Curse of the Riven Sky

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Curse of the Riven SkyBy Paco G. Jaen

The black clouds of war are gathering, and evil flocks to their thundering call! While seeking the legendary expertise of a cloud giant skymage, the PCs interrupt an attack on his lair by well-armed and magically augmented hill giants. To obtain the cloud giant’s arcane knowledge, the PCs must seek out and eliminate the source of the hill giant threat, yet the brutes have little information other than the name of their employer—a mysterious giant calling herself the Storm Queen, whose anger and hatred have transformed over the course of years into a murderous plan that could cost hundreds of innocent lives. Can the PCs find the Storm Queen in time to prevent her from unleashing a horde of vengeful ghosts upon the world?

Curse of the Riven Sky is an adventure for 10th-level characters, written for the Pathfinder Role-playing Game. Authored by novelist and legendary game designer Monte Cook, this adventure features angry giants, slimy horrors raining upon an unsuspecting city, and cursed spirits willing to bore a hole through reality to fulfil their strange desires.

Now that’s the official blurb, which is very accurate and precise. Thank goodness, it does live up to expectations!

As it is to be expected from a write the calibre of Monte Cook, the writing is flawless, rich, precise and very easy to read. It is also been arranged in the way Paizo has us accustomed to, with nice introductions, background stories, great character hooks and very precise location descriptions.
The book is “only” a 32 pages one and printed on very thick and bright paper that reproduces very vivid colourful illustrations and cartography. The cover is very stiff cardboard and again the illustrations printed on them are very bright and colourful. Having said that, the only “flaw”, if you’d like to call it that, is the big difference between the style and quality of the illustration. Some are in a much more naive style than the others, which baffles me. Don’t get me wrong, it is very good throughout, but I would have expected, in a small product like this, that the style would remain more consistent all over. The cartography is fantastic, though. Lazzarety makes a fantastic job of it and the numerous maps to depict the villages, rooms, etc are as good as they can get.
The adventure is tough. There are loads of giants to fight and plenty of opportunities for role playing encounters as well, including a chance to sort out a satyr’s love life!

This adventure can be used as a sandbox in pretty much any campaign. The setting is very flexible and the length is such that could be played in just a few sessions, perfect to give your characters a taste of what to be a 10th level adventurer is all about, or maybe a needed XP boost to get to the next level.

If you want an adventure that will help find out what Paizo adventures are all about, or just a time filler for an existing campaign, you can’t do better than this.

 

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