Curse of the Crimson Throne series:

• Book 1: Edge of Anarchy
• Book 2: Seven Days to the Grave
• Book 3: Escape From Old Korvosa
• Book 4: A History of Ashes
• Book 5: Skeletons of Scarwall
• Book 6: Crown of Fangs
• Reconstructing Curse of the Crimson Throne

It’s part five of my Curse of the Crimson Throne deconstruction, which will be my shortest installment in this series and the most controversial. Before we get there, though, let’s jump into my evergreen caveats for this series (needed today more than others):

First and foremost, these edits are there to make the game that I want to run. What I consider “essential,” you may not, and vice-versa. You would make (or have made) different decisions, which is both natural and part of the fun. Feel free to comment below if you see different opportunities.

Second, I’m going to be making heavy edits. If you’ve run or played in Curse of the Crimson Throne, I’m going to be deleting your favorite side quest, or NPC, or completely rewriting villain’s motivations and backstories. When I’m done, it’s likely not going to resemble the story you know.

Third, there will be rampant spoilers—in fact, once I dive in, these posts are essentially spoilers from start to finish. If you are a player in one of these APs or plan to be, these articles aren’t for you. (If you plan on GMing it or have done so, however… welcome!)

Finally, I don’t yet know what game system I’ll be using to run this Adventure Path, but it likely won’t be Pathfinder. Try not to get caught up in how dramatically I’m reducing the possible XP or treasure, or what I’m doing to CR of encounters. These articles are meant to be system agnostic, focused on story beats rather than mechanics.

Okay, please remember those caveats as I wade into today’s article, because if you love Curse of the Crimson Throne as written, or even just have a particular fondness for this book, I’m going to frustrate or disappoint you.

Curse of the Crimson Throne 5: Skeletons of Scarwall

Book 5 of the Adventure Path is Skeletons of Scarwall by Greg A. Vaughan. As I mentioned in yesterday’s article, Book 4 is largely considered the most controversial of the AP because of its side-quest nature and the removal of the PCs from Korvosa for long stretches of time. In some circles, however, Books 4 & 5 are spoken about as a set, because both are away from Korvosa, and because both involve a similar “go get items to defeat the queen” structure to them. The differences between the two are a) Book 4, generally speaking, involves a longer stretch of time away, and b) Book 4 is all about the Shoanti history of Castle Korvosa and interacting with “barbarian” tribes, whereas Book 5 is all about the dragon Kazavon’s life before his bones were scattered and is heavily about undead and the Brotherhood of Bones.

Skeletons of Scarwall begins with the history of Kazavon in the guise of a human general, who later became a tyrannical and sadistic warlord within the region of Belkzen. Kazavon was both revealed to be a dragon and killed in the same siege of Castle Scarwall, slain by a magical sword called Serithtial. Now, Castle Scarwall is a haunted and undead-plagued ruin, yet the magical sword still resides in its belly. Thus, the hook of this book is the Brotherhood of Bones contacting the PCs, revealing the existence of the sword, and sending them deep into orc-infested Belkzen to retrieve it.

I have a major issue with the whole conceit of this book, unfortunately, and how the AP fits together. I was willing to go along with Book 4’s dragging of the PCs away from Korvosa and the people they’re passionate about protecting because a) it felt like a nice change of pace, and b) the payoff was a bunch of background information and, most importantly, powerful magic items that could take on Queen Ileosa. To have the PCs return from the Cinderlands only to be dragged out to distant Castle Scarwall, for the exact same payoff as the last side quest feels both silly and virtually impossible to sell to a group of players. Clearly GMs do it, because Pathfinder forums aren’t awash in revolts against the AP’s structure, but it’s not the sort of “trust me, do this, even if it’s not what your characters would do” kind of story I want for my campaigns. The only way it makes sense to me is if the PCs return to try and take on the queen, get soundly defeated, and realize they need an artifact even more powerful than what they received from the Sun Shaman. Of course, that sort of structure would invalidate the need for Book 4, because why spend all that time away for something that didn’t work? Which means, for me, the choice is Book 4 OR Book 5, not both.

I’ve already dropped the Brotherhood of the Bones from previous books, because I deemed their motivations and backstories too convoluted to ever make sense to the PCs given the many other factions in play. You may recall that, in Book 3, the Brotherhood was meant to be introduced in the whole Salvator Scream story beat, which I skipped entirely for streamlining’s sake. Even had I included Salvator Scream as an NPC and run the game as written, I have a hard time believing that the Brotherhood is a credible enough quest-giver to send the party away from Korvosa so soon after they’ve returned from weeks away.

Something else structurally bizarre to me about this book is that Book 6 involves an assault on Castle Korvosa. The idea that the party is going to spend months of real game time cleaning out an undead-infested castle only to turn around and storm a second castle sounds like a recipe for frustrating or boring my players.

Indeed, the Hardcover Edition adds some commentary missing from the original printing, which feels to me like validation of the clunkiness of this story beat. It offers ways of streamlining Scarwall to move the plot along:

“This [book] is a significant stylistic departure from the previous chapters of Curse of the Crimson Throne, in that it focuses entirely on the exploration of an enormous castle. Even the final chapter, which features another large castle as an adventure site, doesn’t expect the PCs to spend a significant amount of time exploring rooms. When the assault on Castle Korvosa occurs, the PCs are more likely to make multiple surgical strikes into the fortification, and battles there will tend to spread quickly as the castle’s defenders mobilize to confront the PCs.

This isn’t quite the case in Scarwall, which is presented in a much more classic “dungeon crawl” format. Few monsters will rouse themselves to join battles in neighboring rooms, and the entire chapter is constructed in a way so as to all but force the PCs to explore much of the castle in order to defeat its creatures, lift its curse, and recover the sword they seek. Compared to the attack on Castle Korvosa (during which the PCs are likely to have maps of the castle layout in order to aid their assault), for some groups, the exploration of Scarwall may well end up feeling more like a slog than high adventure, especially if the PCs are eager to return to their beloved Korvosa or worry about what dire acts the queen may be inflicting upon the city while its heroes are “distracted” by a haunted castle hundreds of miles away.”

In my Curse of the Crimson Throne, then, I’m making the decision to drop Book 5. The setup for Book 4 is easier to envision, and frolicking through the Cinderlands and learning about the Shoanti culture sounds more fun than a giant dungeon of undead, at least in the context of this campaign.

What’s amazing to me is that doing so doesn’t change the bridge from Book 4 to Book 6 at all, nor does it affect the overall story. Sure, the PCs don’t learn about Kazavon’s life as a tyrant before his death, and they’re missing a big magic sword. The Brotherhood of Bones and Zon-Kuthon (the god of pain who the Brotherhood worships and who is a major thematic element of Book 5) are absent. Yet if the items imbued with power at the end of Book 4 are cool enough, the job of arming the PCs to take on the queen is done. Nothing else about what’s happened in Korvosa or Queen Ileosa’s motivations change. Depending on the system I’m using to run the AP, I’ll have to think carefully about milestone leveling and ensuring the PCs are of appropriate power to accomplish the tasks of Book 6, but as I say above in my caveats, I’m not overly worried about level progression. What matters to me is a campaign structure that holds together and is something my players will enjoy.

In Praise of Skeletons of Scarwall

Though I’m dropping the entire book and therefore not detailing the specific beats of the Castle Scarwall here, I do want to say a few nice things about this module. I’m a fan of Greg A. Vaughan, someone who’s written a metric ton of AP books for Paizo, and who’s epic Aegis of Empires Adventure Path I own in hardcover. My issues with this book are entirely how it fits into the overall Curse of the Crimson Throne AP, not Castle Scarwall as a standalone dungeon-delve.

In fact, Skeletons of Scarwall looks like a really, really fun old-school dungeon crawl. I mean come on: It’s a haunted, horror-filled castle in the middle of orc territory, with a magic sword waiting to be rescued—that’s as classic as it gets! Getting there involves fighting through orc garrisons and the Deadwatcher tribe tasked with guarding the cursed site. The castle itself is steeped in complex history that gets revealed through its exploration—almost a hundred rooms in all, which to me qualifies it as a “mega-dungeon,” something an entire campaign could revolve around. There are traps and haunts aplenty. The monsters are unique, interesting, and terrifying, all aided by truly exceptional and evocative artwork. There are of course the undead—unique and named wraiths, graveknights, demi-liches, ghosts, bogeymen, banshees, juju zombies, mummies, and such, but also a creepy night hag, a monstrous corpse lotus, an umbral dragon (with a treasure horde!), a purple worm, an iron golem, and even devils from Hell. I have other mega-dungeon adventures on my shelf and now consider Skeletons of Scarwall a viable place to go if I’m ever feeling the itch to run an OSR-type game in one. It’s a vivid setting, and one I’d love to make the center of a game using something like Vagabond to play it.

Which is all to say: Cool adventure! Just not for my urban, Korvosa-centered AP.

As always with my articles, please comment below or send me an email at jaycms@yahoo.com. I’m always eager to hear from GMs who have run this AP to know what they think of my edits and different choices they made.