Church of Asmodeus


Curse of the Crimson Throne


Has anyone found a way to incorporate the Church of Asmodeus or the Acadamae into the AP?

To me, it seems really unlikely that either of these organizations would sit on the sidelines during the battle of Korvosa.

I read that some GMs ran "Academy of Secrets", but I find it ... strange that the party would take part in the Breaching Festival, especially since they're wanted by both the ___ and ___ at level 13. Or they're right in the middle of the battle for Korvosa. Doesn't seem the right time to enter a dangerous (and famous) contest.

Is there another use of Academy of Secrets besides running The Breaching? (For example a map of the Academae with major NPCs?).


Hi Jason

Check out my post in When to run Academy of Secrets in CotCT. There you can see what I'm planning to do with the temple of Asmodeus and Academy of Secrets.

Scarab Sages

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Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

I think it would make the last book a whole lot more interesting if the PCs had to contend with the various power groups within the city before ...

Spoiler:
Going after the Queen. After all, I'm sure she has more allies than just her Grey Maidens. Might be interesting to plan out more of a political battle first. Once people realize that she's planning on sacrificing the entire city, however, I can't see many people going along with that, not even the Church of Asmodeus. After all, that kind of blatant power grab is not really what devils want. They're into corrupting folks first. Sure, Ileosa made a contract with them, but perhaps those were folks who had their own agenda in Hell.


What makes this perhaps the most intriguing of all the AP's to date are the numerous possibility's presented to the PCs and DM on how this entire AP can payout and end. Before KM, CoCT easily offered the probability of a throne to any aspiring PC. Civil War, Revolution, Political intrigue, mass warfare, resistance movements; really all are wonderful and easily workable plots which the DM/Party can easily work into the AP framework.

So yeah, it's easy to work either into the story at any level or degree to best meet your players needs. Let us know what you do and how it plays out.


Yeah I have to agree with Branding, either before or after Scarwall seems the best place, depending on how much of Chapters 5 and 6 you are up to rework (or how much of Academy of Secrets, if you do like I'm doing and chop out some of Chapter 4). I personally want to run Scarwall too much to ever take Vergee's advice of replacing it.


I guess one of the things I was trying to get out of this thread was “on a conceptual basis, what would the church of Asmodeus do in the battle for Korvosa”?

Did anyone have the Hell Knights return? Are they even a significant force (I think I read that there are only 50-100 of them). Yes I know they went back to Citadel Vraid, but what are the changes of them coming back? What about if the PCs recruited them?

What can the Arkonas and Cereleon society bring to the table? What about the other "big guy" (demon) that is sitting behind the scenes and everyone thinks he's dead?

Surely almost every faction would be doing something in this state of crisis. The question remains, what are the factions and what can they do?

walter mcwilliams wrote:

Civil War, Revolution, Political intrigue, mass warfare, resistance movements; really all are wonderful and easily workable plots which the DM/Party can easily work into the AP framework.

Do you advise that I purchase one of the Kingmaker books and run the mass war using those rules? Or the rules regarding Ultimate Campaign? Would that kind of mini game even be fun?

I’ll keep an open mind, but my initial thought was I wanted to keep it abstract, rules light, and feature personal combat (not mass).


I would estimate there is no place for mass combat in COTCT. The entire thing takes place within the city, with the exceptions of HoA and SoS, and there's no place in the story for entire armies marching into combat, unless the PCs dawdle too long or screw up MASSIVELY and the Shoanti attempt to march on Korvosa.

I personally do not like KM/UC's mass combat system; if anything, I'd recommend instead buying Rasputin Must Die! and cribbing out the Troop statblock system instead. And even then, the only opportunity for a battle on that scale is if the Shoanti and Korvosa go to open war, which requires a series of major failures on the PCs' parts.


Oh OK, when you said "mass warfare", I was thinking along the lines of the people of Korvosa against the Queen's forces, or something along the lines of what has been done in the "Battle for Korvosa" thread.


AAAAAAH. Yeah I don't think you'd need the mass combat stats for that. Troop might not be bad though, if you want to handle mobs in the streets or similar things to that.


Jason S wrote:

Do you advise that I purchase one of the Kingmaker books and run the mass war using those rules? Or the rules regarding Ultimate Campaign? Would that kind of mini game even be fun?

I’ll keep an open mind, but my initial thought was I wanted to keep it abstract, rules light, and feature personal combat (not mass).

I don't advise it if it's not something your group would find fun. Perhaps a large combat battle will be in the offering as a follow on after the AP is complete. The ending of this AP is very ripe for follow on campaigning.


What the Church of Asmodeus can bring to the AP is determined by how involved you want them to be. For instance, we know they are in charge of collecting the blood samples, but they really haven't got any involvement beyond that.

What it comes down to, is what can the Church do that hasn't already been provided? Summon devils? Shock troops? Oppression?

The best thing I can think of is that Ileosa has given a blanket immunity to the Church to actively seek out those under oppression to sign contracts for protection or something like that. The ultimate protection racket, but in this case, the victims are paying with their souls.

This could then force the players into an assault on the not-dead Big Bad Devil that owns Ileosa's contract. Would make an interesting wrap up with an all out assault of the BBD to recover the contracts signed by the suffering Korvosans.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I like Tels' idea. That said, having run this campaign twice, I'm not a huge fan of extending the epilogue much.

I didn't really involve the Church the first time I ran CotCT, but I did add them the second time. I wanted the party to witness the Blooding and what happens to citizens that don't submit to letting a cleric and his accompanying brute squad take their blood. This also brought the Blooding plot point to the fore, since in my first game it seemed like that part was brushed to the side in favor of other plot stuff leading up to raiding the castle.

Having the party wipe out a group of Asmodeus' clerics had some unintended consequences, however, when the party decided they wanted to smash down the doors of their temple and get some answers. I regret that I had not foreseen that possibility and adlibbed a less than great dead-end encounter.

If I ever run this campaign again, I'll keep the Blooding squads for sure. Keeps the players hating the Queen. I'll also have a plan in case they pursue the Asmodean church. They are taking everyone's blood (and didn't have to give their own) so that Ileosa can impose absolute order and create the Lawful Evil nirvana the church wants so badly to see. And since the clerics of Abadar had to give their blood, the high priest went along with the whole plan on the promise of picking his loot from the vault and being the dominant church in the city. Obviously, even the church of Asmodeus wouldn't be okay with sacrificing an entire city--that sounds like an invitation for chaos--so they won't know the true nature of Ileosa's plan.

Neither of my groups were interested in running a major combat mini game to take back Korvosa, so I didn't get to give that a shot... maybe next time.

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