A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Beneath the Festered Sun

Beneath the Festered Sun by Pedro Coelho is a role playing game supplement published by Legendary Games for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some of it is considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This adventure is part of Legendary Games’ Adventure Path Plug-In series which are designed to create additional content for Paizo‘s official Adventure Paths. In this case, the Adventure Path is Mummy’s Mask, #79 to #84, which is referred to as the Egyptian Adventure Path in the supplement due to IP issues. This particular adventure is a sandbox city adventure for 3rd level characters intended to be run prior to the third and final encounter of #79, The Half-Dead City. The adventure is also available for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.

Beneath the Festered SunThe supplement is available as a PDF from RPGNow for $8.99, as a softcover premium heavyweight print on demand book for $15.99, a softcover standard heavyweight print on demand book for $13.99, the premium book and PDF for $17.49 and the standard book and PDF for $15.49. The PDF is the version reviewed which was purchased at the reduced price of $6.74.

This is a 42 page bookmarked PDF. Two pages are the full colour front and rear covers, one page is the front matter, one page a standard one introducing the Adventure Path Plug-In range, one page the Contents and one page explains what the supplement is and where it best fits in to the Adventure Path.

The Adventure Background covers the past and present background. Over two thousand years ago, an orphan trained to join the clergy instead favoured the teachings of Anubis, one of the old gods, over the officially sanctioned teachings of the Goddess of the Dead. Expelled from the church and joined by an eidolon from the Negative Energy Plane who she mistook for a representative of Anubis, the orphan, Kapanek, set up her own Anubian cult. Following a plague she and her followers were blamed for it and Kapanek saw her family executed before she too was put to death. On dying, she laid a curse.

The summary explains that the players are recruited by officials to look into what’s happening, and what is going on elsewhere.

A section on dealing with a sandbox explains how to handle the adventure, as there is no set order in which the players will visit the various locations.

Part One: A High Day Comes starts the adventure. Expecting to start a day of tomb raiding (or officially sanctioned grave robbing) in the necropolis, the players discovered that it is closed.

In the present, an astronomer connected an upcoming astronomical event – the Festered Sun – with the curse, believing that the event would trigger it. His warnings went unheeded, until now.

The curse is affecting the citizens and the players are one of three adventuring groups recruited to help investigate it. There are three different missions that the players can go on, and two other parties have also agreed. It doesn’t matter which mission the players pick, as it will turn out that the other adventurers have both failed, so they need to do all three. The section ends with two curses caused by the Festered Sun, which refers to rules in #82, Secrets of the Sphinx (Note: the link to this says it’s the third instalment but leads to the fourth).

Part Two: Reckoning covers various different locations in the city that the characters visit. At any location that one of the other two parties preceded them to, signs will be seen or news passed on about what the other adventurers did, or failed to do (if they were the first to visit, these are ignored). There are seven different locations detailed; some have multiple locations whilst others only have one. At each they will discover clues and at many they will also face opponents created from pieces of Kapanak’s soul.

Part Three: Enters Kerux is the final encounter which could take place at many of the locations visited. This is the final confrontation with Kapanak’s eidolon, Kerux.

Finally, Concluding the Adventure wraps things up and explains what effects the players actions will have.

At the end of the book there are six pages having ten battlemaps.

Beneath the Festered Sun in Review

The PDF is fairly well bookmarked with major and some minor sections linked. Some sub sections and sidebars are not bookmarked which would have been helpful. The Contents is at about the same level of detail. Navigation is on the whole decent.

The text maintains a two column format and a few minor errors were noticed. The presentation is on well above average; there are full colour page backgrounds with an Egyptian theme, full colour artwork, at least some of which would appear to be custom, and some very nice full colour battlemaps of the locations visited.

The supplement has a number of hyperlinks pointing to specific pages, some of which are for stats for standard NPCs or creatures. If there is no access to the internet during play, copies of the relevant stats will need to be on hand. This does reduce the amount of stats in the supplement, making more space for the text, but does mean that some, more minor beings, are basically generic.

There are a number of people that players will encounter. Interestingly, some of those are actually patsies for Kerux. They are operating from the best of intentions and believe that they are actually helping, so they aren’t just foes who can be disposed of.

In the adventure, there are a number of different ways that players can gather information, with better checks providing better knowledge. This includes overhearing what the other parties are asking for in the way of money, allowing players to negotiate a better deal for themselves.

The adventure is designed to work with the Mummy’s Mask and, in regards to the module in which it is intended for, provides a change of pace from dungeon delving with a non-linear investigation that requires interacting with NPCs. Plus a few pieces of combat as well. It should be possible to adapt the adventure for other Egyptian-themed settings (it may lose some of the connectivity to Mummy’s Mask as a result, but it should still work pretty well). Overall, Beneath the Festered Sun is a nice addition to Mummy’s Mask and can be found by clicking here.

 

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