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by PzVIE

Second Darkness has the reputation of being the worst adventure path that Paizo ever published. Well, after playing through the (revised) adventure paths of Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne, I decided to give it a try nevertheless. A memorable remark in one of the few available reviews was “Drow aplenty”. That hooked me somehow and I told my players that this will be the next Pathfinder adventure path we are playing.

2nd Darkness was written for D&D3.5, so as a GM, you have to take care of some small adjustments, which can be easily done on the fly. Mostly it’s the calculation of CMB and CMD for the NPCs and monsters. Piece of cake.

As usual, the adventure path comes in six parts, and I will give each of them a paragraph here.

HUGE SPOILERS ARE FOLLOWING – SO GMs ONLY PLEASE!

The six books of 2nd Darkness

1: Shadow in the Sky
The opening for this campaign is a city adventure set in Riddleport, and I daresay, a pretty good one. The PCs get employed by the owner of the Gold Goblin Gambling Hall, and while working there, they discover that some shady things are going on. They make some friends in and outside the city, and finally discover that their employer is in cahoots with a Dark Elf Lady, who dwells in a cave below the city’s Cyphergate (a Thassilonian relic) and who has some sinister plans … also, there is a strange black shadow hanging in the skies of Riddleport and nobody knows what it is; not even the scholars and mages have any idea. The city is run and controlled by a few gang bosses, and there is plenty of room for the PCs to entertain themselves with small side adventures, if the GM is willing to play along. My players enjoyed that and did lots of stuff outside the story line when they searched in the city and investigated things that better be left in the dark. The book ends with the escape of the Drow Lady. A few days later a meteorite strikes on the island of Devil’s Elbow, 18 miles outside the city, followed by an earthquake and a tsunami and the black shadow disappears ...

2: Children of the Void
The second part is set on the island of Devil’s Elbow and is a wonderful sandbox adventure. There are a few key locations there, but the players are free to go wherever they like, and in what order they prefer. But not only the players are investigating the meteor; a couple of other groups are interested in it too, mainly to harvest valuable sky metals. Riddleport’s Cyphermages, some Dwarfs from the city’s Gasworks, and of course a sinister gang boss and his goons have quickly mounted expeditions and already arrived on the island before the players. But the meteor that struck the island brought something with it: eggs from an alien species that hatched after the impact, bringing some dangerous predators that now roam the island: a bite from them and you have good chances to end up as a “void zombie”. So the players have a quite a lot to do: fight, rescue, or reason with the various groups there and kill the alien creatures before they can get off the island and threaten Riddleport, Varisia, or even the whole of Golarion. (This is of course optional, but my players did it – they were heroes, after all.) Also, the authors implemented a tragic story about the love of an early settler and a siren, which the players can take care of or ignore. I liked that little sidetrack. The end is similar to the first book: a Drow, hidden in a cave in the island’s cliffs was responsible for the meteor impact; she installed some glyphs filled with mighty ancient magic that called the sky stone down to the planet. So the book ends with a little dungeon crawl and the PCs will find some clues that will lead them into an old, abandoned Elven City deep within the Mierani Forest, north of Riddleport.

3: The Armageddon Echo
The third part sends the PCs to the north into that forest, where they find an Elven strike force, committed to take back the ancient ruins that once were the proud Elven city of Celwynvian, in ruins since thousands of years, and now suddenly overrun by Drow and their minions. They have to deal with the Elf army there and when they finally get recruited, they are sent on a couple of commando missions. The first part of this module is very combat-orientated and they face of lot of Drow opponents along with their Driders and Demon allies. In the end, they find out that the Drow wizards created a demiplane within the ruins (called the “Armageddon Echo”) that duplicates past events: the three days before the Earthfall which happened about 10,000 years ago and lead to the collapse of civilization. The Drow are studying these events, and obviously they want to recreate it – the little meteor on Devil’s Island was just a test run.

4: Endless Night
This is a strange one. The clues the PCs find in the Armageddon Echo lead them deep into the Darklands: the Drow capital city of Zirnakaynin. To get there, an old Elven necromancer transforms the PCs into “real” Drow, using corpses from the recent battle. This is a little disgusting and might turn some players off, but mine seemed to enjoy that: becoming undercover agents in the Darklands? Cool! Anyway, this adventure gives them plenty of opportunities to explore Drow society and learn more about the evil sister race of the Elves. The PCs will become employees (read: slaves) of a noble house, sent on some missions, and they also have to do some spying and information gathering to learn what’s going on. Their cover finally get blown by the mighty matron of the house they are serving, but after a little palaver, she let them go free: she’s not interesting in destroying Golarion with a meteorite. Again, they gain some useful clues from here on what to do next. But then the matron dispells their Drow disguise and the PCs have to escape through the tunnels of the Darklands and get back to the surface. These Drow are evil after all! But with all the knowledge they now possess, the next stop is the Elven nation Kyonin.

5: A Memory of Darkness
Kyonin, and its capital Iadara, is an Elven paradise. But behind the happy facade, again, sinister things are going on, and the players they learn about a secret shadow government named the Winter Council. Their investigations are not leading to a final conclusion, but they find out enough to seek out that Winter Council by themselves. This leads to a journey through some old and ancient Elf gates (with some very nice adventure opportunities) and when they finally reach their destination, they find out that the Winter Council sits in a fortress, besieged by a Demon army. Way too many Demons to fight, so they need their wits to get through the siege into the castle to meet that mysterious council. In there, they discover the secret of how the Drow came into existence (this is a weird story … some GMs might alter that part or even skip it at all), but in the end, they again discover enough information to finally learn of what the Drow are really planning: They want to call down a huge meteorite right onto Kyonin, thus destroying the Elven nation and very likely bringing a 2nd Darkness to all of Golarion.

6: Descent into Midnight
Again, the PCs need to go into the Darklands, but this time it is a huge, huge subterranean cave, more than 300 x 200 miles big. There, they have to find the magical glyphs – similar to the glyphs on Devil’s Island – that cause the ancient magic to bring a meteorite down and they have to deal with all the dwellers there. This is another beautiful sandbox module, but unfortunately, except for a few key locations, it’s not very detailed – most side locations are no more than a small paragraph in an appendix of the book. So I invested a good deal of work here, expanding the rudimentary descriptions of the cities and its denizens and their society (there are Duergar, Morlocks, Goblins, and Chardas). It helped to bring that huge cavern alive and offered some great role playing opportunities. Of course, there are also plenty of Drow and their Demon allies there, guarding the glyphs. The PCs have to destroy five of them before they are able to finally confront the boss baddie in her fortress and destroy the final glyph – the master glyph; thus preventing the 2nd Darkness of Golarion. The final battle is pretty deadly and can easily lead to a total party kill; luckily, in my case, it ended good for the players and they returned victorious to the surface, knowing they saved the world from a huge catastrophe.

Final Thoughts

We played the whole adventure path in 21 sessions, each lasting 6 to 7 hours, so all in all, we needed around 140 hours for the whole thing. One of the problems I had with this adventure path is the general motivation of the PCs: why should they care at all? Why should they risk their lives for a few Drow, especially in the beginning, when they are unaware of the full story? So I told them up front that they should consider all playing Half-Elves or Elves, or at least – if they want to play another race – their characters should have close ties to the Elven race. (To help them in their decisions, I offered 22 building points for Elves, 21 for Half-Elves, and the normal 20 for other races). I ended up with three Half-Elves and one Elf. That was fine and the story and the motivation worked.

The adventure path itself is a wild ride: it starts as a city adventure, followed by an island sandbox, then military driven commando raids, again, back to a city (well, a very strange city full of Drow in the Darklands), then the Elven capital of Iadara, the besieged fortress of the Winter Council, and then back into a huge sandbox cavern where the final confrontation takes place.

Be aware that the entire campaign is written for D&D 3.5 and playing it with the Pathfinder 1 rules made me find out that Pathfinder characters are obviously much more powerful than their D&D 3.5 counterparts. So I decided to skip a few level ups, and we played the final confrontation at two levels lower than recommended. That turned out to be a good decision, as the fights were too easy in the beginning, and when I started to skip one and then two levels, things got much more interesting and tense. (It still wasn’t too hard.) In long campaigns, players get very much used to their characters (at least my players), so I played with the optional Hero Point rule. And indeed, three players needed them to prevent their characters from certain death. But all heroes survived all six books and that was my intention.

So all in all, I think this adventure path is way better than its reputation. If you can bear a few strange things (like the Elf necromancer disguising the PCs with dead Drow bodies, or the secret of how Drow are made [that is really close to the border of stupid]), you get a lot of interesting locations and great encounters here. And a wonderful opportunity to introduce the sinister Drow (and also the Darklands) to Golarion. In the end, it’s D&D/Pathfinder, so expect a lot of fights, but there is plenty of opportunity for role playing here too, if the players want that and the GM plays along.

So comparing the two previous adventure paths to this one, I would rate Rise of the Runelords a 9, Curse of the Crimson Throne a 10, and Second Darkness an 8. We really had a lot of fun and if you are into Pathfinder 1, or into epic adventures, or simply are a fan of Drizzd d’Urden and Drow in general, go and play that one. It’s definitely worth your time.

Thanks for reading.


PS: As I usually do, I maintained an adventure log for my players here on the Geek, so if your are interested in browsing through it: PzVIE's Pathfinder Campaign Log: Second Darkness. Although it is in German.

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