (and the doppelganger is at least using the real name of Zenith's father) is "cursed by a wasting disease" for "disowning his three children" and want the PCs to find his "only remaining son" and bring him home. He offers 4,000gp each, or 6,000gp in equivalent arms and armor from the finest craftsmen of his clan, and will go up to 6,000gp or 9,000 in dwarven weapons and armor at which point he gets super angry. Nice reference to doppelgangers playing their roles to the hilt, I guess? Anyways, the doppelganger's actually in service to Vhalantru, so of course he's trying to point the PCs to the Underdark so they die.

The ultimate culmination to this is the doppelganger and Celeste giving them a map to "Crazy Jared's hut", some forty miles north of Cauldron, because he's the only one who knows exactly where the nearest entrance into the Underdark is. Also as an added 'benefit' the PCs are supposed to care that Celeste will sponsor their membership to the club. Also they'll alert the party that another group, that group of jumped-up noble pricks from earlier, is already trying to find Zenith.

There's a lot wrong with this, and I don't think I need to go into too much detail. Not even considering a zone of truth as shutting this fucking down is a massive omission, a ghaele eladrin could do all of this but of course she's just waiting to see if the PCs are capable so she can use them as tools against the corruption of Cauldron, and the doppelganger has a +6 Will save. Also more of those fucking noble asshole kids that should have been butchered.

Anyways, the map to "Crazy Jared's Hut" is pretty inaccurate and they've gotta search most of the mountainside to find it. As soon as they arrive, a young red dragon is expanding his claim on his territory, and he's starting with Crazy Jarred's hut. Jarred is a human bard 10 that is nuttier than a fucking fruitbat, who thinks he's the sovereign of a nation called Anduria, always at war with Eurasia Kheltos. Anyways, the fight with Gotrrod, the young red dragon, is... shockingly, decent advice, considering most published modules force them to land and use their claw/claw/bite/wing routine. Gotrrod instead strafes the area with his breath weapon til he takes "too much" damage from ranged weapons and spells, or if there's no opposition, at which point he lands. Of course, this just means at least SOME people involved with 3.5 were well aware of the dragon type's [Awesome] tag then pretended it didn't exist.

Skipping ahead to Appendix 4 for Gotrrod. Ugh, it's alphabetical, which I guess is nice for people just wanting to find something by name, but it'd be better to have this in the order they appear. Actually, no, you know what? It'd be nice to have them APPEAR IN THE FUCKING TEXT THEY APPEAR IN and then have a neat little appendix later that collects the raw stats and points you back to the page they appear on. Just like the goddamned MAPS that would have been nice to have AS YOU'RE MEANT TO USE THEM in this "easy to use" collection.

Anyways, Gotrrod is a fairly standard young red dragon, I don't really see anything out of the ordinary except his spell selection (CLW, mage armor for 1st level). That's ... unusual, really. I never really see ANYONE pay attention to the fact that some dragons (blue, red, brass, bronze, copper, gold, silver) can cast cleric spells as arcane spells, and hell, I had to double-check to see that Red and Blue are the only chromatics that can do it while that's largely the domain of metallics.

Continuing on, I guess you kill Gotrrod, because the strafing-landing thing is all that this text says about Gotrrod's part of the fight. Jerrod uses Inspire Courage throughout, and the MC is meant to make up an 'epic poem' on the spot that details how the PCs are doing in the fight, even if they're losing. Afterwards, Jared' presents himself as even more insane as he uses hallucinatory terrain to make the surrounding space look like his "Kingdom of Anduria" and introduces himself as King Jared IV. But it's a benign-ish form of insanity, as he's helpful to the PCs and will gladly cast any spell he knows for their benefit, including stuff like legend lore. He'll gladly point them towards the entrance of the Underdark, lamenting that he sent "five thousand of Anduria's finest" to combat an incursion by the illithid.

He'll also freely admit that he's probably insane - "It is said that the royal blood of my family is tainted with a touch of madness. Too much inbreeding in a bygone age, I suppose. We'll just have to get along, knowing that our perceptions differ in certain minor ways."

You know what? I like Jared. He's written decently, is inoffensive, and goes out of his way to be helpful. It's so easy to take insanity and have them turn hostile. It's a lot harder to make madness seem sympathetic, believable, and actually sort of endearing. A+ on Jared. Though going out of your way to say his madness can't be cured, even with wish, is a bit much.

Forward, the entrance to the Underdark is guarded by a seven-headed cryohydra that does hit-and-run tactics, hiding mostly in the fissure that leads into the Underdark and breathing its frost at the landing above it, until the PCs reach the next landing down at which point it snaps at them. It's a cryohydra, its tactics are pretty fucking simple, but there's great advice about "Hydras are complicated monsters, so it's a good idea to study their entry in the Monster Manual before running this encounter". Good. Don't point us at your Appendix 4 in this collection any more.

I'll cover the Underdark later, as the PCs get to immediately enter it after dealing with the cryohydra. So far, this is probably the best-written part of this AP, which coming out of someone who would later be one of 4E's frontmen and biggest shills and proponent of the MMO "role protection" in 4E, is kind of shocking. There's still some flagrant rules disregards, though, and awful omissions.

RelentlessImp wrote:Noonan. Glibness doesn't get you around zone of truth the way you think it does. Seriously, the glibness is for "in case the characters employ truth-detecting magic". Unless there was a massive difference between 3E and 3.5 zone of truth, that's not going to do SHIT if he fails his Will save and just straight up can't fucking lie.
[...]
There's still some flagrant rules disregards, though, and awful omissions. Glibness doesn't beat truth magic, damnit. -.-

Unless there's a 3.0 version of glibness you're using that I'm not aware of, I'm not sure where you're getting that impression. The second part of the glibness description explicitly says:

If a divination is attempted against you that would detect your lies or force you to speak the truth (such as discern lies or zone of truth), the caster of the divination must succeed on a caster level check (1d20 + caster level) against a DC of 15 + your caster level to succeed. Failure means the effect does not detect your lies or force you to speak only the truth.

Hnh. Okay, I'll excise that bit. But still, there's nothing written for the case of zone of truth both beating his Will save and overcoming the (DC22) on a 1d20+6-7. That's still inexcusable.

Yeah, granted, it's a shitty setup overall. But of his many mistakes, that wasn't one of them, so I just wanted to point it out.

I'll also point out that in one of the earlier adventures they head through the abandoned gnome warren to a dwarven fortress in the underdark. I mean, the slave auction is for underdark races - how did they get there?! There is a known connection. I'm away from my books, but I bet there is a tunnel on that map marked 'to underdark'.

Emerald wrote:Yeah, granted, it's a shitty setup overall. But of his many mistakes, that wasn't one of them, so I just wanted to point it out.

Yeah no, that was all me, mea culpa. So few people ever play Bards that I was completely unaware of that line in glibness.

So after the death of the cryohydra, the players are free to descend through the fissure, which leads to a path that gradually descends 100ft over the course of a quarter mile. Which... is about as 'Underdark' as a bomb shelter. As they wander through, there's random encounters oh joy.

Every hour there's a 10% chance of encountering: a behir, a drider, 1d3+1 minotaurs, 1d3+1 centipede swarms, 1 gauth, 1d3+1 derro, 1 ettin, 1d3 gargoyles, 1d3+1 ghasts, 1d3+1 gricks, 1d4+1 shadows, 1d4+2 giant bombardier beetles, 1d3+1 bugbears, 1d4+4 dire bats, 1d4+2 drow, 1d3 ogres, or 1 troll, in descending order of encounter level. The reasoning that most of this shit isn't killed by insane inbred fishmen? They're busy worshiping and monitoring and preparing for their next 'major battle', supremely convinced of their invincibility due to the crazy dwarf with demon-visions leading them to victory.

Sorry, I still can't get over how fucking hilarious and metal that mental image is. A dwarven defender going insane and managing to become the de facto leader of a bunch of speciesist inbred fishmen. Whatever Noonan did later, in 2003 he was hilarious.

Anyways, something not really brought up in Adventure Paths since is the fact that it's perfectly okay if the PCs take several forays into the kuo-toan temple of Bhal-Hamatugn, but after their first attack on the temple they'll be hunted down by the spearmaster Hlanamm and four kuo-toan soldiers who will somehow discover where they're camping and pick off stragglers. But PCs at this level sleep in rope tricks so that's a non-starter, so whatever, I'm not bothering to look up the named fishman.

A few more nice details to have; kuo-toan whips prepare their spells every midnight due to a "water clock" telling them what time it is - though you'd think the way circadian rhythms work they'd pretty much figure that shit out for themselves without need for a 3,000gp item, especially since their spell preparation involves a probably ritualistic "meditation about Blipdoolpoolp's slimy majesty". I'm not sure who Blipdoolpoolp is. The kuo-toan deity is Blibdoolpoolp.

Also the kuo-toans have some text about responding to the PCs; any use of daylight spells has them preparing darkness and deeper darkness the next time they prepare spells, where whips continually ready actions to counter any daylight spells with darkness.

I mean, this is actually stuff that's nice to have if you're not familiar with the genetically mutated fishmen and how they act, so again, whatever Noonan became later, this is actually nicely written.

Anyways, Bhal-Hamatugn is a phosphorescent temple in the center of a rift, crafted in the shape of a prehistoric spined fish, and to get into the temple you have to walk through the fish's mouth. To get over to it, as it's surrounded by a lake, the PCs can take a ferry. Shortly after reaching the lake a kuo-toan monk will pole his ferry over to them and ask them what they want, unless he's attacked at which he'll throw a spear at them, dive into the lake, and come back with reinforcements from the temple. But he only speaks Kuo-Toan so unless someone prepared tongues or set one of their free languages on fire, whatever.

This monk, Aabhaca, is actually pretty friendly for a member of the race that is genocidal against everyone who isn't a sister-marrying fishman. He talks in cryptic ways, and will gladly ferry them across to Bhal-Hamatugn so long as he doesn't believe they're lying to him. If he does, he flips the boat halfway across, gets reinforcement, and you get to have a lovely fight in the water. If he believes them, he drops them off at the place and fucks off.

We get some nice detail again in that we get hardness, HP, and break DCs of the walls and doors (8/90/35 and 8/60/28 respectively) and that all the floors and stairs are covered in slippery water that only matters if you're having to perform balance, tumble, or move silently checks on them, or if you're running or charging down the stairs.

Reaching the temple itself is just as simple as going up the stairs and trying to enter, where they're immediately attacked by kuo-toans in the fish-head's eyesockets. Kuo-toan soldiers that can see moving invisible creatures. Anyways, the rest of this adventure is pretty much fighting your way through the temple with clusters of 4 kuo-toan soldiers at a time, and is different in a couple of cases.

The first is a prison containing a wererat human fighter 4 named White-Eye, and an evil male halfling sorcerer 6 named Cherrit. Cherrit was down here looking for Zenith, having done some adventuring with him in the past and spotted his birthmark, and has some inkling of the Cagewrights' plans so knows the birthmark is important. White-Eye was just down here looking to loot the temple.

And since they're both evil, they lie flagrantly and if any of the PCs are wounded when they free them they immediately attack. If they're let go they run away and promise never to return, only come back a few hours later for dwarf-finding and temple-looting respectively. They can be annoying little pricks if you're tackling this place in multiple gos and don't actually kill them the first time around.

The second difference is the Shrine to Blibdoolpoop, the Sea Mother, which contains 4 whips and 4 soldiers with some kind of amusing stuff in it. There's a permanent widened unhallow that covers most of this place. There's a statue that adds +3 to the whips' ability to lightning bolt things every 1d4 rounds, so that a single whip can do a 4d6 lightning bolt all on their lonesome, and the 4 whips in here can do 7d6. There's a statue that whenever a non-evil character enters its area it conjures up Aushanna, an advanced erinyes devil, who attacks and fights for the kuo-toa for 10 minutes then can't come back for an hour. Killing Aushanna requires a 15th level Cleric of Bilbdoolpoolp to learn the name of another demon or devil and make a deal through the statue for another guardian.

There's balconies and shit that the kuo-toa try to bullrush PCs off of down a 60ft drop, and so on, so forth. There's also a greater glyph of warding on some clay pot that triggers on any non-kuo-toa that isn't also wearing holy symbol of their fucking god Blibdoolpoolp for 8d8 and it holds some bullshittery treasure.

And then there's a meditation chamber containing a kuo-toa Cleric 8 and a duergar slave, who if the former has any warning about the PCs he buffs himself up then engages the PCs. There's a torture champer with a mummy named Garekk in another room, Hlanamm has his own room (revealed here as a kuo-toan rogue 5), there's a wraith haunting a room, some draconic fingerlings...

Oh yeah, these kuo-toans also have a fucking DRAGON as an ally. Dhorlot, the Dragon-Father, which is a stupid title for a young adult dragon. Anyways, it's a black dragon who has no room to fly and strafe, so he's a closet troll in this instance. Finally, there's a kuo-toa monk 3/assassin 3 that likes to cling to ceilings while hiding, studying the PCs, then dropping down and Death Attacking them, focusing arcane casters, then runs away.

Now we get to Zenith's chamber, who will briefly talk to the PCs rather than attack them on sight, while he throws his sphere of the unseen to summon up an invisible stalker, then he won't leave his throne and makes the PCs fight him on it. He rants and raves prophesies of PC doom while using his dwarven defender stuff to fuck with people as they come in melee range. Once he's knocked down to 20 or less HP he runs to a nearby teleportation circle to another area, readying attacks to kill people who come through after him.

If the PCs beat him down but don't kill him, he becomes docile and follows them along like a puppy, taking food and water and adopting defensive stances in battle so he can dwarven defender at things. Anyways, once he's in hand, the PCs get to go back to Cauldron for their reward. Only to be met by Asshole Gummi himself, Vhalantru, who claims Celeste is a close friend of his who asked him to take over custody of Zenith. Turns out Celeste ACTUALLY got her shit kicked in by Vhalantru while trying to figure shit out, then got charmed and bound into a painting.

Anyways, Vhalantru pays them whatever Celeste promised them, if they insist on delivering Zenith to his father he says it'll take a day or two to arrange a meeting, then Cagewrights teleport in in the night and steal Zenith away while they're sleeping.

And that's Zenith Trajectory. After looking up some of the awful shit Noonan's done since 2003, I can really not believe this is the same guy. This is ... really well written, has the most hilarious mental image I've ever heard of, and aside from exactly 3 pieces of stupid shit, is probably the best part of any adventure path I've ever read.

Not taking into account PCs beating a CL check of 22 with a zone of truth, the railroading nonsense at the end, and the fact that Celeste, a ghaele eladrin, could have solved this all solo... eh. It's APs. It's a good adventure, and I'd actually run this as a drop-in to another game. Good on you, Noonan. You did good in 2003. The tactical advice is solid, the NPCs are memorable, the backstory isn't reams of bullshit, and the encounters are varied nicely. Gold star. Worth a run.

EDIT: I forgot to include this, because of how shocked I was at how good this part of the AP was overall. There's this line of stupidity involved during the black dragon fight:

Because Dhorlot readily flees, and because the close-quarters terrain favors the PCs, award 10% less experience for this encounter

No, fuck you, fuck off, fuck you to death Noonan. You were WELL FUCKING AWARE of the [Dragon] type tag being [Awesome] and you shoved a goddamned closet troll in here. But really, that's the only other standout bit of rage I've got for this.

Anyways, hopefully Tito Leati can generate more hate for me.

Dhorlot, the Dragon-Father, which is a stupid title for a young adult dragon.

He's called Dragon-Father because he likes fucking random creatures and having half-dragon babies; that seems like a pretty "young adult" thing to do. There are a number of half-black dragon creatures in later adventures who have Dhorlot as a daddy.

My impression of this module was that it was not bad except for the set-up which has the disguised doppelganger you can't unmask (because plot) who is hired by the disguised beholder you can't unmask (because plot) and the beholder has a disguised eladrin he can't unmask (because plot). As a GM, that seems pretty lame. On the other hand, as a player I expect D&D plots to be pretty lame so it probably wouldn't bother me too badly.