I’ve
had mixed opinions of the instalments of Giantslayer so far—some
have been good, others not so good—but Shadow of the
Storm Tyrant works well as the
culminating adventure. It’s primarily a dungeon crawl, but has a
good sense of urgency and variety that its predecessor, Anvil of Fire, is missing. It
also has some epic-feeling encounters and combats appropriate for a
high-level party, and it makes good use of its setting, which helps
to turn what could have been just a bog-standard dungeon crawl into
something much more unique.
The
adventure picks up from the moment Anvil of Fire
ends, with the PCs discovering the Storm Tyrant’s flying castle,
Ironcloud Keep, in the caldera of Ashpeak (the volcano setting of
Anvil of Fire). The
castle has been moored here since Volstus first captured it, held in
place by massive chains. Only two of those chains remain in place, as
Volstus is trying to get away before the PCs can get inside the
castle. His servants are in the process of cutting the chains to
release the castle. The PCs must reach the castle before it can get
away, but to do so, they must also contend with the Storm Tyrant’s
extensive defences.
As
the PCs try to reach the castle, they are
assaulted by numerous groups of giants, many of whom
possess long-range weapons like ballistae and thus can attack the PCs
from far away. The PCs will likely have to take a detour or two to
deal with these groups before they can reach the castle. However, if
even one of the two remaining chains is broken, the castle can get
away (although Volstus would prefer both be released, since pulling
away with one still attached will damage the castle—but he will try
with one if the PCs get too close), thus creating a wonderful sense
of tension to the entire scene. The PCs don’t know how long it will
take for the group of ash giants breaking the chains to get through
the first of the two and then get to the last one, so they need to
move quickly.
Under
normal circumstances, this is the kind of opening that I would
praise. It’s a big and exciting combat, much different and more
varied from the usual style of combats the PCs are involved in. It is
spread out over a vast area (the crater that makes up the caldera is
very big and has multiple levels), so the PCs must keep moving, and
may even end up ignoring some of the attacks coming at them (from a
defence tower in the caldera and defenders in the castle itself, as
well as defenders on the ground) just to cover more ground. It’s an
epic and exiting opening for an adventure.
Unfortunately,
it’s impossible to ignore the context in which this opening occurs,
following immediately from Anvil of Fire.
That adventure is just
endless combat after combat. While this opening combat is a far more
interesting one
than any of the combats in Anvil of Fire,
it’s still yet another combat. At this point, the players are
probably sick of nothing else happening, and even the different style
of this combat may not be enough to break the feel of monotony.
I
hate to criticise an adventure for the faults of another adventure,
but the two are not independent of each other. They are meant to go
together to make a unified whole, and in this case, that whole is
very repetitive. Indeed, the rest of Shadow of the Storm
Tyrant is mostly combat as the
PCs move through the castle and confront the Storm Tyrant’s
remaining allies. Both Anvil and
Shadow are very
similar structurally, even if Shadow
does it better, and that repetitiveness can be a problem—something
that has plagued much of Giantslayer.
That
said, taken on its own merits, Shadow of the Storm Tyrant
is a pretty good adventure. Once the PCs reach the castle, they must
find a way in. The easiest way is to use entrances in the rocky base
of the castle (the PCs might have found details about these entrances
in the last adventure). These lead into the castle’s engine level.
However, getting in this way is by no means mandatory.
There are ways into the castle proper higher up. These ways are
heavily protected, both by giants and magic (windows, for example,
have magical stained glass that produces a prismatic wall
effect), but crafty PCs can likely find ways to bypass these
defences.
One
thing I like about the adventure is that it allows PCs to make full
use of their high-level abilities to access the castle and the areas
within. Once they’re inside the castle, they have a lot of options
regarding how to proceed and where to go as they search for the Storm
Tyrant.
The
castle itself makes for a relatively vibrant setting. Most of the
encounters are location-based, but for the most part, the castle’s
denizens have good reasons to be where they are, and the castle never
comes across as a static, non-changing setting. This is partly
because the castle is on high alert for the entire adventure. The
castle and its inhabitants also have a strong backstory—one that
actually has an effect on what is happening and has a role to play in
the adventure, which makes a welcome contrast to the previous
adventure where there is a lot of backstory that never plays a role
in the adventure and the PCs never learn. In short, Ironcloud Keep
was, until recently, called Zephyr Hall and belonged to a group of
cloud giants. After the death
of the cloud giants’ previous ruler, there was a schism in their
numbers regarding who should be the new ruler. Volstus took advantage
of this schism to join with one of the sides and conquered the
castle. This is why it was anchored to the floor of the Ashpeak’s
caldera. The chains were part of Volstus’s initial attack on the
castle. In the time since taking over, he has been trying to learn
how to control the castle. Even now, as he is desperately trying to
salvage what is left of his plans, he can’t yet fully control the
castle. This makes for a fun addition, as GMs can easily throw in
some erratic movement as the castle flies unevenly under Volstus’s
imperfect control.
Giantslayer
is not an adventure path with a lot of NPC interaction, particularly
the later adventures. Shadow of the Storm Tyrant
isn’t really an exception in this regard, but it does have a few
opportunities with some interesting NPCs. In particular, the PCs will
likely encounter the ghost of the castle’s former engineer, Renfal.
Renfal was captured and tortured into revealing the castle’s
secrets to Volstus before being killed. He came back as a ghost to
haunt Volstus, but Volstus killed him again—multiple times. As a
ghost, he kept reforming, so Volstus eventually found the location
where he was reforming and trapped him in there with walls
of force. If the PCs free
Renfal, they have a useful ally against the Storm Tyrant.
Volstus
himself also makes for an interesting NPC. On the surface, there
doesn’t seem to be much to make him really stand out other than he
has an orb of red dragonkind.
However, he is also something of a coward. He spends the opening of
this adventure trying to get away from the PCs, and most of the rest
of the adventure avoiding them and hoping that his allies get rid of
the PCs for him. He won’t face them until he has no other choice. A
lot of adventures inexplicably have the main villains wait around for
the PCs, even though it would make far more sense (albeit be a deadly
end for the PCs) if the villains just faced down the PCs with all
their allies right from the start (Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh at
the end of Mummy’s Mask is
a particularly egregious example of this). It’s
nice to see a villain have a real motivation for avoiding such an
encounter. It’s also nice to see a villain who is actually afraid
of the PCs—who has seen what they have done and has realised that
he might not be able to defeat them, that he might not actually be
all-powerful.
Volstus’s
fears and paranoia also create an additional obstacle for the PCs. To
ensure that nobody else can take the castle if he is defeated, he has
placed a bomb in the propulsion ducts beneath the castle. The bomb is
triggered to go off if he is killed. The PCs can find out about the
bomb from Renfal, and they may find themselves searching through the
propulsion ducts in search of the bomb while being pursued by phase
spiders and a shadow giant inquisitor. Alternatively, if they don’t
find and deactivate the bomb before killing Volstus, it explodes,
leaving them in a critically damaged castle that is hurtling towards
the ground, possibly over an inhabited area. Both of these options
allow for some great game moments.
The
final battle with Volstus is also suitably grand. Through his orb
of red dragonkind, he has
dominated an old red dragon that he flies on into battle. As such,
Volstus makes certain to take the battle outside and avoids fighting
indoors if he can. This can result in a battle the takes place all
around the outside of the castle, with the PCs potentially either
flying themselves or climbing along the castle’s walls and
parapets.
One
disappointing aspect of the adventure, however, is the way in which
it handles the character, Naximarra, who was first introduced in Ice Tomb of the Giant Queen.
Naximarra is a red dragon whom the PCs might have allied with. She
has been trying to recover the orb of red dragonkind
from Volstus, but has been unable to approach too
closely or else she could be dominated as well. She
is also a descendent of the original red dragon whose essence was
trapped in the orb,
and as such, her breath weapon can actually destroy it. One
thing I liked
about Naximarra
in Ice Tomb is that
she offered a rare opportunity in Giantslayer for an NPC who carried
over between adventures, providing a bit more of a link between the
adventures than the adventure path has tended to have. She was mostly
a background character in Ice Tomb
due to having to keep a low profile, but she was promised to have a
larger role in the final adventure.
Unfortunately,
she is mostly glossed over in Shadow of the Storm Tyrant.
Her
appearance is completely relegated to a sidebar, which mostly has her
unwilling to do anything until after Volstus is already dead—in
other words, she really
doesn’t do anything at all. Of
course, Shadow of the Storm Tyrant
can’t assume that the PCs made an alliance with Naximarra; it’s
just as possible that the PCs simply decided that working with an
evil red dragon was too great a risk and just killed her, making
her unavailable for this final adventure.
However, I do think it could
have made greater allowances for her appearance that would provide
her with a bit more to do and make a bit more of a pay-off for PCs
who decided to ally with her. As it is, her role in the adventure
path ends up kind of pointless.
As
this is the final adventure of Giantslayer, the main adventure is
followed by a “Continuing the Campaign” article by Jim Groves for
groups who wish to do more with their high-level characters. It gives
several brief ideas and two more fleshed-out options. The first deals
with what the PCs can do now that they have a flying castle under
their control. The second deals with the orb of red
dragonkind and does provide a
role for Naximarra, although this doesn’t really make up for her
not having a role in the adventure itself since not every group is
going to continue the campaign in this way. For many groups, Shadow
of the Storm Tyrant will be the
end of the campaign.
The
other support article in the volume is “Ecology of the Gigas” by
Patrick Renie. I have often been confused by just what role in the
multiverse gigas take. While they have been mentioned here and there,
statistics for gigas have only appeared in two previous adventures
(Hell gigas in The Thrice-Damned Prince and Abyss gigas in
The Witchwar Legacy),
with a third (the Abaddon gigas) in this volume’s Bestiary. This
article nicely removes that confusion. It also provides brief
descriptions of numerous types of gigas (since there is theoretically
a type of gigas for every plane) as wells as a few specific gigas
known to have interests in Golarion.
And
that brings the Giantslayer Adventure Path to an end. It starts out
very strongly with Battle of Bloodmarch Hill and
continues strongly into The Hill Giant’s Pledge.
However, after that it becomes rather repetitive with the next two
adventures sharing the same basic structure as The Hill
Giant’s Pledge. It then ends
with two adventures that are very similar in structure, the first of
which is so repetitive with itself that players are likely to get
bored. It also has little connection between the individual
adventures (particularly after the third adventure) beyond the theme
of giants who want to join the Storm Tyrant’s army. The PCs start
out as defenders of the town of Trunau, but Trunau is pretty much
forgotten about after the second adventure. Shadow of the
Storm Tyrant is a decent end to
the adventure path, but unfortunately, it is a decent end to a path
that has been of quite variable quality.
“Tall
Tales”
Typically,
the Pathfinder’s Journal in each volume of Pathfinder
Adventure Path has consisted of
six-part stories broken up over the six volumes of each complete
adventure path. The stories have themes relating to the theme of the
adventure path they’re published alongside. Because of this, I’ve
generally waited to read the fiction until after I’ve finished
reading all six volumes of the adventure path so that I can review
the stories
as a whole at the end of my review of the adventure path’s final
part.
As
such, I was unprepared for the change in format for Giantslayer.
Instead of one story by one author, broken up into six parts,
Giantslayer’s Pathfinder’s
Journal entries consist of six separate stories, each by a different
author, although with a framing narrative linking them all together.
Collectively titled “Tall
Tales”, the framing story is about a group of six adventurers who,
on the night before a big
battle they expect to die in,
each take turns telling a story about their encounters with giants.
If
I’d realised this was the case, I probably would have added brief
comments about each story with my reviews of each volume of
Giantslayer instead of waiting until the end, since reviewing them as
a whole doesn’t really work in this case. It’s too late to do
that, so I have decided to just make brief comments about each here.
“Close
Relations” (from Pathfinder Adventure Path #91) by
Richard Pett
Told
by Silas Shortstone, the party’s gnome bard, this story tells of
Silas’s capture by a family of ogres and how he outwits them to
escape. It quickly becomes clear why the framing story is called
“Tall Tales” as Silas is clearly only first level (he states that
this was his first ever adventure and his description of his
spellcasting abilities match that of a 1st-level Pathfinder bard),
yet he defeats much higher-level opponents.
The
story is reasonably fun, although it takes a little while to get
going. The opening relies
on a
lot of telling (“One
by one, they took us... They would leave one of us injured... At
night they gave us no rest...” p 75), although to be fair, it does
read very much like a person telling a story to his companions around
a campfire, which is exactly
what is happening. Once Silas is captured by the ogres, however, the
story becomes much more interesting.
“Going
Dörak”
(from Pathfinder Adventure Path #92)
by Michael Kortes
The
dwarf Angriss tells a story of how she and three of her clan fought
an ettin shaman. The story is almost entirely just the one battle and
it includes some very inventive tactics, including using a chain
between strung between two moving sleds to knock the ettin off a
cliff (far-fetched, but fits nicely with the “Tall Tales” frame).
Angriss’s character comes across well, although she is a fairly
stereotypical dwarf. The other characters don’t come across as
well. I actually had a hard time remembering which of the other
dwarves was which. However, the story is entertaining and the battle
is quite vivid and
full of tension.
“The
Travails of Kilig the Steersman” (from Pathfinder Adventure Path #93)
by Greg A. Vaughan
Okay,
I loved this one. It’s huge fun. In it, the title character, Kilig,
tells of
being
caught by a marsh giant and then duping
her into believing she has
contracted a “stone curse” from him, and only by curing him can
she cure herself. His
tale is certainly a “tall” one, full of obvious falsehoods.
Throughout the story, he calls his ship by two different names and
claims to be a full-blooded Ulfen at one point and to have Sczarni
blood at another. The characterisations in the story come across
really well—there are only two characters, so that makes things
easier.
The
only thing I don’t
care for in the story is Kilig’s disdain and abuse of his dog.
Being a dog lover, I wasn’t amused by him kicking the dog to get
him to wail as a way of spooking the giant, Mush-Lips. It really turns me off a character I otherwise like. That said,
considering all signs point to Kilig making the story up as he goes
along, it’s easy to think that he’s making that up too and
wouldn’t really hit his dog like that. I do love that both the dog
and Kilig’s greataxe are named Bran, the Giant Killer.
“A
Huge and Hulking Darkness” (from Pathfinder Adventure Path #94)
by Clinton J. Boomer
I’m
of a somewhat mixed opinion of this one. There are aspects I like,
but overall, I don’t feel it works so well. The narrator,
Ulionestria is an intriguing character with a lot of potential to be
a good character. We get treated to a lot of backstory for her, but
much of that backstory isn’t very relevant to the story. She
doesn’t do a lot either—apart from cast a speak
with dead
spell—and is more of an observer in her story than an active
participant, which makes her far less interesting to read about. It
leads to an ending which is primarily just exposition as one
character tells Ulionestria all the secrets she doesn’t find out
for herself.
This
story also has a very different style to the ones preceding it, with
a much more serious air and little
that could really be considered “tall”. While it makes sense that
not every member of this adventuring party would exaggerate stories
or outright make them up, but it does feel out of place and not
fitting with the framing story’s title of “Tall Tales” (other
than a brief appearance by a shadow
giant—whose
presence is never really explained—which ties in with the other
meaning of tall,
I
suppose).
Overall,
I feel this story would work much better if expanded into a longer
one and separated from the group of tales it’s part of.
“Clouded
Judgement” (from Pathfinder Adventure Path #95)
by Wendy N. Wagner
Frem,
the halfling alchemist, tells this tale of his first adventure where
he and two others
are hired to track down a cloud giant who has been rampaging and
killing local shepherds. It’s not as far-fetched as the earlier
tales in this series, but it is reasonably enjoyable. There are a
couple of places, though, where the scale seems off. In particular,
during a fight with the cloud
giant
early in the story, a human character, Gorten strikes at the
18-foot-tall giant’s shoulder. He then goes on to slice “low”
and leaves a gash in her leg. When she drops down to clutch at her
leg, he snatches a locket from around her neck. She is crouching at
this point, so I can see how he could reach it, but the locket
doesn’t seem to be any bigger than a human-sized locket and he can
carry it about without any problem. I’d expect a locket made for a
cloud giant (and we do learn later that this isn’t a stolen human
locket or anything like that) to be big enough that it would be
awkward for a human to hold.
I
can’t quite decide if this oddness of scale is deliberate—a hint
that Frem is not a reliable narrator, which would fit in with the
style of this series of tales. However, there’s nothing else in the
story to indicate that Frem is an unreliable narrator, just a couple
of oddities with scale. As such, I have to wonder if it’s really
just an error on the author’s part. Frem is probably meant to be an
unreliable narrator, but there really needs to be a little more to
make this clear.
“Fears
in the Frozen Pines” (from Pathfinder Adventure Path #96)
by Patrick Renie
This
story starts out really well, presenting an interesting, fleshed-out
character in the form of the narrator, Raus, an Ulfen ranger. I
particularly like his reasons for not having an animal companion,
which wonderfully (and sadly) allude to his having lost a close
companion in the past. The story does start to drag a little, though,
despite
being only six pages in length. It can be difficult to find the right
balance of description in action sequences (and admittedly, where
that balance occurs is a matter of opinion), but for me, the story
dwells a little too much on describing small details during sequences
of Raus nearly drowning/freezing in ice-cold water and later, his
fight with a troll that the tension in the scenes ends up diminished.
I do like the ending though, which nicely lives up to the “Tall
Tales” theme.
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