Pathfinder Legends: Rise of the Runelords: Spires of Xin-Shalast

Pathfinder Legends #1.6

by Cavan Scott, John Ainsworth (Director), Stewart Alexander (Performer)

Armed with magical weapons, Ezren, Merisiel, Harsk, and Valeros travel across the icy wastes of the World's Roof to find the lost City of Greed.

With ghosts, wendigos, and giants standing in their way are they already too late? The Rise of the Runelords has begun and a terrible sacrifice must be made.

Genres: Fantasy

Audio CD

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

is a freelance comic writer and author. He is best known for his work on a variety of spin-offs from both Doctor Who and Star Wars, as well as comics and novels for Vikings, Pacific Rim, Sherlock Holmes, and Penguins of Madagascar.

Cavan Scott, along with Justina Ireland, Claudia Gray, Daniel Jose Older, and Charles Soule are crafting a new era in the Star Wars publishing world called Star Wars: The High Republic. Cavan's contribution to the era is a comic book series released through Marvel Comics titled Star Wars: The High Republic.

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

And of course you have to have the Big Bad Boss Beatdown to finish everything off for a D&D campaign. And that exactly what this one is. Nicely done.

[Jamie Revell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here we are at the end of the series, and, unsurprisingly, there isn't much to say about this that I haven't said about the earlier instalments. Scott has previously been the stronger of the two writers, but this is his weakest offering, in which he apparently struggles to bring to life a segment of the original campaign that doesn't seem to have had much depth to it.

Having said which, the opening part of the story, with the adventurers stumbling across a haunted waystation in the mountains is rather effective. The ghosts have a backstory, and there's a good focus on the dwarven ranger as our heroes deal with a problem that can't be dealt with simply by hitting it with swords. It doesn't feel especially "high level" (as it presumably was by this stage in the original) but that's a good thing, making the characters feel more vulnerable and endangered.

From then on, however, the bulk of the story is just a long string of fights leading towards the predictable final encounter. The villain just rants, being less developed than the underlings we've seen up to this point and there isn't any real development of the overarching plot, just a slog to finally get to where he's hiding. There's a sense of something grander behind it all, but there isn't time to explore any of it, and we're mainly left with the combat. Without the first segment, I'd have given this two stars, but, fortunately, that pulls up the average.

[Filip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Common knowledge has it that you should never turn a D&D campaign into a novel. So this one was turned into an audio-drama. I wonder how it would be like a novel. The drama was really good, with great voice acting and production values, however there were some problems that came with the medium. First of all, since this is an RPG campaign there was plenty of fighting which, in the drama, took form of a lot of shouting (plus some really enjoyable banter). Secondly, in order to inform the reader (listener?) of the plot, each villain had to provide extensive monologues explaining their plans.



I am familiar with the Rise of the Runelords campaign and I must say that the drama did really good with keeping to the storyline, while cutting out most of the unnecessary exploration and filler combat. What is more important it made the Pathfinder iconics into really enjoyable characters through the use of snappy and witty dialogue. Especially Merisiel, a character I haven't cared about much before, quickly became my favourite.



All in all, this was really enjoyable.

[Joseph B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rise of the Runelords reaches its epic conclusion as the Heroes of Shatterpoint face Karzoug in a fateful encounter. The climax while predictable, brought a fun end to our adventure. The cast once again does a great job with a high production quality. If you've enjoyed the series so far, you won't want to miss the end to this first arc.

[Jennifer Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've played this campaign a few times, so I was familiar with this story, but I enjoyed the audiobook of this a great deal. It reminded me of listing to a radio-drama with the way it is performed in the audio.