I hope you're not a player, because the DM would be very displeased.
King Eodred gets a trophy wife, Queen Ileosa. They live in Castle Korvosa, on top of an ancient pyramid. Turns out, the pyramid's purpose was to hide a piece of an evil artifact. The Queen finds it, and gets infected, and turns evil. She murders the King, and starts reworking Korvosa in her image. This causes riots.
The players are tied into this by their campaign traits, which all point to a petty criminal Gaedren Lamm, who the guard has no time for, but the PCs know is a child slaver, drug dealer, and all-around bad guy. They are summoned by a Varisian harrow card reader (like Tarot but pathfinder), Zellara, who does a magic harrow reading and gives the party bonuses.
They infiltrate his place. Regardless of what they do there, they find Zellara's head. Turns out she was murdered by Gaedren, and her soul turned her harrow deck into an intelligent artifact. Her goal is to protect Korvosa, the city she loves. Every chapter, she can do a magic harrow reading to give the PCs special bonuses.
They also find a brooch owned by the Queen. By returning it to her, they get a reward, and are asked to help the city in its riotous state, and are asked to go to the Citadel to speak to Field Marshal Cressida Kroft. Cressida sends them on various adventures within the city. Eventually, there is a woman, Trinia Sabor, who allegedly murdered the King, who is placed on execution despite Cressida telling the party to capture her for a fail trial. She is saved by Blackjack, aka Korvosan Zorro, or as my party calls him, Batman.
Chapter 2: Behind the scenes, the Queen is pissed. She's had quite enough of the lower classes, so she instigates a plague to wipe out the poor. She calls upon the Red Mantis assassin group, and her old family doctor Dr. Davalus. The party then struggles against the plague for a chapter, eventually finding evidence of Davalus' part in the plague. The party is meant to infiltrate the headquarters of the Queen's Physicians, as they're called, to find out that it's an Urgathoan cult spreading the plague.
Chapter 3 is where I am now. She has been collecting the pieces of that evil artifact from the beginning, and made a crown with it. During a public address, the leader of the Sable Company shoots a crossbow all up in her forehead, but due to the evil crown, she pulls out the bolt and kills him with it. Cressida sees this and is all O_O and...well I don't know what happens after that.
Spoilering this since Iced appears to be a player himself.
Heh, no, I am DMing this, but I think I oversimplified things. When I say I don't know what happens after chapter 3, it's because I don't have the PDF yet. During the first two chapters, the players shouldn't be totally certain the Queen is behind everything. Right now, my players are arguing whether or not it's her using Davaulus, or if Davaulus is using her. There's also theories about Rolth's involvement, as well as various other NPCs.
Gotcha.
I definitely recommend getting your hands on the rest of the PDFs ASAP.
Gotcha.
I definitely recommend getting your hands on the rest of the PDFs ASAP.
I agree whole heartedly. I ran this AP and highly recommend it. I loved RotRL but for me this is even better. That said however, to run any AP, especially this one, without all the chapters I feel is very difficult.
Was fortunate enough that my GM hadn't read this AP yet but owned it and I volunteered to. Reading this whole thing back to back blew my mind. Can't wait to start running it next week.