Edge of Anarchy (GM Reference)


Curse of the Crimson Throne

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Something I would advise to just be aware of is that the Hellknights' role is essentially already over, and is intended to be replaced by the much more severe grey maidens in the next book. The riots are essentially at an end by the time they get Gaeken's body back and go to the execution, and the Hellknights are essentially the evil riot cops that will tackle you (if not just cut you down), over use pain submission, and then just pepper spray you while they have you detained in a line with a bunch of other people out of spite. Perhaps they can be used to scare the PC/party a bit when you start the interrogation/parlay with Ileosa, but you definitely don't want them squaring up against a squad or even a lone Hellknight. At the barest minimum, a true Hellknight is a minimum CR 5, and the queen likely wouldn't just have a rookie Hellknight near her. Hellknights also hold a grudge. Basically don't put them in a fight with any Hellknights unless you have something planned like the summoned mantises that Inspectre recommended.


Thanks. I was planning to use more Glorio Arkona as the evil goatee advisor as suggested by Inspectre (thank you Inspectre!). I tend to prefer him to the hellknigths as two of my PC backgrounds are linked to the Arkonas.

The first one is himself an Arkona. He's from a family branch fallen in disgrace 200 years ago when the Arkona came back from Vudrani. The idea is that this branch is not aware that they are some Rakshasa and they are use for dirty/not so important business. And this PC has been raised in bitterness and dreams of taken back their place at the head of the family.
And I have another elf PC who got her husband killed by the Arkona Rakshasa (even if she does know it yet).

So, to make this long story short, I think it's nice to bring some Arkona early in the game, as they will be some nice evil guys (so it's less that probable that my PC will ever make an alliance with the Arkona. But who knows...)

I played a bit with the Hellknights (trying to catch Trinia and managing the riots in a bloody and efficient way), but as they don't have a big upcoming role, I am not sure I want to spend too much effort on them. I used them to put a bit of pressure on the PC.

I don't intend anymore to play any fight here (unless something very unexpected happens). The queen, advised by Glorio, will either try to convince them that Trinia is guilty (with the help of some false evidences put in place by her allies), either try to convince that maybe she's not guilty, but that the city needs a culprit, and the list of candidates is small. I have not figured it yet.

And I like the idea to give them a role in the trial, I'll see, but it sounds cool. I think it makes more sense if the Queen plays that "Trinia is guily".

And the hellknigths could do their own investigations and challenge a bit the PC, but I'm not sure it is that interesting if I don't bring them back later.


-Hellknights-

Yeah, unfortunately the Hellknights just aren't a thing after Edge of Anarchy, which is pretty weird given they seem to have zero ideological problems with Ileosa's tyranny, and given her resources it shouldn't be impossible to continue hiring the Hellknights out to do her more open dirty work in the same way the Red Mantis are hired to do all of her covert dirty work. Of course, she does have the Grey Maidens later on for day-to-day oppression, and they are more loyal as brainwashed fanatics than glorified mercenaries, but still. It is really weird that this army of hardcore mercenaries just scampers off to their fortress outside Korvosa and never interact with the plot again.

But since you don't have any provided material on the Hellknights beyond "they leave after Book One and are never seen again", and the players haven't wired their characters motivations/backstories into dealing with the Hellknights, it seems perfectly fine to just let them fade into the background and save yourself the work.

If you do want to use the Hellknights as the opposition pressing for Trinia to be prosecuted here, as their final villainous send-off to the campaign, I'd agree that you want to use either a rookie Hellknight hoping to turn Trinia into their first big case and make a name for themselves within the order (and thus be around that minimum CR 5) or perhaps an armiger which is a non-proven Hellknight (or trainee/wannabe Hellknight which can be of any level really but probably below 5th or 6th) looking to use Trinia's sentencing as justification for them undergoing the trial to become a full-blown Hellknight. Basically, the Order of Hellknights doesn't care about Trinia much because nobody is paying them anymore to care, but there's that one annoying guy who's looking to show initiative and get ahead.

Alternatively, you can use a higher-ranking Hellknight who's just there as an intimidating threat/social challenge since the PCs can't take them in a head-on fight (much like Sabina). When it comes to a physical confrontation, if you want to add one at the end of Edge of Anachry at the Trinia/Trinia replacement execution, have the high-ranking Hellknight summons some low devils like a bearded devil and/or some hellhounds to chase Blackjack and (fake) Trinia through the streets, which the PCs have to discretely intercept after the escape from the execution.

-Arkonas-

Anyway, the Hellknights are a fairly "meh" choice in your situation I'd say, and given the player backgrounds I would definitely put Glorio and Melyia Arkona more front-and-center as the obviously evil red herring villains leading up to Book Three when the party can finally go deal with them. Maybe they'll be convinced of the argument for a temporary truce/non-aggression pact with Glorio given the reveal of Ileosa's evil, maybe he'll just run away and manage to escape the PCs for revenge later, or maybe they'll manage to kill him outright in Book Three. He's pretty high-CR for the party in Book 3, but faced alone against a prepared party he should be killable.

-Trinia Trial-

If you do decide to go for a trial as a juicy drama alternative to the Hellknights, you can just drop them entirely and have the voice of the prosecution be a very unhappy Kroft, who shares the PCs' belief that Trinia/surrogate Trinia is completely innocent, but due to the high profile nature of the case as the Field Marshall of Korvosa she has been asked to serve as the prosecutor before the arbiters during the trial. She is really NOT happy about that, but it's a stated duty of the Field Marshall, and Kroft is pretty big about fulfilling the duties of her office, unpleasant as they may be. A trial would as mentioned before also give you a chance to show Zenobia Zenderholm to the party prior to her fall and undeadification, although if you do not plan on running the hard cover's addition to Book Four of the Deathshead Vault then this won't be necessary.

As for the party arguing Trinia's innocence before Ileosa, I would definitely think ahead a bit on what her arguments will be for why she believes Trinia did it. In order to keep up the deception her reasons will need to either sound logical for someone who doesn't have all the facts (i.e. Trinia had access to Eodred and is someone whose loyalty to Eodred is questionable), and/or Ileosa plays dumb and naive who is getting bad advice (pointing to Glorio as said "bad" adviser).

One thing you can definitely spin later on after Trinia/surrogate Trinia is sentenced to execution if the players question why, is 1) Ileosa wants to show mercy of a quick and clean death while offering closure to the city, instead of consigning Trinia to a slow torturous death in the dungeons as the normal punishment for regicide. In actually, of course, she wants to wrap this up and consider everything done before some do-gooder can investigate matters further and pick apart Trinia's "guilt". Same with the potential Feeblemind on the surrogate Trinia - if her mind is gone, she won't experience the pain and fear associated with the execution.

And of course, Ileosa can answer truthfully that she did not poison Eodred, although things will get more blurred on whether or not she's responsible for his death, since she is the mastermind.


Thanks for all the ideas and the details. Thanks everyone, this will be super cool I think!


Hey guys! We played last friday.

We played an audience with the queen, and she gave some arguments to explain her point of view. She gave them 3 days to investigate as they were insisting. The players noticed that she started to doubt the loyalty of Kressida (especially after what they told the queen ^^' - i.e. approximatively "Kressida sent us to catch Trinia and hide her"). They totaly went for the idea that Glorio Arkona was gaving her advices, maybe even threathening her (they came with that themselves).

So their next move was to go to Kressida and warm her: "The queens knows everything, you should give her back Trinia". I am quite glad that they are worried about Kressida's fate. But I try to keep Kressida always busy and moving around, and never sitting in her office. So she was busy with the Shoanti and Pharasma's priests trying to figure out out to manage the Dead warrens crisis. So they decided to put on hold the Trinia's question, and they started to clean the dungeon (two of my players have backstories linked to Rolth Lamm, so they literaly jumped on it).

So for next session, they will close this Shoanti/Dead Warrens "interlude" and then they will go back to the investigation and the trial.

It was really cool, maybe weird to put the Dead Warrens in the middle of everything, but all in all, I think everyone really enjoyed it, and we will go on next time. So a big thank you to everyone again :)

Next sessions is in a while, the 1st on july. Usually we have more a 3- 4 weeks rythm, but agendas were quite busy for June -_- I keep you posted!


Last session, we finished the Dead Warrens dungeon. Everyone is still alive, and will go for the investigation/trial/execution hopefully next session, in two weeks :)


Hello everyone,

We finally played the investigation and Trinia's trial yesterday. It was heavily based on your suggestions, and went quite well. To recap, a PC sent a letter to the queen after Trinia capture to say that he was convinced that she was innocent. He has a connection to the queen, so she convene the PC and ask them to give back Trinia, promising a fair trial. She gave them 3 days to investigate. She played a bit the game of a naïve queen, badly adviced by Glorio, and not caring that much about Trinia guilty or fate as soon as her death can calm the riots.

So they did investigate (after a small Dead Warrens interlude). They used "speak with the dead" to question the dead guard that confess under torture, seeing Trinia pouring the poison in the king's drink. They learned that:

- he did not see Trinia pouring the poison, but he did lie because of torture.
- Sabina killed him
- Sometimes, the king was arguing loudly and violently with an unknown voice (foreshadowing Venster)

They also questioned Trinia's neighbors (and a mouse living there), learning about Cinnarbar hiding some poison there before the visit of the hellknigths. They had a description of her hair, armor and blades. With the description, they managed to figure that it was probably the red mantis leader.

They tried to have information on the poison (who can do that kind of thing, but the rolled really badly). So they studied some books found at Rolth's place in the end, without much success. They went to Abadar temple, where the priest did some investigation on the poison found, and even if they had no information, one cleric PC met Ishani and it was a nice discussion.

They also tried to sneak in the queen's room using the shape changer'skills, and this was absurd and funny. I don't really like such foolish scenes, but everyone's fun matters.

They also went to Grau to have maybe some useful information about Sabina. They learned more about Grau's backstory, with was nice.

Then it was time for a new conversation with the queen, that convinced them that then Trinia's trial should go smoothly. She gave the prosecutor job to Cressida, and offered to the Senechal's son to take care of the defense, as a demonstration of goodwill, because she wants to be sure that she his not losing his trust nor support. He did accept.

So the next day, the Trial did happen. Trinia was under "feeblemind" spell effect. Zenobia launched her "Lesser restoration" and "Dispell magic", that should be enough for most common magic or poison effect. Either she thought that Trinia was then pretending to be sick, or she noticed that then he was probably a powerful spell and she did not want to be in the way of a powerful opponent, no one will never know ^^'

The PC made a quite convincing speech showing that all of this was a masquerade:

- poison put under the floor by a mysterious woman
- cannot trust the guard that was tortured
- Trinia had no good reason to commit the murder
The PC asked that Trinia would be interrogated in a zone of thruth, without many success.
Then a guard that saw the confesison of the dead guard also testified that he saw his colleague showing some torture signs when confessing seing Trinia pouring the power.
But the court did not really cared for the quality of a testimony under torture. And the lack of proof from the PC was quite of an issue, so Zenobia decided to sentence Trinia to death, succumbing to the overall political pressure.

Then we played more or less by the book, the PC deciding to help blackjack.

Overall, it was really nice, interesting, and fun, so thank you :) I was a bit afraid that they would be disappointed by the fact that the murder mystery part was long (3h), without finding any proper evidence. And that whatever they do, the trial outcome is very difficult to change (the PC speach was really cool though ^^')

But when I asked them, they told me "ha, no, it's fine, some powerful opponents are there conspiring and influencing. We tried, we lost, we find what is going on".

So he was really nice and fun to play. I'm really glad I asked for your advices, the result was really cool! Thanks!


Sound like it all went great. It might be a good "between modules" thing since you introduced Zenobia and showed her (semi-)remorseful over the decision to show her good side (before she disappears then comes back evil and transformed in book 4).

And if the party thinks they didn't "save Trinia from guilty verdict" (and later fugitive status) because they simply failed to save her from the mob and not actually evil Ileosa, all the better for the reveal in book 2.

Have fun!


I have a question for people who have DMed Crimson Throne: I'm going to run Curse of the Crimson Throne, but my players prefer things to be fairly direct and succinct rather than having lots of side-quests. In chapter one, the characters meet Cressida, and then she sends them on a mission to deal with Vancaskerkin, and after that on a mission investigate the ambassador. As far as I can tell on a quick read, meeting Cressida in some way or other is important, but these particular missions could be eliminated. Is that right? Or in later chapters, does it turn out to be vital that the characters did these missions? I'm hoping those of your with experience can guide me. Thanks!


The point of doing these quests is to hopefully get the party invested in their (most likely) hometown. There are some planted leads in these quests, Vankaskerkin is working for the Arkonas that appear in book 3 (and the silver dagger they can collect is actually a spy for Vankaskerkin's patron that will report to her on the PCs actions and strategies). The Ambassador is meant to sow doubt in whether the Queen is actually loyal to Korvosa (or at least her own interests in it) or is actually just a Chelish plant because obviously the Ambassador is doing some shadey s!&#, but it just turns out to be he has a love affair; then the next mission is the reveal that the Queen is actually just shadey herself.

There's also the matter that skipping these events means you will either make the party miss out on xp needed to level or means you'll have to level skip them if you're just doing milestone.

I would recommend running them anyway even if it does seem like "side quests" but play up the importance in these actions to the point of keeping their hometown stable and from collapsing from a food shortage (Vankaskerkin) or from a housing crisis (the ambassador), things heavily in today's zeitgeist as well, and to play up the fact that everything else moving in the backgrounds of these scenes from the lines of beggars looking for handouts to the party goers looking for escapism in the nightlife *are* Korvosa.


I agree with AwesomenessDog. The quests are nice for giving a feeling of Korvosa and introducing important NPC. Probably you can skip some of the minor events depending on your group interest (the Otyugh, the mad prophet, imps, meet the mob...) but I would not skip Vancaskerkin, eel end (the ambassador secret) or the grey district dungeon.

Vancaskerkin: This is the first mission Cressida gives to the PC. In the next chapters, Cressida will stay in contact with the PC but is not allowed to hire them officially. So you need Cressida and the PC to build quite some trust, and mutual respect. The quest is nice to give some colors to Cressida and Grau. And the shadow of the evil and powerful Arkonas.

The ambassador/ Eel's end: It introduces Vencarlo, who also need to build some trust with the PC, but you can probably do it differently. It also introduce the crimelord Devargo and his cool lair.

The dead warrens (grey district dungeon): you investigate one lab of the son of the guy the PC team up to kill. I would not classify it as "side quest". It also introduce a shoanti shaman that you meet again later on.

For the XP, I am using milestone and even without skipping almost anything in the chapter 1, my PC and I had the feeling that the levels are quite quickly earned.


Alseta wrote:
For the XP, I am using milestone and even without skipping almost anything in the chapter 1, my PC and I had the feeling that the levels are quite quickly earned.

This is probably just a side effect of the story being paced around 3.5 which is Paizo's fast track for XP. The remaster only added extra content at the end of book 4 and a crap load of random room encounters in book 5, so everything has more or less the same pacing, just with more story XP rewards to make up the difference.


Hi, all,

I just started GM'ing CotCT and my players just finished part 1 of Edge of Anarchy. I have one question about part 2: How the hell am I supposed to shoehorn all those events into the story when the logical sequence is "Have an audience with the Queen, be inducted into the City Guard as factotums, apprehend the deserters, be back in time for tea and medals"?
I had a hiatus GMing after becoming a dad for the second time and the sandbox approach does not sit quite right with me…


If you are referring to the events in part 1, the events are meant to take place between all the various encounters after dealing with Gaedren. You can give them one on the way with the broach (have them meet Amin as they pass by his shop being accosted; he pays them and fixes the broken clasp quickly for saving him), then maybe another while they are headed to meet Kroft and become "factotums" (Grau stumbles into them and returning him to Kroft can seem to influence the job she gives them first of returning the deserters), another as they return with the deserters (you hear the doomsayer talking of many different dooms but hearing him talk about starvation might hit differently when you are escorting a group that *was* feeding people who would be hungry otherwise), a fourth while on the boat to meet with Devargo (defeating a wing of imps, even with the help of pseudodragons can get the kingpin's attention to be given an audience, and to see another pseudodragon caged gives them more reason to want to free him), and finally maybe the last encounter as the party captures Trinia (perhaps just as they take her into custody the Otyugh pops out of the ground in the alley they are in, she is not in their care and needs to be protected, but her magic can also significantly hinder the otyugh with a poor will save but that is a decision the PCs have to decide on; or she could also just be scared and afraid of being executed and try to run causing some of the party to be out of the fight and stuck trying to grapple her). These are just my ideas for easy ways to slip them in and enhance the meaning of other existing encounters, but you can certainly mix some of them up, like the order of the doomsayer and Grau given their proximity to the All the World's Meat quest.

If you mean the part 2 events, those are the actual missions that the party gets sent on...


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Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Yesterday I had the epiphany that part 2 and 3 are essentially one big part 2, and that I can sprinkle the smaller events in between the three missions.

Climbing back into the GM saddle after two years isn‘t the easiest of tasks :)

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