Evocative City Sites: Burial Vaults of House Blackwood by Richard Biggs Jr. is a role playing game supplement published by Rite Publishing for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts of it are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
This is a 33 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $2.95 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. One page is the front cover, one the front matter, one the Open Game License and two pages are ads for other supplements.
The first two and two thirds pages have maps of the three levels of the vaults followed by the standard in-character narration, in which there are also a number of skill checks that can be made. The vaults are in a cemetery, one that is notable for its blood-soaked soil. There are the home of the deceased adventurers of House Blackwood, but have supposedly been broken into. This section ends with some adventure hooks.
Next are NPC descriptions. Each has the usual complicated stat blocks of Rite offerings and has background and secret knowledge. Renirus Blackwood is the head of House Blackwood (he apparently visits the Intimate Shape Festhall) and Vaughn is his bodyguard. Thief-Taker Blake Steelson has a connection to the cemetery’s caretaker, but it seems to be an unwilling one. Caretaker Bryghtwater is an evil necromancer who runs the cemetery and may be blackmailing the thief-taker, or Renirus. Or both. Mayhem is the caretaker’s raven familiar. There are two undead that can be found in the vaults, the House Blackwood Zombie and the singular Kordner Blackwood. The Black Shroud Scoundrels are an order of thieves that are well equipped thanks to stealing items from the cemetery. The Giant Cadaver Larva is a new monster. The final NPC is the House Blackwood Dragonguard. Finally, there are some magic items connected with the family and NPCs, a new material and a new spell.
The final ten pages of content are battlemaps of the vault.
Evocative City Sites: Burial Vaults of House Blackwood in Review
The PDF is well bookmarked with most sections linked. Navigation is decent. The text maintains a two column black and white format and a number of errors were noticed. As well as the partly coloured maps, there are also black and white illustrations for each NPC and some of the magic items. Presentation is excellent.
As with other supplements in the series, this is theoretically set in Questhaven yet can easily be dropped in to other settings.
When the actual text is read, after the in-character narration, things get a bit confusing, sometimes to the degree of not making sense. The Dragonguard is a paladin – lawful good in other words – yet in the adventure hooks he goes around murdering House Blackwood members and his background states he is trying to take the Blackwood fortune. The Dragonguard may be a religious fanatic, but that’s still not appropriate behaviour for a paladin.
Renirus, Steelson and Bryghtwater are connected – somehow. It’s not really clear how. The secret knowledge given for the NPCs often seems contradictory – some would seem to be false. Bryghtwater is doing something, and may have something on the other two. He seems to have kidnapped Steelson’s family, but quite what he’s done with them isn’t clear. Renirus seems to be broke in one place and buying up properties in another. Steelson seems to be conspiring and being blackmailed – both cannot be possible.
This supplement contains a lot of extras compared to others in the series. The problem is that the extras, related to the NPCs, are very confusing. Some of what is said must be false, for it cannot all be true, but this is never made clear. This is a rather confused entry with some nice material that really hasn’t been put together that well. A GM can still use it but will probably have to go through and rewrite some of the material so it makes more sense. It looks good, but it’s probably the worst entry in the series. Evocative City Sites: Burial Vaults of House Blackwood can be found by clicking here.
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