Pathfinder Adventure Path: Cult of the Cave Worm (Sky King’s Tomb 2 of 3) (P2) (PATHFINDER ADV PATH SKY KINGS TOMB

by Scott D. Young

Finding a legendary tomb requires tracking an equally legendary cave worm said to dwell there. As the adventurers set out from Highhelm, they must brave the Darklands’ dangers, navigate a treacherous fey city, and recover the relic that retraces the cave worm’s path. Yet in doing so, they learn of nefarious rivals who also seek the tomb―rivals the adventurers might stop by infiltrating an unforgiving underground metropolis.

“Cult of the Cave Worm” is a Pathfinder adventure for four 5th-level characters, continuing the Sky King’s Tomb Adventure Path, a three-part monthly campaign in which a group of adventurers travel deep underground to discover a legendary dwarven king’s tomb, seek subterranean treasures, and heal millennia-old injustices―all while stopping an ambitious villain from weaponizing those same discoveries. This adventure also includes a study of cave worm ecology, a gazetteer of the duergar city Hagegraf, potent relics, and several monsters to threaten underground explorers.

Each monthly full-color softcover Pathfinder Adventure Path volume contains an in-depth adventure scenario, stats for several new monsters, and support articles meant to give Game Masters additional material to expand their campaign. Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes use the Open Game License and work with both the Pathfinder RPG and the world’s oldest fantasy RPG.

Genres: Fantasy

96 pages, Paperback

Published September 12, 2023

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This adventure offers much of what I like in adventure writing: cool locations and space to offer up secondary plots or spots of world-building. The locations covered offer fun “adventure hubs” and the article on Cave Worm Ecology is a real treat. The only thing preventing a 5-star review is the article of Hagegraf doesn’t offer enough adventure seeds to spring board PCs into more duergar/hryngar stories.

[MuffinMan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Content warnings for debt and indentured servitude, cannibalism.

Since the first book in this series was the first good Pathfinder AP volume in a while, I was excited for this one. Unfortunately, this book is poorly organized at every level. At the sentence level, the author often puts the subject of a sentence last or uses a pronoun or general descriptor that implies the subject should be obvious when it is not. (Consider "Across the field was running a horse." It's technically a valid sentence, but "A horse ran across the field" is better in every way.)

As far as tying into the rest of the series, this book doesn't deliver on two of the big promises made at the end of the last volume. As a result, there's an NPC who is supposed to be a significant part of this volume who isn't really described anywhere. At a more intermediate level, a pack of maps and some formatting mistakes in subheadings make it unclear how the encounters in chapter two fit together.

I feel like it would take detailed note-taking and some degree of guessing to figure out what this adventure is even supposed to accomplish, the adventure is a bit of a railroad in the parts where the structure is most clear, and the encounters aren't particularly inspired.

The first adventure looks awesome in the hands of an experienced GM. I would still recommend that one, and would rewrite this one basically from scratch.

[Peter De Kinder · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking for an adventure doing some cavern exploration, and happened upon this scenario. It was unfortunately not what I was looking for, but did offer a nice enough scenario for my players down the road. At first it looked like a bit of a slug fest scenario, but the introduction of the city at the end still managed to give it a nice balance between combat and intrigue.