Lashonna and True Seeing


Age of Worms Adventure Path


Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

True Seeing reveals "the true form of polymorphed, changed, or transmuted things."

I interpert that as:

True Seeing will tell you Lashonna's a silver dragon, but won't tell you she's a vampire. I recognize True Seeing's a powerful spell, but I also realize True Seeing's only a L5 cleric spell, so it has limits. I just want to run it right though. Will True Seeing tell you she's a vampire*?

*Of course True Seeing + Detect Evil will raise eyebrows when the silver dragon registers as evil - probably more eyebrows than an evil elf would have raised. But who isn't evil at the feast?

Liberty's Edge

drsparnum wrote:

True Seeing reveals "the true form of polymorphed, changed, or transmuted things."

I interpert that as:

True Seeing will tell you Lashonna's a silver dragon, but won't tell you she's a vampire. I recognize True Seeing's a powerful spell, but I also realize True Seeing's only a L5 cleric spell, so it has limits. I just want to run it right though. Will True Seeing tell you she's a vampire*?

*Of course True Seeing + Detect Evil will raise eyebrows when the silver dragon registers as evil - probably more eyebrows than an evil elf would have raised. But who isn't evil at the feast?

I always imagined her dragon form as being more lean with red eyes and more pronounced canines than a normal silver. I think vampiric dragons would share those traits along with humanoid vampires. Of course it might take a Knowledge: Arcana check to realize that this silver doesn't look 'quite' right.

The Exchange Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6

I decided that there just wasn't much of a difference between Lashonna and a normal silver dragon ("vampires appear just as they did in life"), so I didn't give away the secret to my party.

Shadow Lodge

I figure that if a party is willing to burn 250gp worth of material components on a True Seeing spell, then you should play fair. The fact that she is a silver dragon is obviously the big part. Discovering that she's vampiric is going to take an almighty knowledge (religion) roll but it's certainly one the true-seeing character might be able to make. If they make the check, give them the information and see what they do with it. The party will not be able to kill her and there are steps you can take if they don't want to follow her directions.

Essentially, if the characters make the checks, give them the information. In some ways, it will be more fun for them (and thus you) if they know what she is beforehand. There could be some excellent role-playing opportunities here if your party is so inclined.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Even if Lashonna is unmasked prematurely, it need not have too much impact on the overall story. She did not get her charisma score from a bag of corn flakes. I would play her relatively open, with some twists.

Her argument in that case might run somewhat like this (but much more eloquent): "Yes, i am a vampire. No, i do not particularly enjoy what i have to do to maintain my existence. Neither do i particularly like having been forced into this state. Help me with my revenge, and you get closer to your goals at the same time." Given that she is more or less the authority about Balakarde at this point, the group will more likely than not agonize over it, but play along. They might be more weary of treason, but it is not a game-breaker.


TerraNova wrote:

Even if Lashonna is unmasked prematurely, it need not have too much impact on the overall story. She did not get her charisma score from a bag of corn flakes. I would play her relatively open, with some twists.

Her argument in that case might run somewhat like this (but much more eloquent): "Yes, i am a vampire. No, i do not particularly enjoy what i have to do to maintain my existence. Neither do i particularly like having been forced into this state. Help me with my revenge, and you get closer to your goals at the same time." Given that she is more or less the authority about Balakarde at this point, the group will more likely than not agonize over it, but play along. They might be more weary of treason, but it is not a game-breaker.

Did exactly this...players were even more betrayed since they thought they had found everything creepy about her.


Duration: 1 minute/level

Lashonna's arrival: At least an hour late

PCs chanting and smearing mushroom ointment on their eyes during a dinner party?

Priceless.


When I ran the adventure, one of the PCs detected her as undead during the follow-up meeting with her after the dinner party. I had Lashonna cheerfully admit that she was a vampire, "but I have an arrangement whereby I only drain condemned murderers who would be lawfully executed anyway; they sleep and don't wake up. Far more humane than a noose, really, and without the distasteful public spectacle."

The players love her now. She's the "nice elf vampire" that they're "good friends with."

Spoiler:
Can't wait to see their faces when they realize she's (a) a dragon and (b) Kyuss' minion...

Scarab Sages

I've never understood how True Seeing is supposed to be described.

Seeing through illusions - fair enough, the false image becomes thinner and insubstantial, revealing the true picture underneath.

But for creatures who have actually physically changed?
How would they appear?

I can see that the spell can reveal that there is a transmutating effect running, and the subject is not as they seem, but how to explain the true form to the viewer?


I banned spells at the dinner party, so PCs were stripped of spells by Mizzin Mitchwillow before they were allowed entry. That made things a lot easier for me. That dinner party was a lot of fun, and I decided to add Darl Quethos and his goons from "Library of Last Resort" to the party. Everyone was starring daggers at each other, with Toris and Montique quaking in their seats, Quemp making lame boasts, the Fabler freaking everyone out, and the party bard putting on a better show than anyone. Thankfully, the only time we rolled intiative was during the cockatrice challenge. ;-)

Concerning Lashonna, should true seeing be used, obviously her elf form would be dwarfed by the insubstantial image of a massive silver dragon crammed inside the dining room, but I'd be strict with the skill check to spot vampirism. Since she's a dragon, tooth structure might not give anything away. Even red eyes might just be a quirky color like a drow having lavender eyes. I'd up the DC considerably, and I'd only allow anyone with ranks in knowledge (religion) or a ranger with favored enemy undead or dragon (spot check) to have any chance of noticing vampiric traits in a dragon.

In fact, I might not even allow a check to reveal vampiric traits until Lashonna has been observed on any level. Noticing things like her avoidance of mirrors, her insistence on nighttime meetings, and her lack of appetite might be all that gives away her true nature. Catching her feeding might also be interesting.

Of course, a successful detect undead and/or detect evil spell or effect would help.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Part of the reason we set Lashonna into an evil city was to help further disguise her. The PCs should be getting used to seeing all sorts of evil folk by the time she shows up. And if the PCs do discover what she really is... the clincher is that her advice and suggestions are the RIGHT ones, at least up until the very end of the campaign...

Spoiler:
...because if the PCs don't follow her advice, Dragotha's minions get back his phylactery and then in the last adventure they'll have to deal with everything in that adventure PLUS Dragotha. That's bad news.


Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

Thanks everyone.

I ran the adventure and none of my PCs actually thought to use true seeing (or any detection magic for that matter) at the dinner party. They also neglected to use it during the follow-up meeting* with her. So they're none the wiser.

In game terms, if you run it like a standard knowledge religion check (after someone casts true-seeing) based on Lashonna's hit dice, it's quite a difficult check to actually make. That's how I intended to run it, and let the chips fall as they may from there.

*One of my players missed the session with the party, and missed the beginning of the session where they met with Lashonna 1 on 1. This player ran a paladin (with free detect evil), and is inherently the most on the ball about these things. I sort of engineered him missing the 1-on-1, by not having him run into the PCs until after the meeting. mwuhahahaha. They continue on with the campaign, unaware.

Scarab Sages

I just used Deus Ex Machina, when they used Detect Evil and True Seeing (we were in Eberron and one of the characters was Dragonmarked).

Detect Evil - "Yeah, she's Evil, like 80% of people here. So what?"

True Seeing - "She's a silver dragon." But I didn't tell them of the Vampire part as she used abjuration to cover that up. I needed to do that as they were all undead haters and would have tried to kill her there and then.

Cheers! :D


I believe my solution was the utilization of a Rakshasa Overlord spell from the Ebberon "Lords of Dust"(IIRC), the Dragon article that went into the Rakshasa Overfiends. I believe they had a spell called "Cloak of the Kyber", a 3rd level dweomer that allows a polymorphed caster to appear as their true form. In this case, Lashonna was a beautiful Elven Women. It only raised questions during LoLR, but it worked quite nicely. They trusted her all the way to the end.


When I ran the adventure, the "one-hour" she was late took a couple of real life hours to role-play out. And to be honest, by that time, all of the PC's were SO freaked out by the other guests, and SO freaked out by the events happening, that Lashona came off as normal. They knew they were only there to make contact with her and not get themselves arrested, and it was all they were worried about.

If you really feel like cranking up the freak out factor, remove the gimped manocores that deliver the meal, and substitue in the Zombie Centars that have cooked themselves in an oven, then come out, and cut peieces off themselves to serve to the guests.

If you have a character with True seeing though, let them see. She is a silver dragon. That cat will be out of the bag at the end of the next adventure anyway. If a character starts to cast a spell (such as detect evil) while with her, go to initive, and if she wins, have her refuse to allow the casting of spells in her home. She could also attempt to disrupt it in a way that doesn't provoke an all out combat, and talk her way out of hostilities if the caster is offended, or attempts to start a fight. She knows at this point they are no real threat to her.

Liberty's Edge

I have taken to tweaking certain encounters during the campaign (as I am fairly certain one of my players has read through the story arc).

Lashonna may end up being "something else" in my campaign.


The only thing that I think I'm gonna have trouble with is the Wormhunter prestige class from Dragon has (IIRC) a spell like ability to detect minions of Kyuss. Any ways around that? Cos I know my players will be doing that.....alot. Any help is appreciated.


This probably comes too late, but as one of my players is a Paladin / Wormhunter as well, I checked the boards and SRD to find a solution:

nondetection: "The warded creature or object becomes difficult to detect by divination spells such as clairaudience/clairvoyance, locate object, and detect spells." I figured "detect minion" was a detect spell much like detect undead. Lashonnas caster level should give her at least a decent chance to do unnoticed. Or

untedectable alignment helps further with the evil thing.

mind blank tops them all, and Lashonna might well be willing to pay for it when meeting new good-dooers she plans on getting on her side...


Yes, Mind blank is what i'm going with. Pc's will be meeting Lashonna soon!


TheWhiteknife wrote:
The only thing that I think I'm gonna have trouble with is the Wormhunter prestige class from Dragon has (IIRC) a spell like ability to detect minions of Kyuss. Any ways around that? Cos I know my players will be doing that.....alot. Any help is appreciated.

Lashonna may be Kyuss' minion, but she is a vampire. My guess that the detect minion would (or should) not work on her. Besides, she is nobody's minion.

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