Beginning the entire 'Pathfinder Society' shared campaign with a bang, this adventure sets the heroes the task fo saving Absalom from an ancient and deadly plot many centuries in the making. Now when the plot was originally hatched some 800 years ago, it was swiftly detected and the forces massed against the city defeated... or so it was thought. But one man's meddling nearly brought the city to disaster once more. The stakes are high.

The Pathfinder Society has got wind of this and the adventure starts in media res as the party of young Pathfinders set out to retrieve an ancient codebook from a scholar... only to discover that he has been kidnapped! Success in rescuing the scholar is key to solving this adventure - no advice is given as to what to do if he doesn't survive, so the astute DM will have to ensure that he does or this might be a very short game.

Assuming they are successful in rescuing the scholar, one Yargos Gill, he not only tells them who stole the codebook but reveals that they are using it to raise undead combatants from ancient times... and a mad scramble through the city to thwart their plots ensues. The episodes are a little disjointed, with a brawl in a granary, a visit to an information broker whose price is a spot of safe-cracking and a visit to a temple with exceedingly bizarre worship give the party little time to rest before the final climax of a raid on the individual who is using the codebook to such dire effect.

I've DMed this adventure several times, and it still seems to lurch a little disjointedly: I'm not sure how well it flows from a player perspective (although all mine have enjoyed the game). Fortunately, each individual encounter is well-resourced with appropriate maps, NPC/adversary notes and all you need to run it successfully. By making Gill very talkative - he is a scholar after all, and many such are fond of the sound of their own voices - you can convey sufficient background to cue the players in to what is going on and what they can do about it.

Introducing the concept of 'Factions' which runs throughout the shared campaign, members of each Faction have individualised sub-plot targets to achieve within the context of the main adventure. If you are using the adventure as part of a campaign outside of the series of adventures that make up Season 0 of the Pathfinder Society shared campaign (or even are playing through them as a group with the same DM) there are suggestions of how to carry things through - favours earned or emnity gained - from this adventure to others set in Absalom, a nice touch.

A quite memorable, if slightly flawed, adventure to get the campaign rolling... but possibly not the best thing to start off your own campaign involving members of the Pathfinder Society - bring it in at an appropriate point later on.

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Reviewed: 29 December 2015