Part One: A Mystery
In Bruce Cordell's head, the math goes something like this:
Kyton (Chain Devil, CR 6)
Maralith (Demon, CR 17)
"The Cathezar" (Half-Devil/Half-Demon, CR 21)
...
BULLSHIT
Anyway, this is yet another
Dungeon Magazine-ism, which is putting in characters that blatantly break with/vary from the established rules and setting of the game. You would think that when creating a hopefully iconic adventure path designed to highlight your system and setting material you might actually, I dunno,
use said system and setting material, but the fact is that by and large the established designers played fast and loose with stuff - so that you get things like this, where it's obvious that they
want stats for half-dragons and half-fiends of every race, but they obviously cannot be fucking bothered to do that shit in any organized manner, so they just stick in generic templates and then pull this shit out of their ass whenever they want to feel special and creative.
Anyway, the intro to this adventure isn't "You meet in a tavern," or "A mysterious plague has been afflicting the newborn," but "This random asshole you've never seen before shows up to kick your collective asses." It's a complete non sequitur, and it means that your game session immediately grinds to a halt as you play out a combat between 4-6 18th-level adventurers and one of Bruce Cordell's wet dreams. Bruce is too lazy to actually give any set-up at all to where and why and how this happens. Seriously, here's his entire thoughts on it:
Choose a time and place where the player characters will be all together to be set upon. One possibility includes a public street or tavern of your choice where screaming commoners and other secondary NPCs provide interesting flavor. Another intriguing possibility is an attack on the NPCs while they are involved in an unrelated adventure.
Dark gods dammit Bruce,
this is an adventure, which you are
selling people, not a random NPC encounter you posted on the website. You're supposed to do some of the work
for Mister Cavern here.
Anyway, Bruce doesn't actually care about that. While the PCs are presumably caught flat-footed, the Impossible Critter is given a Power-Up Suite. That is a literal sidebar for every significant opponent in this adventure, telling you what buffs they apply to themselves to gain an advantage, because at this point D&D was embracing buffs in a big way and hadn't nerfed any of the spells yet.
Impossible Critter isn't meant to die right away, though, so if the PCs look like they're winning she
teleports without error way the fuck away - preferably after the PCs meet Demogorgon B's lackey, a 5th level Rogue/Death slaad named "Nurn."
"Don't wear it out."
Nurn is there to answer questions/lie to the NPCs, although considering he's a backstabbing giant fucking chaotic frog I wonder why he doesn't become the next target. Presumably the offer to parley throws the PCs off their game.
To Bruce's small credit, he does acknowledge the possibility that the PCs might kill the Cathezar (worth 200% XP if it's permanent!), or beat her the fuck up and interrogate her. He also includes a sidebar where Nurn joins the party as an NPC and gets a full share of the XP, and I have no idea why Bruce thought that was actually going to be a thing since the player characters I know would stab him in the fact after the first fight when they realized they were getting shafted.
Scene Two: Gathering Information supposes that after getting randomly attacked, possibly in the middle of doing other shit like saving a princess or something, and then solicited by a creepy-ass giant backstabbing frog that openly admits to working for a demon lord, that the PCs might want to figure out what the fuck is going on. General information-gathering spells and abilities (
augury, Bardic Knowledge, etc.) are explicitly crippled because Bruce wants you to jump through the requisite hoops in this adventure. This is partially explained to be because of the
Ban of the Unborn:
By an edict as old as the multiverse, the deities are prohibited from influence, or dealings with pre-incarnate souls in any fashion whatsoever. This is to prevent their meddling with the sanctity of the free will that all creatures possess at birth. For the PCs, this means that they cannot appeal to the deities once they figure out what is going on. Similarly, summoned planar allies will not accompany PCs into the Bastion. Divination spells and the like that touch directly on the Bastion of Unborn Souls are simply not answered, while questions that bear indirectly on the Bastion are skirted or only answered partially. It is the Ban of the Unborn that prevents divination and similar spells from determining the cause of the infant "sickness" described in Character Hooks. Repeated or clever questions garner only the following answer: "The Ban of the Unborn may not be set aside." Knowledge (religion) checks reveal more (see below).
Despite the Ban, clerics who enter the Bastion continue to receive granted spells; likewise, items or artifacts that feed off divine power continue to function.
There's a lot there, but let's break it down.
1) This presumes that all living creatures (with souls!) have free will from birth. Fuck it destiny and racial alignments!
2) This presumes that there is something greater than the D&D gods. And presumably greater than the generic D&D overdeities. So yeah, it's sort of like how God in the Marvel Universe is the One-Above-All.
3) This is all obviously bullshit because there
was a god and there
is currently a demon-dragon mucking about with these "pre-incarnate" souls, so this "don't fuck with pre-born souls" thing is really more of a guideline than an actual hard rule of the universe. I mean fuck, the whole Incarnum business is about channeling soulstuff. I don't even want to think about how reincarnation fits into this shit. Where do souls come from? Where do they go? IT'S A MYSTERY!
4) Yes, the whole pre-incarnate souls business doesn't make a lot of sense and isn't explained well in D&D cosmology terms, just as the "final destination" after souls exit the Outer Planes is never given any sort of explanation. At least they don't get all right-to-lifey and decide that all fetuses have souls, but they avoid that argument entirely so that they don't have an actual abortion debate.
5) Also, since when does the Ban of the Unborn mean that the deities can't at least talk about this shit? Wouldn't they actually hold lectures on this? "Yeah, look, we're not supposed to touch that. So if you do, I'm flinging you into a
sphere of annihilation, capice?"
6) Yes, this whole thing is just to dick with the PCs and limit their options and abilities arbitrarily.
So, just to make this clear: the PCs are attacked (randomly), with one getting focused on more than the others. A death slaad with a dagger to grind and who doesn't quite know what's going on but obviously knows more than he's telling wants to join your party, and then Mister Cavern is supposed to sit back and let you decide what to do from there. If you decide to say "fuck it" and make a beer run to the kitchen while waiting for the actual adventure hook, the MC is suggested to have
more NPCs try to murder you, which just gets out of hand. What you're apparently
supposed to do as NPCs is make a bunch of Knowledge skill checks and divinations and hope that the random, evasive answers you mysteriously get give you enough clues to actually follow the fuck up on. I shit you not.
Anyway, there are two real random threads (that Bruce prepares for): 1) references to the druid Dydd, the PC's until now unknown ancestor, and 2) this whole preincarnate soul business.
Ad Hoc XP Adjustment: Award experience to the PCs for having the wherewithal to use their resources to pierce the shrouds of this mystery, and move on to the next scenes. This experience is awarded once only, even though the PCs may attempt to gather information multiple times throughout the adventure. Grant the PCs as many XP as they would get from an EL 16 encounter.
Well, thank for that. Nothing like clawing your way up to 18th level to get some XP from making a bunch of gods-be-damned skillchecks.
Scene 3: The Cathezar's Abode
Assuming the PCs don't give a fuck about this Dydd thing or preincarnate soul business and
do care about the Impossible Critter that tried to murder them, they can track her down to her lair. Which, given that this is a plane-spanning adventure of cosmic importance should seem to be somewhere exotic, but is really a cavern beneath a warehouse in a large city on the same plane. It's not quite "this is Wolfram & Hart's home office" as a reveal, and actually feels distinctly unglamorous for demons to be doing worse than the Mafia or local Thieves' Guild, which can at least afford a discreet building in the nicer part of town with lead pipes to take the sewage away and everything.
Anyway, the Abode isn't an actual scene, it's a set-piece embedded in the middle of the adventure in lieu of actual plot, so very much like the
Sunless Citadel in that it's a room-by-room series of encounters, except Bruce didn't have the space or wordcount to do a proper job of it so it's seriously just six rooms with one entrance. I'd personally just flood the place with holy water and sort shit out from there. Along the way we get this gem:
When the PCs find out that Demogorgon (or at least one of his heads) is behind their troubles, they may simply want to travel to the Abyss and take the fight to the Demon Prince. This is a bad idea.
No it isn't Bruce, shut the fuck up.
Honestly, once you defeat the Cathezar and raid her lair for the 60,000 gp or so of treasure there, you're probably in hours 4-6 of the adventure, or maybe even session 2, and PCs might call it there. I wouldn't blame them. Of course, if they get the Cathezar to talk she immediately rolls over on her Demon Prince.
Scene 4: The Church of the Elements
This is a stone circle, with druids, so "church" is not actually a relevant or useful term. It's assumed the PCs aren't going to start any shit, but even if they were I doubt the Dire Tiger on guard duty around the magical sapling in the middle of it all is going to be more than a speed bump. Yet somehow, coming down here and asking questions earns the PCs the XP from an 18th-level encounter. You get the idea that Bruce is just flinging out the XP willy-nilly, or he really wants the PCs to level up before they get to the good fights.
Anyway, the church tells the Chosen One about Dydd and then shuffles them along to the Guild of Sleep.
I find the entire Dydd thing nonsense, by the way. It would be one thing if Bruce had a spell or something behind the ability, but really it's just one of those random ass-pull fantasy things where Mister Cavern is supposed to wave their hands and go "Magic!"
even though magic in D&D doesn't work that way.
See, D&D is High fantasy. That doesn't mean it isn't comedic or that it has more magic in it or anything, that just means that
magic has rules. Low fantasy just has magic do
anything, and restrictions are random and arbitrary.
The Lord of the Rings is high fantasy because it has a consistent internal setting - anyone who puts on the One Ring, for example, disappears.
Ewok Adventures is low fantasy because the abilities of the fucking teddy-bear aborigine wizard change from episode to episode, and previous abilities are often forgotten. D&D, by definition, is high fantasy - there's an actual system in place. There is no need to make random statless shit up just for story purposes, and it actually detracts from the setting when you do.
Scene 5: Guild of Sleep
This is another random set-piece where the PCs get yet more information, this time from a Night Hag sorceress that sleeps in a magical pod.
I am okay with this.
...protected by "Sleep Golems" (variant iron golem).
Works for me.
Now, scenes 3, 4, and 5 are not actually in any particular order, so you could totally go see the Church and then the Sleepers then raid the Cathezar's abode, or raid the abode and say fuck it to the rest of the adventure, or burn the druid grove down for lulz because at this point you've been getting XP just for asking fucking questions and you're wondering when the actual goddamned adventure is going to start. But you sort of
have to go to the Guild of Sleep because they're the only ones (apparently) that will get you to the
Well of the Souls Bastion of Unborn Souls.
Wrong adventure, move along.
I
strongly suspect that Cordell wanted the whole Guild of Sleep to tie into the Demiplane of Dreams, which he's always had a bit of a hard-on for if I recall correctly, but considering the blistering pace of this module I suspect he just didn't have time for it.
Scene 6: Desayeus's Prison
The long story short is that one god did try to add unborn ("virgin") souls to their portfolio. It lasted seven hours, during which time he created one artifact, and then he got demoted to titan, kicked out of the god club, and imprisoned in Pandemonium, more or less in that order.
Which isn't how being a god in D&D works, since his fossilized ass should be floating in the astral plane. But I digress.
Anyway, the artifact Desayeus made was the
soul totem, and among other things it allows people to enter the Bastion of Unborn Souls. Ashardalon has one third of it, somebody else has another, and Desayeus has the other third. Naturally, the PCs need to go rob him of it so that they can continue their mission (wait, what?) and go to the Bastion of Unborn Souls to confront Ashardalon (why? Unborn plague, I guess? For lulz? For loots?)
This represents the first actual planar travel in an adventure that's supposed to literally be all about planar travel, and it doesn't cover how the fuck you're supposed to get there - Cordell's particular methods suggests a slightly convoluted
scry,
plane shift, and
teleport without error combination and leaves it at that.
Anyway, this is another set-piece, where the PCs go through a series of fights against solars and shit in a rather linear cavern to get to a demoted god and murderize him. Talking isn't really supposed to get you anywhere, which is sad because you'd think you could explain things. Aside from the soul totem, the only really interesting bit that Desayeus has on him is a
+5 brilliant energy gargantuan warhammer, which I nicknamed "the Whammer" the one time I ran this adventure for a group.
That brings us halfway through page 19, and the end of Part One. The PCs have, if they have followed Cordell's logic carefully:
1) Been randomly attacked by an impossible critter,
2) Solicited by a giant talking frog,
3) Awarded a great deal of XP for simply doing some legwork,
4) Maybe took out some demons/druids/golems/and a sleepy nighthag
5) Invaded a planar prison and threw down with a demoted deity and all of his many good-aligned but creatively bankrupt former followers.
At which point you're still in Pandemonium, you're probably above 20th level, and you have another artifact for your collection. Next stop: the Positive Material Plane and a giant demonic dragon.