DoubleGold's PFS Feast of Ravenmore (Inactive)

Game Master DoubleGold

Adventure Background
The village of Ravenmoor was founded during the initial
burst of Chelish colonialism that saw the birth of much
larger cities like Magnimar, Korvosa, and Riddleport.
Yet where those cities flourished, Ravenmoor never
progressed far beyond its rural beginnings, for in the
early years the town was ravaged by what appeared to be a
supernatural blight. With the villagers close to starvation,
the town’s founder, a priestess of Desna named Iola
Kriegler, decided to undertake a sort of vision quest to
seek a solution to her village’s problems.
Alas, the visions she chose to follow came not from her
goddess, but from an ancient enemy, the god of parasites
and stagnation, Ghlaunder. Iola fell victim to these
dark visions and came upon a strange commune of his
followers deep in the Churlwood, from whom she learned
of a ritual that would ensure good harvests in return for
giving the spawn of Ghlaunder a place to safely grow—
her body, her descendants, her village.
Accompanied by two faceless stalkers disguised as
human druid advisors, Iola returned to Ravenmoor a
changed creature. But while her flock worried about her,
they could not dispute the miracles she worked, and the
harvest that year and every year since has yielded enough
bounty to keep the villagers well provided and safe. Iola,
now a priestess of Ghlaunder, recruited select members
of the village into her inner circle of allies, forming a
hidden cult within the populace who helped mask the
truth from the others. As Ravenmoor grew increasingly
isolated, the strange beliefs and traditions in town became
more and more distorted, and the worship of Desna grew
increasingly perverted into a mockery of her faith.
Iola eventually paid for her bargain with Ghlaunder
when her body gave birth to one of the Gossamer King’s
spawn, but not before giving birth in the preceding years
to several children of her own. The Kriegler line would
rule Ravenmoor for decades, both as mayors and as secret
spiritual leaders, and each of them eventually bore the
Gossamer King’s spawn in a gory ritualistic death in the
wee hours of the morning. Now and then, a particularly
astute villager would discover the truth, but the cult
was always quick to silence such folks before they could
spread the word.
And so, over the generations, Ravenmoor has stagnated.
Today, however, the cult faces an unanticipated peril.
Through chance and accident, the Kriegler line has
dwindled to a single member named Andretti Kriegler,
a man who has recently been forced to admit that he is
sterile. Without the ability to perpetuate his line, he
knows that the line of the Gossamer King’s spawn will
come to an end as well. Visions granted by his dark god
have made it clear that should Kriegler allow this to
happen, the town of Ravenmoor would not only suffer
greatly, but his immortal soul would be denied its proper
place in the Gossamer King’s court in the afterlife.
And so Kriegler began researching a cure for his
condition. He hopes that by performing a number of
fertility rituals centered around blood sacrifices that have
come to him in his visions he can cure his sterility and
father children to carry on the Gossamer King’s legacy.
Initially, the mayor intended to use his own followers
as sacrifices, but he worried that doing so would test the
limits of the non-cultists’ faith, and, even worse, make
them suspect that there was more to their beloved “Dream
Tender” than they were led to believe. The arrival of a tax
collector named Elias Kyle less than 24 hours before the
ritual was scheduled struck the mayor as a divine sign,
and though Kyle struggled and managed to kill one of
the cult’s faceless stalker allies, in the end his sacrifice
went exactly as Kriegler had planned, down to luring new
sacrifices to town for the next few rituals. After all... what
better sacrifice than a nonbeliever?

Adventure Summary
When a Magnimarian tax collector fails to return from
the remote village of Ravenmoor with a long-overdue
collection of taxes, the PCs are tasked with investigating
and collecting the missing sum. They arrive on the day of
the village’s annual harvest celebration. As they take part
in the festival, they begin to unravel the truth—that the
missing tax collector may never have left Ravenmoor. When night falls, the PCs are ambushed in their beds by villagers
dressed in strange robes and mosquito masks. Presented
with the revelation that a dangerous cult is operating in the
village, the PCs must travel to the abandoned farm where
the cult is preparing for a living sacrifice if they hope to
discover the missing tax collector’s fate and—perhaps
more importantly—survive the night!

WHERE ON GOLARION?
Feast of Ravenmoor takes place in the small village of
Ravenmoor in Varisia. The village is well off the main
road that links Magnimar and Riddleport. An old,
seldom-used track that winds along the west bank
of the Lampblack River is the only real connection
Ravenmoor has with the rest of civilized Varisia.

Part One: On the Road
Low-ranking Magnimarian bookkeeper Jeminda Anikee
(LN female human expert 2) has a problem on her hands.
A few weeks ago, she discovered that the small village of
Ravenmoor hadn’t paid its taxes to Magnimar in several
years. The village’s yearly tax owed has never been large,
so it’s not surprising that the mistake has gone unnoticed
for so long. In fact, Jeminda’s research suggests that the
village hasn’t been lax with its payments maliciously,
but rather as a result of Magnimar simply forgetting to
send a tax collector up to the remote village because of a
repeated clerical error over the past 15 years. But while a
year’s worth of taxes might not be much, over the course
of several years of missed payments and penalties, the
amount due has climbed to 500 gp.
Jeminda didn’t want to go to her superiors with this
news before she had the 500 gp accounted for, afraid
she’d be blamed for allowing the missed payments to go
on for so long in the first place. Instead, she contacted
a tax collector she felt she could trust—her brother-inlaw
Elias Kyle. She received a short letter from him from
Galduria a week after he set out to collect the 500 gp from
Ravenmoor, but in the 2 weeks since that missive, she’s
heard nothing. Elias seems to have vanished, and now
Jeminda feels responsible not only for a missing 500 gp
but for a missing employee of the free city of Magnimar.
More convinced than ever that reporting to her
superiors would only get her fired, Jeminda opts to contact
a group of independent investigators. As fate would have
it, the people she contacts are the PCs. How she’s heard
about them depends on what previous successes the PCs
have had, but the fact that they’re not yet well-known
adventurers is key to her. She hopes to send a group of
competent agents up to Ravenmoor to investigate the
missing money and man, but not a group that’s so well
known that word of their journey to the town would catch
anyone’s attention. And of course, she can hardly promise
enough payment to entice much higher level help anyway!
If the PCs are far from Magnimar, she hears about them
from a distant cousin whom she asks for advice—this
cousin should live wherever the PCs have had their most
recent adventure so he can recommend them to Jeminda
for the job.
Jeminda would prefer to meet the PCs in a nondescript
tavern somewhere outside of the district where she
works—she recommends the Drunken Dog in Ordellia, a
relatively quiet and out-of-the-way tavern just south of the
Yondabakari River where she’s unlikely to be recognized
by her colleagues. Jeminda is a nervous, mousey woman
with dull brown hair and busy hands. A DC 20 Sense
Motive check is enough to confirm she’s nervous about
both her missing brother-in-law and losing her job if she
doesn’t find a solution to the problem.
She asks the PCs to travel to Ravenmoor as quickly and
quietly as possible, and once there to accomplish two
tasks: to find out what happened to Elias and to collect
the 500 gp owed in back taxes. If the townsfolk aren’t
able or willing to pay the money, she will settle for a
report to that effect and can then go to her superiors for
further support—her primary concern at this point is
for her brother-in-law’s safety. She promises a payment
of 200 gp each in reward to the PCs if they can solve
the mystery, but doesn’t mention that she hasn’t yet
approved the disbursement of this fund from the city
coffers—she hopes and assumes that Magnimar would
be only too happy to pay this reward to the PCs once they
accomplish this goal. (In fact, if the PCs discover what’s
actually going on in Ravenmoor, Magnimar will pay a
much larger reward—see Concluding the Adventure for
further details.)

dot

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Checking in

dot.

The intro seems to include a lot of information that we wouldn't necessarily be privy to. What should we assume our characters have been told?

Seconded, I actually stopped reading because I wasn't sure.

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Okay, so here it goes, I'll still waiting for one more player, but here you go

Jeminda greets you all. Look, my brother-in-law is missing, last I knew he was in Ravenmoor, not to mention there are strange things going on in Ravenmoor, and this is important. I'm willing to pay 200 GPGP payment doesn't matter in PFS since you get a set amount anyway, but it gives you character a roleplaying reason to do this. You can use diplomacy bargaining to get the amount higher if you want for roleplaying, but it will not affect how much gold you get in the end.

dot. Sorry, though I'd dotted in yesterday

Yoshi looks at Jeminda with a puzzled expression. "Two hundred gold is being a lot of money for a brother in law. I was once being offered almost that much to remove one..."

He pauses. "What are being these strange things happening there, and what are you wanting us to be doing about them?"

Gold is never unwelcome, but lives are more important.

Dunia scowls, then nods at Yoshi's words before speaking in a thick Sargavan/Chelish creole.

I ain' been t' Ravenmoor, but de name ain' soundin' cheerful.

Knowledge (anything except Nobility or Geography) for some Ravenmoor background: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (7) + 5 = 12

Sajna looks uneasy. Strange things... Gruhastha watch over us.
It had been a long journey from Oppara, but the images of what happened there still haunted her memory.
Focusing on the task at hand, Sajna takes a deep breath and exhales slowly before addressing Jeminda. "What does your brother look like, Ms Anikee? And when you last heard from him, did he mention anything unusual?"

The young good looking man walks into the room, a sling at his side with new armor donned. The holy symbol of He Rowdrosh is around his neck. He nods in greeting as he listens to the newest mission. With patience earned in the fields of taking care of sheep he listens and watches.

Dunia knows that she has to go through foothills, forests and to get to Ravenmoor, about 250 miles from Magnimar. Note, The PCs can be from any town, and the adventure doesn't really start until you are in Ravenmoor, so ignore the food you would eat traveling there. The Game is assumed to take place over 1 full day, which means everyone will need 1 trail ration or just right off .5 gold as a purchase and enough water for 1 day or they will suffer hunger effects.

As the group begins speaking to one another Uthraed puts down the book on Chelish history that he had been reading and stands at attention. He straightens his new chain shirt. "This thing is so light and flimsy compared to my old clunky gear, I hope the man wasn't selling me lies when he said it would be just as good at keeping me alive."

"Of course we will find out what happened to your brother in law," Uthraed says with a slight bow.

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Dunia attempts to draw Jeminda back on topic.

What you bin sayin' are de strange t'ings goin' on in Ravenmoor?

A Kelish man sits, quietly stroking a small dinosaur's eye ridges, watching the others ask their questions...

Yoshi is more than happy to stock up on food for the travel. Going hungry is for dumb folk and monks. Not pit fighters.

Thanks, means so much to me, to be clear, the last a heard from Elias was a short letter from Galduria, in which he boasted making the journey along the Long Coast Road from the town of sandpoint in record time. He predicted that if weather held, he'd be in Ravenmoor in no time and would be back in Maginmar within a week and a half. It does not indicated where you stayed in town

As the heroes approach the village of Ravenmoor, they hear a young boy call out "Aaaaaaplesaaaauce! Here boy! C'meer boy!" then they hear a whistling sound.

The heroes are see what looks like a giant mosquito up ahead, as big as a softball, 20 feet in front of the party. nature to id it
Everyone give me a perception check, also init
init: 3 + 1d20 ⇒ 3 + (19) = 22 Yoshi
init: 4 + 1d20 ⇒ 4 + (17) = 21 Darvan
init: 3 + 1d20 ⇒ 3 + (10) = 13 Dunia
init: 7 + 1d20 ⇒ 7 + (7) = 14 Unthraed of Galt
init: 2 + 1d20 ⇒ 2 + (20) = 22 Eli
init: 3 + 1d20 ⇒ 3 + (15) = 18 Sajna
init: 4 + 1d20 ⇒ 4 + (3) = 7 that thing

Perception: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (6) + 8 = 14
Knowledge (Nature): 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (18) + 6 = 24 (special attacks, defenses)

Stirge

DEFENSE
AC 16, touch 16, flat-footed 12 (+4 Dex, +2 size)
hp 5 (1d10)
Fort +2, Ref +6, Will +1

SPECIAL ABILITIES
Attach (Ex)

When a stirge hits with a touch attack, its barbed legs latch onto the target, anchoring it in place. An attached stirge is effectively grappling its prey. The stirge loses its Dexterity bonus to AC and has an AC of 12, but holds on with great tenacity and inserts its proboscis into the grappled target's flesh. A stirge has a +8 racial bonus to maintain its grapple on a foe once it is attached. An attached stirge can be struck with a weapon or grappled itself—if its prey manages to win a grapple check or Escape Artist check against it, the stirge is removed.

Blood Drain (Ex)

A stirge drains blood at the end of its turn if it is attached to a foe, inflicting 1 point of Constitution damage. Once a stirge has dealt 4 points of Constitution damage, it detaches and flies off to digest the meal. If its victim dies before the stirge's appetite has been sated, the stirge detaches and seeks a new target.

Perception : 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (8) + 5 = 13

"what in the world is that thing?"

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Perception 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (16) + 5 = 21

Can we tell if the creature is attacking the boy or anything else?

You do not see the boy, you just hear him calling for his pet. You also cannot tell if the things is aggressive in any way or not, but if you want, I'll allow a sense motive dc 15 to know that, given the circumstances

Sense Motive 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (10) + 6 = 16

Not aggressive, with that combat is over. E'li did notice rustling in the bushes.

Just then the stirge lands on Yoshi's shoulder gently. And you all see a young boy come out of the bushes. No, don't hurt him, he's just a-scairt!

The warpriest will gently ask the boy Greetings little one. Who are you and is this your wonderful pet?

What do you feed a pet like that?

Boy, if'n you don' want yo pet bein' killed, you gotta be puttin' on 'em a ribbon, a bell, sumpin! Dunia takes a calming breath. Sorry. I's bein' harsh, but you lucky yo pet still breathin'

What a horrifying creature.
"I agree, a ribbon would really... help."

Yoshi looks at the large mosquito.

"I am thinking that this is a most unusual pet."

And how ease would that be to knock to the ground?

"Boy, I am wondering if this is being Ravenmore city, and where there are being good lodgings to be staying in."

"What a fascinating creature. Did I hear you correctly? His name is Applesauce? How incredible intriguing," Untraed chuckles at the idea of naming the creature Applesauce.

"Any who, yes as my companion here said we are looking for Ravenmore, and I sure hope that we have found it. I am so terribly tired of travel."

I'm so glad you didn't hurt applesauce, and ya you've reached Ravenmoor, but I ain't sumose to talk ta strangas, talk to ma pa, he knows everyting.

Das good advice. Where dey at righ' now?

I'll tke you t my houze if you want, pa's at home on heh fron porch

The warpriest will nod. Take us to your father, young sir.

Sajna adjusts her backpack, shifting uncomfortably under the weight, then makes a move to follow the young boy.
"I don't believe I caught your name, little one?"

"oh how I do love porches, lead the way my kind man, lead the way"

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"I am thinking porches are a type of dog?" asks the somewhat confused Yoshi.

Turning to the boy he adds
"Is your pa knowing a good inn do you think?"

You go to his house. Greetings I'm Viorec Korzha, what can I help you with? As he waves sitting on his porch drinking a nice cup of cocoa.

Have you seen a man name of Elias? He bin sayin' he stay here in town, but he ain' said where.

"Or if you could be recommending an inn for us to be staying at, that also would be helpful." adds in Yoshi.

Ah, you mean that readheaded guy. He didn't talk much to the people in the town, he went straight to the Mayor, got his tax payment and left the next morning. Honestly I heard he skipped town with the taxes and was headed up to Riddleport. But before you go heading off, there will be a Founders' Festival here in town in about one hour, followed by the Traditional Founders' Feast, if you'd all like to join us.

Dunia frowns, but sighs and asks, An' de Mayor. He gwine be at de festival?

"I am not being especially interested in founder's feasts" admits Yoshi with blunt honesty.

"I am agreeing that we must be talking with the mayor first though. How far away is Riddleport being?"

"Is that really all you can tell us? We have travelled far and just wish to see our friend again. Please, any extra information you can remember would be a big help."
Diplomacy: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (10) + 7 = 17

"Would it be worth trying to see the Mayor before the festivities begin?" Sajna asks her companions, "I imagine he is very busy, but I can't see him being any less preoccupied during the feast itself, unless we can arrange a seat at his table and discuss things over the meal?"

"Oh a festival how exciting. I haven't been to a proper party in ages. What is this fantastic little for? "

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Darvan grunts, "We should speak to him as soon as possible, get the story straight from him. The sooner we find the money and Elias, the sooner we can be done with this mission."

Festivals are good places to mingle; eat good food and find out inforation, some of which might be true. says the warpriest,

"I am finding festivals a good place to be having your pocket picked." says the dour pit fighter.

"I wonder if they are having a fighting competition?"

He perks up at the idea and joins the others heading towards the festivities.

He smiles. If you really want to know you can ask the mayor or investigate the town. I too am wondering the truth, but I also realize it is not my business. If you want to investigate the houses while people are out of their houses you can, just don't get caught. We also have the weaver shop, the physic shop, the trading post and smithy, the Ravenmoor Ferry, the ruined church, the stones, the festival grounds, the ravenmoor mill, the Kriegler manor and the chenowitz place. Actually, a lot of people might not take kindly to the investigation of Elias at all, that's why I stay out of it. Not sure what they all have against him. As far as I know, it is something about late taxes, as I believe he got the taxes already, not sure why the townsfolk have to pay the taxes again. Something odd, but it ain't my business. As he explains everything with a very serious voice.

He pauses for a minute. But I'm glad you can all join us for the festival

"Nobody likes paying taxes..." notes Yoshio.

I'm going to assume that we were filled in on him being a tax collector by his sister in law at this stage

"What did happen to the ruined church?" he asks. "And who was it being dedicated to?"