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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9027898" data-attributes="member: 6750502">So this part of the review’s going to be a tad unconventional. Chapter 4 gives the overview of the adventure in broad strokes, separated by weeks and levels. Chapter 5 covers the first 3 weeks, save the 2nd, which is covered in Chapter 6. And Chapter 6 covers the rest of the locations in the Isles of Manaki save the Black Atoll which serves as the end game in Chapter 7. The locations in Chapter 6 cover locations alphabetically, not when they’d first be visited, and due to this you get places that talk about events and characters that haven’t yet been covered in the book, which is some pretty poor organization IMO. For those reasons this Let’s Read will cover the adventure in chronological weeks, touching on the places visited during those times.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/ocBTdKY.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />At the first three weeks of the campaign, all is well ecologically speaking. The Islands have abundant natural resources and magic remains predictable. Taking place on the Island of Kadaur in the village of Makolf, the annual Gathering Festival is celebrated annually to commemorate the people unifying in overthrowing Skati Fylkir. Dancing, feasting, sports, storytelling, and other fun diversions are planned, and people from across the Isles make trips to Makolf to join in the festivities. During this time some storytellers go over Manaki’s history, and the PCs can compete in contests via skill checks and win some minor equipment as prizes. If the PCs don’t know each other, the festival provides a good means for them to learn about their upcoming adventuring buddies. But on the third day of celebrations, the island begins to rumble from a volcanic eruption! Instead of lava, multicolored paintlike blood spews forth, turning into giant crab monsters in a place that lands near the PCs. Kada will appear at this time, casting a spell to turn the falling rocks into dust and can aid the PCs in fighting off the crabs if the DM desires. The villagers are relieved at Kada’s arrival, and the half-immortal explains that a great force is about to change the Isles but he is in a weakened state. He then asks the strongest people in the village to head to Fylkir’s Fall, the final resting place of Skati Fylkir, to ensure that he hasn’t risen.It’s presumed that the PCs will volunteer, and 1d6 tribal warriors along with 2 Ikolf dwarves will accompany them; but the dwarves are secretly Skati cultists. The PCs can learn more about the dread reign of Fylkir from them if need be, and the GM can drop a random encounter or two during the journey, likely against a wild boar or poisonous snakes.Fylkir’s Fall is a temple that is avoided by everyone, and understandably so: Skati’s lingering magical influence douses the nearby terrain in a storm of perpetual bloody rain that recycles into the surrounding atmosphere. A curse causes creatures and objects within 300 feet of the temple to magically repeat every week, which is part of the magical warding stones erected to keep Skati in an eternal prison. The undercover cultists will encourage the PCs to explore if they decide to report back to the village first, supposedly to ensure Skati is still put down. The tribal warriors, by contrast, will be more than eager to leave but will accompany the PCs. Skati’s body is pinned in place by the legendary spear Marrow, and the temple is bereft of traps and dangers. However, the PCs can find a hidden crypt via a slit in the throne, where they can find the magic dagger Friendfire (+1d4 psychic damage when attacking friendly creatures) along with some of Skati’s personal writings, such research into a supposed ritual to gain godhood and rumors of a legendary weapon that supposedly grant absolute authority over the Isles (the weapon Allay, which has several quests to create).While it’s possible that a PC may be foolish enough to take Marrow and end up resurrecting Skati that way,* the adventure presumes that the Ikolf cultists will destroy the warding stones while the PCs are distracted and exploring, which undoes the protective magics holding Skati in place. Standing up and taking hold of his surroundings, the Undead Lord will give a villainous speech to the party, telling them to flee and report his return to their rulers. He has no desire to dirty his hands in fighting the party, even if they attack him, and will enter the temple as five skeletons appear to attack the party.*Once Skati is free the PCs have the opportunity to take the weapon for themselves. Kada will otherwise retrieve it for himself by the third week. If a PC is responsible for freeing Skati and Kada knows about it, he will attack the PC to kill them and grant the spear to another party member. It’s a +1 spear that once per day can render a creature that has less than half its maximum hit points paralyzed, immovable, and invulnerable for the next seven days if they fail a DC 20 Constitution save. The paralysis is ended early if the spear is removed from the creature.Thoughts: This concludes the first Week of the campaign, and so far it’s pretty railroady. Skati has to rise, and it presumes that the PCs are unable to detect the cultist’s deception among them. As for the volcanic eruption, I’d recommend letting the PCs fight the giant crabs, having Kada intervene if they get overrun by the monsters. If he just shows up to save the day without the PCs getting to roll initiative, that won’t be as much fun. It also further compounds the feeling of “it doesn’t matter what we do” when the dwarven cultists destroy the stones.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/krDnE5g.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The village of Makolf is our central base for much of the campaign. A settlement home to both Native Manaki and Ikolf dwarves, it stands as a testament to the unity of the two peoples and is the largest settlement in the Isles in being home to about 600 souls. Most homes are communal family dwellings with central rooms and a few side rooms, and the adventure suggests asking the PCs where they live and with whom to give them deeper ties to the community. There’s a single local storehouse that holds reserve supplies for the whole village, and an open-walled structure around a clearing serves as a village center for the people to gather about. Two drums magically enchanted to be clearly heard anywhere in the village serve as means to alert everyone to gather for some important event.We have write ups of various NPCs, notably craftspeople and those who can provide important services for the PCs during the campaign. Olaf can temporarily enchant one magic item per week that lasts for 1d4 days, with item rarity increasing as the weeks go by, and some NPCs come to settle in the village later on in the campaign, notably refugees from other communities.There are nine side quests to do in Makolf, five of which can be triggered at any week as the DM desires and four of which appear during later weeks in the campaign. They involve helping out the villagers and visitors with various tasks, such as the kia’i Onaona rewarding the party with healing potions if they retrieve some doghouse bush seeds (plants whose seeds can transform into doglike plants to defend it), entertaining the villagers as morale decreases and getting magical tattoos as a reward if successful, or searching for missing children during later weeks that are running from monsters in the nearby wilderness.The PCs can also help improve Makolf’s defenses during downtime, which helps them better defend against undead and ecliptic attacks while the party is away adventuring. Sadly there’s little rules for this beyond DM Fiat.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/88bma8C.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />During the second week, an injured merchant arrives in Makolf. Bearing dire news, he claims that the nearby town of Keyport (the prime trading outpost on Kadaur) was attacked by strange fishlike beings (in reality an ecliptic attack), who killed nearly everyone and dragged bodies with them into the ocean. As Makolf relies upon Keyport’s overseas shipments, an elder will plead for the PCs to check the town if they don’t go to visit on their own volition.Located in the north of Kadaur, Keyport is a major shipping hub, holding an open-air marketplace, warehouses, storehouses for trade goods and sea vessels, and of course taverns and inns. The town is nearly devoid of life, even animals, by the time the PCs arrive. Goods have been dropped and spilled in the middle of town, and the boats at the docks all abandoned. The PCs can find Chuck Lawrence, a shipwright unconscious under a pile of dead ecliptics, who is grateful if revived and can offer his services while searfaring if ever needed. There’s also Larry Baker, the keeper of the Flappin’ Kraken tavern who is hiding in a secret portion of the kraken statue part of the tavern. He’ll remain in Keyport, confident that such a tragedy won’t happen again and that the town will recover.During the way there, the PCs will come across a swarm of ecliptic scavengers eating and stripping the remains of a horse to bring back to the black atoll. If sent by one of Makolf’s elders, the PCs are tasked with checking on the supplies in the warehouse. This huge building is full of various sorts of items to be shipped (along with Units of wood and stone), and is magically cooled to enhance the viability of perishable supplies. An ecliptic hauler is here, gathering bird eggs in the building to take back to the Black Atoll.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/weLPhzO.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />I suppose now’s a good time to talk about the ecliptics. Ecliptics are beings created from recycled souls when the Star Breather needs to directly intervene in any of the worlds it created. They come in a wide variety of forms and alignments, but the ones in this adventure are typically Lawful Evil (cuz y’know, genocide) and tend to look like vicious sea monsters. They are single-minded in their purpose, which is to go to where the Star Breather assigns them and kill and capture any living creatures found there to take back to the Black Atoll. Some particularly strong-willed souls and more powerful ecliptics can have something approaching a personality, although even then they have the mentality of a hardened soldier bent on destruction. Their missions are quite literal, meaning that they won’t attack the PCs first if they just randomly run across them, or if they weren’t originally present at the sight of the attack.The ecliptic hauler is a pretty tough challenge for 2nd level PCs, being a melee-focused bipedal crablike being who can attack and grapple up to four times per turn. It can substitute an attack with launching a swarm of ecliptic scavengers out of its hauler’s net, but can only “summon” one swarm this way per day or until the swarm is scooped back in. As for the scavengers, they can look like a variety of small oceanic shelled creatures, typically snails, slugs, shrimps, and/or nudibranchs, and as you can guess they primarily attack by swarming over a target. Both monsters lack ranged attacks, and in the case of the hauler it has poor mental saves and the scavengers have a very slow speed, so PCs can outmaneuver them if they’re smart enough to not engage in melee.Even as a ghost town other people will travel to Keyport over time, as it still remains an important destination for sailors. PCs can convince villagers in Makolf to make repairs and defend it. One particular NPC, a mirescale merchant by the name of RockJaw, arrives later this week and can tell the PCs more about his home of SpringBog.Thoughts: This week is slightly less railroady in the fact that the PCs have more opportunity to act on their own initiative and make meaningful choices. Gaining the aid of Chuck can help raise their survivability in the Ecliptic Hauler battle, but otherwise they don’t have any NPC allies to fall back on. The major detriment in this adventure is that there are only two encounters beyond any side quests the DM drops in.During the third week, Kada has left the village to take care of some wild magic menacing the skies (in reality he’s redirecting the wild magic to rain down on the islands and ocean). It is during this time Skati Fylkir sends out several zombies to deliver a message to Makolf. Quickly causing panic, one of the zombies says that they bear a message from the dwarven king himself to send their strongest to meet with him in the temple of Fylkir’s Fall. The zombies have thurisaz tattoos which deal an AoE attack of 2d6 lightning damage to all creatures within 60 feet, or activated once per long rest as an action. No it’s not a unique monster ability, but a new magic item even the PCs can get. It is through these tattoos that the zombies hold the village hostage, for if the PCs (or a village warrior who takes the initiative themselves) attack a zombie it will activate the tattoo and end up killing a bunch of villagers.When the PCs go back to Fylkir’s Fall, they will find Skati hard at work doing BBEG stuff, like magically drawing the blood from surrounding animals as red lightning strikes the temple. He compliments the PCs for realizing that it’s “prudent to work with me rather than against me” and some cultists will give them magic items as a gift. His task for the PCs is to find one of two powerful figures from the Isles’ history to aid him, for he is currently unable to travel beyond the main island.Content Warning: Suicide[spoiler]Skati will also order two of his cultists to stab themselves to death, just to show the PCs how fanatical his minions are and how influential he is. Their deaths will also power the next magical ritual.[/spoiler]Two giant pillars of plasma will streak across the sky in different directions. This is Skati reviving the two other Undead Lords; he will assign the PCs the errand of finding and retrieving one of them while he’ll assign other islanders to go find the other. Skati will also give them a bloodstained compass that points in the general direction of their assigned Undead Lord.This decision sets a recurring theme through the rest of the Sunken Isles; in going down one route, the other route’s events are “locked off” as some other group retrieves the other Undead Lord. As just about every week gives the PCs about 2 places to travel before the next week (and thus next hook) pops up, they need to manage their time wisely.Also while traveling to the assigned Undead Lord, the adventure presumes another week has passed, putting the PCs at 4th level! Wow, these levels are going by pretty quickly, huh?<img src="https://i.imgur.com/HuW1XGW.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />If the PCs choose to look for Kumuhea, they’ll need to head somewhere near Alalula Cove,* where they pass by some smaller empty settlements depopulated from travelers to the Gathering Festival (hasn’t it been nearly a month since?) and ecliptic attacks, and PCs can find random small-time loot if they look around these abandoned places. The book notes that the communal nature of Manaki Islanders says that there’s little moral reservation against this technical grave-robbing, for if someone’s in need, it’s everyone’s duty to provide for them and such resources would be better used for those still alive.*A location that has its own entry and is not visited itself during this adventure.The PCs will come across an inhabited village of Eikheim, which is near one of the rumored entrances to Kumuhea’s tunnels. A child in the village offers to take them to said entrance if the party teaches him how to better fight monsters. The cave is home to traps Kumuhea designed long ago, pockets of hot water from an underground spring that spurt boiling geysers. The cave entrance is also marked with stone carvings which, if translated, can teach a party member the Lutum Scutum Ancient Ritual. It is cast as a bonus action, commanding the earth to block incoming attacks, forcing creatures to suffer disadvantage on their first attack roll against the caster. The ritual’s maledictio is reducing the caster’s speed to 0 and making them suffer disadvantage on all attack rolls.Further inside the PCs can find more of Kumuhea’s writings, this time not containing any rituals but more collections of information of various usability. They can also a complicated rope and pulley system that can transport heavy rocks. The sections of the tunnel are ruined and require days’ worth of labor to clear, and the GM can intersperse these with random encounters of widely varying lethality.Another thing I’d like to note about the Sunken Isles; many encounters, random and otherwise, don’t have a set amount of enemies to fight, often determining the opposition’s number by die rolls. Given the importance of action economy, this means that some sections of the adventure path can end up much more difficult, or much less, depending on the results. For this adventure in particular, you may fight 2d6 giant crabs (doable to difficult), 1d4+2 giant spiders (slightly more doable), or 3d6+1 gray oozes (can easily end up deadly). Kumuhea can be found buried alive…well, undead, with a single hand of hers uselessly grasping the air. A single earth elemental will attack the party, mistakenly presuming they’re trying to hurt her.Although unhappy about her undead state, Kumuhea will be thankful for being freed. She will laugh if they bring up Skati, claiming that mortal rulers overestimate their own status, and will magically transport the party to the tunnel entrance. Although not eager to have a meeting with Skati, a condition of the necromancer’s spell overwhelms her, making her realize she doesn’t have a choice in the matter.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/mtUH3i5.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Should the PCs opt to find Captain Keelhaul instead, they will head for a beach on Kadaur’s west, where they will find a lighthouse home to a friendly family. A family whose demeanor will darken if they mention their mission. Their trust can be gained if the children are rescued from a random monster encounter that shows up on the beach (these encounters are more fair, typically being just one or two stronger monsters such as a giant scorpion…but what if the PCs fail to earn their trust?) where they’ll reveal that one of the people who took down Captain Keelhaul lives in a nearby cave. It is Anson Drahl, who has a hunch for why the PCs are here. He will share with them his and his brother’s backstory, and while troubled that his brother is revived knows that there’s nothing any of them can do to stop him for the time being. Anson will help the PCs sail to get him if it means averting Skati’s wrath. The PCs will be taken out to sea in a fishing boat and given magical potions that let them breathe water for 8 hours, and swimming below they can encounter swarms of quippers and a giant shark on their way to the Bloody Twins wreckage. They will need to perform Strength checks that take up time in clearing the debris (the family in the lighthouse can give the PCs magical tattoos that can grant temporary water breathing that refreshes daily) in order to free Captain Keelhaul. Keelhaul’s first question is if the party has any whiskey, and why he’s been brought back. Unlike Kumuhea he is interested in seeing what Skati Falkyr has to offer him.In both instances villagers will be deathly afraid of the Undead Lords and give the party a wide berth. When they return to Fylkir’s Fall, Skati has a party planned, with zombie servants setting up dishes of smoked meat and glasses of whiskey. As a reward, the necromancer will tell the PCs the password to let the tattooed zombies leave Makolf. As the party is made to leave, they can hear the two Undead Lords talking: in Kumuhea’s case she sees right through Skati’s flattery and demands to know why he summoned her, while in Captain Keelhaul’s case he’s more than happy to go back to his old life in exchange for all the carnage, vengeance, and whiskey Skati can provide him.Thoughts So Far: The first few adventures in the Sunken Isles leave much to be desired. They are railroady in a way that pretty obviously harms PC autonomy. While there are parts that gently steer the party in certain directions, the adventures fail to take into account more rebellious courses of action. What if the PCs try to escape Makolf and the island of Kadaur to find other allies to fight Skati, or look for where Kada seemingly vanished? What if they pretend to go along with finding one of the undead lords and leave the same way? What if the cultists who’d be responsible for awakening Skati are detected by the PCs somehow or die in a random encounter on the way to Fylkir’s Fall?There’s also the fact that the adventures are relatively light on combat, and are spaced apart such that the PCs have ample time for long rests. This may give them the wrong ideas for future adventures that may be more combat-intensive if they get too used to going nova.Join us next time as the PCs get their first ship, have the choice of visiting the mirescale or decapodian home settlement, and visit a fabled lighthouse or an archipelago filled with giant monsters!</blockquote>

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