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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 7971983" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/0yyeWy1.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The major hindrance in venturing to the siren’s forgotten city is that it’s well, forgotten. And also several hundred feet below sea level, but prior contacts can help with the latter should they lack the means of breathing water themselves. Fortunately for the former, one of Narsus’ siren attendants has an undersea map to the place! This chapter takes place entirely underwater, and we get a handy repeat of rules for combat changed by this: to sum things up, fire attacks deal half damage and an assload of weapons have disadvantage on attack rolls. The city itself is several hundred feet below sea level, and a civilization of merfolk now live among the ruins. Said merfolk are at war with a group of merrow who came from a nearby abyssal trench known as the Chasm. A great monster known as Scylla lives at its bottom, and the merrow take captives to sink corpses down there for sacrifices. It won’t be long before the merfolk petition the PCs to save their people.The merfolk worship a group of empyreans as gods, who live within the shrines of the Temple District. They are capable of great feats of might and magic but are unable to leave the confines of their respective temples. The key to their freedom lies with the death of Scylla, a task the merfolk have yet to perform. Said empyreans will be quite helpful to the party, explaining that Scylla ate the artifact in which they seek and will butter up the PCs: they’ll speak of how they were once a lost pantheon, but feel that Thylea’s fate is bright in the party’s capable hands. To better seal the deal, each empyrean has a unique gift for one PC, ranging from a monstrous companion to fight at their side to magic items and boons. Some of the empyreans have higher standards than others, and demand some kind of trial.The empyreans are liars. You see, there was once a great angel by the name of Phaeros who was exiled by his kind for believing that godhood is a right for all mortals. He sought to find a more worthy pantheon than the reigning titans of Sydon and Lutheria, so he visited the city of the sirens to find those he believed could challenge their reign. From there, he made a new pantheon of empyreans. The titan twins learned of this and asked their father Kentimane to unleash Scylla upon the city. Together with their mortal armies, they sunk the realm beneath the waves while Lutheria tricked the empyreans into being cursed to never leave their sunkern temples. Phaeros and the Promethean Fire were swallowed by Scylla, their only means of breaking the curse of imprisonment. This forgotten pantheon has grown mad in the passing millennia and seek vengeance upon those they believe abandoned them: said criteria includes all mortalkind.The empyreans are all evil alignment save for one Chaotic Neutral crazy trickster god, and their gifts are twisted such that they will turn against the party: boons and magic items become curses, while companions fly into a rage and attack. However, none of the empyreans have means of magically concealing their alignment, meaning that the PCs may very well spurn their aid and reconsider the whole Scylla-killing business if the party contains...oh, let’s say a Paladin who realizes that empyrean after empyrean is radiating big honking gobs of Evil!The merrow seized a fortress in the city which has 40 of their rnumber along with a coven of 3 sea hags, and there are various other small locations the PCs can explore in the city itself although most of it is free of danger and mostly role-play.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/t1NTNNH.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The Chasm is a 2-mile deep pit with three broad layers. The Upper Reaches are barely lit and home to most typical sea life. The Void is halfway down and completely dark, home to gigantic primordial creatures and a tribe of ichthys.* The very bottom of the Chasm is a cavernous floor covered with the corpses of whales, merfolk, and other things that drifted down to the bottom. Tunnels and trenches hold portals to the Nether Sea at this depth.*like centaurs but evil and with lower halves of lobsters.One of the set-piece encounters is a nest of 36 sharks of the giant and cetus varieties asleep on a sandy ledge in the Void, and the adventure notes that waking the creatures will be suicidal for the PCs. Now I know that 5th Edition’s bounded accuracy makes it so that hordes of monsters can be dangerous even at the highest of levels, but there’s something...tonally dissonant about the whole affair. In prior chapters the party killed gods, possibly besieged a city of Spartan look-alikes with a Colossus protector, and did many other heroic deeds.  But the adventure assumes that a nest of sharks is where they draw the line and decide that discretion is the better part of valor.Scylla is the Boss Monster of this adventure, and she is a creepy, screaming bloated mass with six canine heads connected by serpentine necks. She is a tough cookie, on par with Sydon and Lutheria statwise but with slightly worse saves and no spells. Her primary means of attacks are her many biting heads and tentacles, and she can sing an AoE dirge that charms those who fail a Wisdom save which can also be done as one of her legendary actions (the others being bonus attacks and movement).Once the PCs kill her, Phaeros will cut his way out of the corpse, holding a blue orb of fire in one hand: the Promethean Fire. He will praise the PCs for freeing him, and mention that he must now complete his sacred task and ‘restore the rightful pantheon of Thylea.’ What he means is that he will use the Promethean Fire to free the empyreans; he will fly up out of the chasm while ignoring any attacks directed at him. The adventure assumes that the PCs will be unable to catch up to him even though spells like Dimension Door are easily a thing at this part in the plot. When the PCs reach the Sunken City he will suddenly turn on the party once the emypreans are free, proclaiming them to be blasphemers for trying to use the artifacts to become gods themselves. How would he know this unless they spilled the beans to the empyreans? Also, isn't this contradictory to his earlier ideology of spreading the god-wealth around? The adventure makes no mention of how and why he changed his ideals over time.The PCs can gain the Promethean Fire from Phaeros after killing him, and the empyreans will feign ignorance and claim that the angel must have gone crazy from time spent being digested. They will pretend to leave Thylea forever, but in reality seek to learn of the land and rebuild their strength for the coming time of vengeance.But at least the PCs have all 3 artifacts now. They should be able to challenge these empyreans as God-to-God for a thrilling climax, right? Wellllll, about that...I took a look at the rules for the Theogenesis ritual and contrasted it with the expected experience levels at certain points in the adventure path:<img src="https://i.imgur.com/cdsiEq1.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><img src="https://i.imgur.com/idcWb0t.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /><img src="https://i.imgur.com/GATRtpC.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />If the PCs didn’t want to strangle Narsus before, they almost certainly will want to do so now.Thoughts So Far: I’m beginning to see a recurring theme in this third act of the PCs managing to make things worse in their quest for godhood. While the Aresian campaign could be averted, the Sunken Kingdom is far more railroady in its expectations and resolution. It presumes that the PCs will take the empyreans at their word, be unable to intercept Phaeros before he frees said empyreans, and then kill Phaeros anyway after the deed is done. The backstory is something the PCs have no real chance of finding out, so it’s very much in the style of Paizo’s adventure paths which give enemy NPCs detailed write-ups that most players are never going to learn. Contrast this to that of Sydon and Lutheria, or the legacy of the Dragonlords, or even the kidnapping of Narsus and the Aresian Campaigns. Odyssey has been rather good in giving opportunities for the PCs to learn of the world’s past and how that affects their current adventures, but this chapter only works if the party is kept in the dark about as much as possible for as long as possible.Join us next time as we wrap up the conclusion to this adventure path in Chapter 12, Apokalypsis!</blockquote>

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