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So I'm finally arriving at the Skinsaw Murders more than 25 weeks after starting this campaign with my group. We just played session 1 Friday, which was largely consisted of the party being shown the murder scene in the lumber mill and being told of various things going on, with some leads elsewhere.
So, I'm coming to the point where I need to pad this stuff out. Small bits of content, extra modules I can rip sections from to use, anything really as long as it matches the dark tone of TSSM. This is also an open forum to share ideas, obviously.
First, I'm thinking of heavily focussing on Undead this time around, so the things that catch my interest are the ones that really let me play up that ghoul-invasion aspect. I've got a little blurb written by someone detailing an abandoned horse left on the side of the road, it's rider I'll probably have the group find the remains of later as a meal for roaming ghouls.
Also, I've got the PF module Hungry Are The Dead, which as I read through I am just enamored with. It's a big, chunky dungeon crawl loaded with disgusting rooms filled with undead being lead by a Dread Wight Necromancer. In my head, this seems like a great little bookend for the chapter, by introducing the players to Carlizu when they visit Habe's Sanatorium, and having him escape. By the end of the chapter, I figure it would be cool for him to have stumbled upon the power that turned him into a much more powerful (and undead) necromancer. Though more likely, I'll shrink the actual dungeon down to be a few less rooms and smaller, so that it's not 10 sessions of dungeon crawling.
There will be more ideas coming, I haven't even gotten into planning out Magnimar, but one thing I know I'll have to include somehow (if only in a passing mention) is the Succubus Assassin of Shax that the party let escape when I ran Dawn of the Scarlet Sun as the in-between books 1 and 2.
As a side note, I have a player who's background involves his father using his children as collateral for a debt, making the PC basically legally bound to go to Turtleback and join the Black Arrows, and he's been doing everything he can to get out of it, asking everyone he found with some influence to help, but without much success. He absolutely loved it when I had him return to Sandpoint to find a note from Orik Vancaskerkin (who actually saved their lives in Thistletop once they spared him) saying that he's gone in the PC's place. So big thanks to whoever it was somewhere on this board who suggested that.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
The Scarlet Son was one I was going to suggest until you mentioned that you used it already. I've half been toying with using the King in Yellow adventure from Dungeon 134, I may also use Boggards in the Brinestump. I'd considered using some fragment of Keep on the Boarderlands for some of those rumored devil worshiping bugbears on the Devil's Platter.
I have a pile of other things I'm looking through for just the same purpose - was planning on filtering through that stuff next weekend actually, but I'll share what I come up with.
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There are some really, really good Pathfinder Society scenarios that take place in Magnimar and fit thematically. They're small, self-contained, fit thematically and are easily adaptable.
Season 4 scenarios
Particularly recommended are:
4-01 Rise of the Goblin Guild
4-02 In Wrath's Shadow
4-03 The Golemworks Incident
4-26 The Waking Rune
Special - Race for the Runecarved Key
I'm running a RotRL-Shattered Star mash-up (not all of Shattered Star, just about three volumes) and fitting nicely for me as a follow-up to the Skinsaw Murders was Curse of the Lady's Light, volume 2 of Shattered Star. You could introduce Shiela Heidmarch in Magnimar through one of the above scenarios and then have her point them towards the Light, removing the Shard motivation entirely and replacing the search for something else entirely. Its worked incredibly well for me, but as part of the larger story. Just an idea.
Night Marches of Kalchemedes should get a mention as well. It's loads of fun and can be a good lead-up to The Waking Rune.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
As a starter, some parts of the Carrion Crown can fit with the dark mood of Skinsaw.
From Trial of the Beast:
- Journey to Lepidstadt (the crooked kin scene)
- Karb Isle Sanctuary + the Chymic Works (could easily be part of a return to Habe's Sanitorium.
Large portions of the Haunting of Harrowstone could be lifted as well.
Also Cages of Delirium a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure could possibly be used again for Habe's at the beginning of Fortress of the Stone Giants when the party returns to town.
I'm sure I have some stuff amongst my Ravenloft adventures that would contain things that would be usable as well - I just haven't combed through them yet.
I guess while I'm here, I'd like to explain a little bit of what I'm doing and how my game is going for anyone who is interested.
I ran Burnt Offerings pretty much stock-standard, with the only actual changes being that somewhere before Thistletop, I had the players go through the Waypoint magazine Chopper's Isle one-shot as a way to get players familiar with Sandpoint's history a bit more, and give the players in-roads with Das Korvut, who they wanted work for. They loved it. Everything else was pretty much the same, just spending some more time dwelling on RP stuff. I did have the players acquire the Shard of Wrath from Shattered Star off of Erylium, and they placed it in the hands of Brodert Quink to study. Thistletop proceeded as normal, except that they managed to capture Orik Vancaskerkin alive on the first floor (Nualia, Tsuto, and Lyrie were holed up on the lower level) after he surrendered in the face of superior odds. They took pity on him and tied him up, while someone used a poison to knock him out. They spent a good long time getting to the next floor, and when they finally got there, they had a long and hard fight that they would have lost except for the fact that Orik woke up and (due to a few very surprising nat 20s behind the screen) had freed himself from his bonds and surprised the group by saving them in the fight. They agreed to never see eachother again, and Orik left the fort as they continued exploring.
So like I mentioned, the party went to Magnimar after the end of Book 1, both as a bit of a "vacation" and to sell more expensive items like their Cold Iron Returning Dagger. They picked up a new party member and headed to the Underbridge to flesh out the backstory of the Sarenrae Cleric PC, where I ran Dawn of the Scarlet Sun for them. The Succubus Assassin survived and escaped, and they are aware that it is loose in town, but not sure what that means for them.
Now we come to Book 2, where the players were fetched because of the Lumber Mill murders, and they investigated the scene there. I decided that since I had no female characters when Aldern met the party, I would change his focus to Ameiko, since I think the Lust angle is the most interesting. I had been dropping hints that little things of hers were going missing before the party went to Magnimar, and it had continued through to when they came back, with the addition of a nasty smell lingering around the grounds and windows. The note the players found on the murder scene was addressed to Ameiko rather than a player.
So here's what I've got planned so far; I'm going to keep the players focussed on protecting Ameiko, as that seems to be something they're all on board with in-character, but when the players actually get to the Sanatorium and Sevilla delivers the message, I'm going to have him deliver both the Envy and Wrath messages, because while Aldern is very obviously obsessed with Ameiko, he knows she's not the protectors, so his messages after that are for the party who he has grown to hate.
I only recently read about it, but I wish I had the grounds to turn the tables and accuse the players, as I think it would be a fantastic setup to have them be locked in Habe's and do a very creepy escape-from-the-asylum style plot, where they try to free themselves from a mental hospital where horrible experiments and necromancy are happening around them. But, unfortunately, I don't have that set up and have no way to get there.
Aside from really wanting to play up the undead/ghoul aspect, I'm not really sure what to do. Basically, my interpretation is that everything from the initial murder all the way up through the end of Misgivings is all designed to have a very dark horror atmosphere, and I want to play with that as long as I can. When the party goes to Magnimar, things take a very different tone, and I'm still working out where I want to go with that.
But for now, basically anything that works as a self-contained horror vignette to make the first half feel more and more like a descent into horror is what I'm after.
Oh, and Aldern has the Shard of Lust, in case that matters.
I know it's only a few hours, but I'm gonna lay down my thoughts for the coming book, the things I'd really like feedback on.
First, I'm thinking of re-structuring the entire adventure to make the Manor happen at the end. I really do agree with the GamesLibrarian that the way Misgivings is set up, it really should be the finale to the module, rather than something of a false climax at the middle, and a clear marker of the divide between the "horror" section of the book and the "investigation/intrigue" section.
So, first is the Sanatorium, where my players have asked the Sheriff for permission to go. Stealing from "Escape From Meenlock Prison" in Dungeon magazine #146, a little adventure that was basically "Players hired to escort prisoner to a private prison in the countryside. Prison has been taken over by inmates who are posing as the staff to make money before leaving", my thought is this would be a great point to run with, turning it into the Skinsaw Cult agents who had basically taken over the Sanatorium in an attempt to bring back the survivor Sevilla to sacrifice him properly. When the players get there, Habe will have cause to appear much more nervous because all of the "staff" there will actually be disguised Cultists (the bodies of the actual staff hidden in a closet somewhere), basically forcing him to "act natural" and send the PCs away.
I'll need to spend some more time actually writing this part to see where it goes and exactly what kind of encounter it turns the Sanatorium into, plus how I can move Carlizu into a more prominent position. I'm thinking that when the players get there, Carlizu will actually be gone, with only the remnants of his work left behind to show the players what was going on behind the scenes here. Again, I want to play Carlizu up for a dungeon later, so I think having him come across some discovery that caused him to leave and find a site of power for a ritual or something is a fine way to move him.
Now, since I'm using the Skinsaw Cult in the Sanatorium, I think that's a good way to send the players to Magnimar on the trail of the Cult. Maybe Hemlock can deliver a line about the Scarnetti lumber mill doing business with a mill in Magnimar, giving the players a reason to head there.
From there, most of the Magnimar stuff would run as normal, I think, with the exception of removing Foxglove's townhouse as I see no point in it really existing at all, up to and through the Bell Tower. And from there, on to the Misgivings Manor for the final dungeon crawl and face off against the Skinsaw Man.
I think I'll do a bit more explaining of where I'm going with my plot and what I'm writing for it. If nothing else, this is basically where I can write things out and see how they look on paper. I've actually found myself doing some really, really out-of-left-field stuff with this chapter, which is odd considering how insistent I was on running chapter 1 as close to the book as possible. It's all in service of story, though.
The basic layout of Skinsaw Murders as-written goes a bit like;
Sandpoint murder -> Habe's -> Farms -> Misgivings -> Townhouse -> Sawmill -> Shadow Clock
Whereas in my campaign it's going to flow about more like this;
Sandpoint murder -> Habe's -> Cult invesitgation -> Sawmill -> Shadow Clock -> Farmland -> Misgivings -> Townhouse
What I'm doing is having Kasadei, the Magnimar Guard Captain the players dealt with when I ran Dawn of the Scarlet Sun, arrive in Sandpoint with a contingent of guards, and a note for Hemlock saying that Justice Ironbriar has sent her. The players helped her stop a small-time Shax cult from killing Sarenite priests in the Underbridge, and Ironbriar will be sending her to Sandpoint to see if these murders are connected (the succubus leading the cult escaped). In truth, however, Ironbriar shut down the cult as it was dangerously close to Skinsaw turf. Kasadei herself is good, so she's an unknowing pawn for him to keep an eye on the Sandpoint situation.
Next is Habe's, where the players are going to arrive just as Grayst is being taken from the hospital, given by the two orderlies to the custody of two guards who will take him to Magnimar. In reality, all four of these men are low-rank Brotherhood members, who were sent to get the survivor of Aldern's murders and bring him to a dropoff where he can be disposed of to tie up loose ends. In fact, I'm playing with the idea of having Habe actually be replaced by a Brotherhood member, the real one tied up in his room.
A friend and I discussed the idea that Kasadei would be traveling with a right-hand-man, who in reality is Ironbriar's hand-picked Cultist who would be carrying out missions in Sandpoint, such as retrieving Grayst. I think a great twist would be that he's actually the one impersonating Habe, with use of a Stalker's Mask. I think Aldern has one, but never uses it as far as I know.
The second (named Deitrich) will escape when the mission goes south, fleeing into the woods, and leaving the bodies of the cult initiates, who's VII brand and address for the drop-off location will start the player's on the Cult investigation.
There's some details I'm still sorting out:
1. I think I need a bit more of an introduction to play up Ironbriar. One important change is that I want him to be more of a real, developed character, and his story arc should be Introduction > Betrayal > Fall, meaning that the players really need a way to get a sense that he's a good guy, one who's got his weight thrown behind this murder business so that when they discover his true nature, it's much more of a bigger deal.
2. Exactly how much investigation time, and how to draw it out. What I'm thinking is basically once the players get to Magnimar, they'll interact with Ironbriar directly, and he'll give them a bunch of leads to chase down, crime dens to knock over or bad people to kill. The idea is that I want the players to get the sense that they're doing something important, but really it's all just Ironbriar using them as pawns to keep suspicion off himself (and maybe throw it on Kasadei in the process?).
3. I've knocked around replacing Xanesha as a Lamia with something else, like a demon. Basically I want a way to bring back the Succubus Assassin from DotSS, and I can't really come up with a good way or place to do this.
4. By the time the players finish investigating the cult and assault the Sawmill, I don't know if Ironbriar will die there, but it should be a big setpiece. It will be followed by the group hunting Xanesha at the Shadow Clock as normal. The idea is that the group will wrap up the cult business, and then return to Sandpoint to find that the plague of Ghouls has hit the local area, with a clue from there sending them finally to Misgivings, which will be the final setpiece of the module.
5. The chapter will finish with the players killing Aldern, and possibly the Manor sinking into the sea. Then, the only clue left is to visit Aldern's Townhouse, where the story of what happened to him and how he came to be is wrapped up for the players, tying everything up with a neat little bow.
That's basically where I am right now. Still a lot of planning to do, but I think I like the overall structure of this story.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
Askren wrote: I think I'll do a bit more explaining of where I'm going with my plot and what I'm writing for it.
Whereas in my campaign it's going to flow about more like this;
Sandpoint murder -> Habe's -> Cult invesitgation -> Sawmill -> Shadow Clock -> Farmland -> Misgivings -> Townhouse
There's some details I'm still sorting out:
1. I think I need a bit more of an introduction to play up Ironbriar.
2. Exactly how much investigation time, and how to draw it out.
The idea is that I want the players to get the sense that they're doing something important, but really it's all just Ironbriar using them as pawns.
3. I've knocked around replacing Xanesha as a Lamia with something else.
4. I don't know if Ironbriar will die (at the Sawmill).
5. The chapter will finish with the players killing Aldern, and possibly the Manor sinking into the sea. Then, the only clue left is to visit Aldern's Townhouse, where the story of what happened to him and how he came to be is wrapped up for the players, tying everything up with a neat little bow.
OK, some thoughts -
1. Kasadei is already going to be in Sandpoint as a bit of a dupe of Ironbriar. Have Kasadei TELL the players how Ironbriar defeated/drove off the Succubus from the Scarlet Sun, and why she is in Sandpoint (from her perspective). That will tie up (in the player's minds) that loose end - more on that in a moment, and also should buy him some goodwill from the players.
2. Ironbriar "helping" the PCs out with information is great, is the "Lyrie Scenario" an option? I can see ways to use the ideas in that thread, even if you have to change that "Lyrie" into someone else. Maybe one of Aldren's sister's starts to get worried about Aldren and has arrived in Magnimar (could be a good vehicle to info dump some of the Foxglove family history).
3. Well, perhaps Ironbriar didn't kill the succubus, but instead recruited her or got her in touch with Xanesha, and Kasadei only THINKS that Ironbriar finished off that case that the PCs failed at. It also could work to completely reskin the Skinsaw Cult as SHAX worshippers instead of Norgorber.
4. Not sure what you're looking for here - in the one I'm running, I'm considering having Ironbriar be the source of all the illegitimate half-elves in Sandpoint, he's at the moment my number one contender.
5. The final scenes as the manor in Magnimar could also be the tie up for any spare villians who escaped - maybe they're there impersonating Aldren's sister?
the Lorax wrote: 1. Kasadei is already going to be in Sandpoint as a bit of a dupe of Ironbriar. Have Kasadei TELL the players how Ironbriar defeated/drove off the Succubus from the Scarlet Sun, and why she is in Sandpoint (from her perspective). That will tie up (in the player's minds) that loose end - more on that in a moment, and also should buy him some goodwill from the players. I actually sat down and spent some time with a DM friend (who happens to be playing this game, but helps me work out story stuff since he's run Runelords already) discussing Kasadei and her purpose here. His idea was that she actually ends up being the one to betray the party, but I didn't like that narrative because what it felt like to me was basically being that kind of DM who kills off every connection the players have, so their stable of friends they have around the world stays limited because everyone they make friends with dies in some way. So I would prefer to have her actually be a real friend, one the players can rely on going forwards.
So when Kasadei comes and relays Ironbriar's intention to stop the cult-like murders in Sandpoint thanks to his interest in cult-related violence that was brought to his attention with the party revealing the small Shax cult in Magnimar. The party probably doesn't remember it, but I did name-drop him in Book 1 when Lyrie was handed over to Magnimar for trial.
The thing with Avalexi the succubus is, I haven't decided how I want to use her yet. I can easily see her showing up later next to Xanesha, having decided to help the people seeking souls for Karzoug, since she still wants power from Shax, which access to a cult of murderers can help her with. But I'd rather not actually mention the succubus at all until then, because I just like the idea of the players not knowing if she's involved or not. Like, I don't want to basically tell them "This enemy of yours is dead" to get them focused on other things, only to have that be a lie.
Quote: 2. Ironbriar "helping" the PCs out with information is great, is the "Lyrie Scenario" an option? I can see ways to use the ideas in that thread, even if you have to change that "Lyrie" into someone else. Maybe one of Aldren's sister's starts to get worried about Aldren and has arrived in Magnimar (could be a good vehicle to info dump some of the Foxglove family history). I'm not sure what you're referencing here, the Lyrie thing of having her be on the run? I'm not crazy into that idea, just because I have no story I really want to tell with her and I don't see her adding much to the narrative in the way I've written it.
Personally, the way I have set it up (and this may not resonate with everyone, but it makes sense to me) that all the "exposition" about Aldern and his family and life will be handled after the Manor. Like, the idea is that the players handle the cult first, and then they go on to actually hunt down and stop the ghoul plague/murderer that turns out to be Aldern, learning a lot about his family and history from the Manor itself. Then, once he's dead, the players sort of get the chance to get the real answers from his Townhouse, where hopefully all the sad details of how he became the man he turned out to be came about, and it sort of closes the chapter with the players understanding the full circle that had been working since book 1. I just think it wraps everything up in the most natural way.
Quote: 3. Well, perhaps Ironbriar didn't kill the succubus, but instead recruited her or got her in touch with Xanesha, and Kasadei only THINKS that Ironbriar finished off that case that the... That's my idea, in a way, though again I haven't quite decided how exactly I want to use her. Personally, I don't think Kasadei should mention the succubus at all, especially not to basically lie to the players on behalf of the DM. That's just me though. In her mind, I think the succubus would fall under someone else's jurisdiction, probably handed off to whatever taskforce Magnimar has for this kind of thing (the Pathfinders, maybe).
In fact, I'm actually looking for ways to incorperate the Pathfinder lodge and it's relevant NPCs (featured in Shattered Star and PFS stuff in Magnimar) in some way, but haven't decided how I'll do it. I'm thinking of having Sheila Heidmarch at the society ask the players track down signs of the succubus (or whatever other lead I decide to use), that ends up running parallel to and intersecting with the cult investigation. Really it's just a way to introduce more NPCs and flesh out the world a bit for the players.
So I just dropped my party off at Habe's.
Here's a quick overview of what happened last session:
The players visited Hemlock to find out about the Scarnetti family and their potential involvement in the Mill Murders, but Hemlock could do little other than tell them who owned the deeds, where their trade manifests showed them sending caravans, and inform them that while Titus Scarnetti is a rather nasty businessman, there's nothing to link him directly to the murders, even if he did know about Harker stealing money. They visited Quink, who had his usual exposition dump, this time introducing the two new PCs to the Shard of Wrath they had obtained and stored, and telling the group about the seven virtues/sins of Thassilon, the Sihedron, and some other things. They currently think the murderer is targeting one victim per sin (Greed, Sloth, Lust, Wrath, etc.). Kasadei then arrived in town with her men and told the group Ironbriar had sent her to make sure the murders which had a lot of cult-like details to them weren't done by the same group that killed Sarenrae priests in Magnimar (Thanks Dawn of the Scarlet Sun!), and to make sure whatever WAS at work in Sandpoint didn't spread to Magnimar.
They then got a letter from Hemlock basically demanding them access to the patient/prisoner at Habe's, with the knowledge that the letter probably would carry little weight outside of the town's walls, but it was something.
So, on to Habe's. The group got there in the evening, and encountered 3 horses tied to the patio, inside were two "guards", two "orderlies" and Deitrich (Kasadei's lieutenant) disguised as Habe. They were in the process of trying to remove Sevilla when the party asked to see him, and "Habe" let them ask questions while he was being taken out. So they demanded answers, Sevilla babbled about things that made the party uneasy, and eventually the Bard started mentioning things about "His Lordship", and Sevilla got really crazy, shoving and trying to escape. While this made the disguised cult members skittish, the real trigger for all hell breaking loose was the Bard conjuring a big Sihedron rune in the air with Silent Image. It freaked Grayst out, but it actually scared one of the guards more than anything, as he basically reacted by diving onto the Bard and trying to take him out.
Things got weird, with the players still unaware that these were not real guards and attempted to show they weren't hostile and such, but Deitrich made for the door and told them to leave none of them alive, before escaping out onto one of the horses while the group was busy with the disguised cult memebers. One other "guard" actually got away (he was basically shut out of the room by the Slayer, and saw his boss leaving, so he fled too), and one was about to do the cyanide-pill type suicide before another player crit him anyway.
Slayer instantly bolted after the "guard" who got away on horseback, saying he'd spend all night trying to track him if necessary, so I'll have him away for at least a day, maybe more.
The others are still in Habe's, Sevilla delivered his message before turning (I had his token change from a normal screaming man to the image from the book, in fullscreen in front of my players, it really freaked them out as I was screaming his message, haha.), and they killed him. The most ominious part though was when the Fighter buried his sword into Grayst's torso for the final blow, Sevilla just slowly turned his head to face the player and (again, token up on the screen) said "The Skinsaw Man is coming..." before he died. (It was at this point I learned one of my players actually had Norgorber on his character sheet, which was news to me. It freaked him out though.)
So that's where we ended. The players got some clues, particularly the number VII branded onto the inner arm of all 4 of the people they fought.
So next session will be a combination of them investigating the rest of the Sanatorium, where they'll get a journal I wrote about Habe's notes on Grayst, mentioning Carlizu a bit, even though he's gone at the moment, and there will be a new player joining when they get back to Sandpoint, since they have no Thassilonian specialist anymore.
I guess what I need to figure out currently is:
A. Where the two escaped people went. The group THINKS Deitrich is currently securing the farmhouse murder scene, but he's obviously not there. I want to have them go somewhere that can help the investigation, but I'm not sure where.
B. I'm not actually sure how the investigation proceeds. Like, technically they're now on the trail of the Brotherhood of Seven, but how they get to Magnimar and how things go from here, I don't really know yet.
C. Like I said, I've been dabbling in a bit of material from Shattered Star, mostly just as side flavor and padding, but I really do want to stretch the time in Magnimar coming up, so I'm planning on doing a lot with the Pathfinders there, giving a bunch of adventures for Ironbriar. It also turns out that one of my players really, really wants a backstory resolution...in Cheliax. So somewhere along the line I'm going to need to have the actual campaign events take a few months break while the group can side-trek to Westcrown or something, possibly so I can run some content from CoT. Oh boy.
Yeah.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
Askren wrote: A. Where the two escaped people went. The group THINKS Deitrich is currently securing the farmhouse murder scene, but he's obviously not there. I want to have them go somewhere that can help the investigation, but I'm not sure where. The only sensible place for them to bail too once the mission is screwed is back to Magnimar - getting Ironbriar the information that the PCs are sniffing around is important information.
Askren wrote: B. I'm not actually sure how the investigation proceeds. Like, technically they're now on the trail of the Brotherhood of Seven, but how they get to Magnimar and how things go from here, I don't really know yet. Deitrich is too useful to throw away at this point, and for the plot, should get back to Magnimar. The guard, however, isn't so lucky, Deitrich may not be invested in making sure that the guard makes it. He can be the arrow that points the party to Magnimar. Maybe the PCs catch him when his horse comes up lame. Maybe he barely survived an attack by Boggards near the Brinestump Marsh (heck maybe boggards dragged him down into Brinestump Marsh - run some of Boggards in the Brinestump)
Askren wrote: C. Like I said, I've been dabbling in a bit of material from Shattered Star, mostly just as side flavor and padding, but I really do want to stretch the time in Magnimar coming up, so I'm planning on doing a lot with the Pathfinders there, giving a bunch of adventures for Ironbriar. It also turns out that one of my players really, really wants a backstory resolution...in Cheliax. So somewhere along the line I'm going to need to have the actual campaign events take a few months break while the group can side-trek to Westcrown or something, possibly so I can run some content from CoT. Oh boy.
Sounds like you have the basic solution - maybe Xanesha escapes to Westcrown?
the Lorax wrote: The only sensible place for them to bail too once the mission is screwed is back to Magnimar - getting Ironbriar the information that the PCs are sniffing around is important information. Logically, yes, but I think it might trip some red flags that I'm not sure I want to raise with the players if they never meet him in person, and only hear that in the span of one day he investigated an old crime scene and then went back to Magnimar. Remember, he's Ironbriar's eyes and ears within Kasadei's group, though I haven't decided how many of "her" men are actually Brotherhood. Maybe it's none, and the 4 at Habe's were local guys. I figure he'll have to make it back to Sandpoint, at least so Kasadei isn't curious when he just vanishes. Remember, the players haven't seen Deitrich's face yet, he was using a mask to disguise as Habe, so he's free and clear for the moment.
My current thought is that the guard actually catches up with Deitrich and attempts to flee with him, but Deitrich backstabs him to cover his tracks. This will allow the player who followed the fleeing guard to find the body, but in a way where the man didn't have time to take the suicide poison or cover his ass, so there may be something incriminating on him. Likely the address for where to deliver Sevilla.
Deitrich makes it back to Sandpoint, and from there the party returns to town to put the pieces together, directing them to Magnimar.
Quote: Deitrich is too useful to throw away at this point, and for the plot, should get back to Magnimar. The guard, however, isn't so lucky, Deitrich may not be invested in making sure that the guard makes it. He can be the arrow that points the party to Magnimar. Maybe the PCs catch him when his horse comes up lame. Maybe he barely survived an attack by Boggards near the Brinestump Marsh (heck maybe boggards dragged him down into Brinestump Marsh - run some of Boggards in the Brinestump) See above for this, but the idea is basically the same. The player who is going to tail the fleeing guard is a fellow GM who has already run Runelords, so I often use him to workshop plot elements and deliver clues the other players may not come to. He told me he'd be fine with coming up empty on the chase, but I think I want to do something with it.
Quote: Sounds like you have the basic solution - maybe Xanesha escapes to Westcrown? Not something I'd considered, but I'll leave the option open. I tend not to plan for situations where a villain has to escape for the plot to work, because what ends up happening is me spending the fight trying to get that NPC out alive rather than giving players the appropriate challenge. So I don't think like that, I tend to assume that the enemies will always be dead by the end of the fight, that way on the rare occasion they do escape, I just have an extra bit of stuff to add to my next chapter.
Basically, the Cheliax thing is a long way down the road, I'm thinking like, after book 3.
FWIW the most natural gap where you can fit a long side-trek in is actually after book 4. The whole book 3-4 section has some time pressure issues that would make a long detour something that probably wouldn't make a lot of sense for them to do narratively.
Hmm... Gives me a few ideas... Kinda makes me miss playing that game with you guys, even if it was for like, 2 or 3 sessions lol.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
A&B. Absolutely, long and short is Deitrich gets away (to continue his work) and the guard (somehow, dead or alive) points the PCs to Magnimar.
C. Xanesha's "fleeing" doesn't have to be during melee - once the cultists/Ironbriar go down, Xanesha doesn't have a lot invested in sticking her neck out to get chopped off. My reading between the lines seems to indicate that Xanesha is getting bored with this whole Skinsaw Cult thing. Xanesha can just as easily flee the scene before the PCs engage.
So I'll continue explaining my game changes as they come up, since our plot continues.
I'll spare the details of the party's investigation of Habe's Sanatorium and the details and characters therein, as it's mostly unimportant. The Cliff's Notes version is this; Players explored the place, found the two tiefling orderlies dead and hid in a storage room, as well as discovering Habe's corpse in his room, which confused them greatly as they had seen Habe flee during the combat. They found Habe's journal, which I had describe A.) That Carlizu had taken an interest in Sevilla as he believed the man to carry ghoul fever, B.) that Sevilla's ramblings had mentioned the name of "Lordship" among the scattered details of the murders he was made to witness, but also that he used the name "The Hurter", which led Habe to conclude another attacker was present at the scene, and C.) That Carlizu had left in a hurry, taking most of the patients with him. Most of the things in the basement were gone, but from scraps of notes left behind in haste and other clues, they know a necromancer operated there.
So, now their current destination is Magnimar, as one of the disguised "guards" had an address with him, one they know is not in Sandpoint. Since all their current clues point there, that's where they'll head next.
So now on to the the actual investigation into the Brotherhood/Skinsaw cult. Laying this out, in my mind there are a few stages here that are essential to the plot, namely;
1. Meeting Ironbriar and hearing his position, which will be that there is a fanatical murder cult of some sort active in the area, and since the players were so handy in dispatching the last one, and this might be connected (though the players believe them separate), he will task them with solving it.
2. Discovering what the VII mark on the attackers means, and thus the nature of the Skinsaw Cult. The actual revelation here does not need to happen instantly, or even soon. I intend to spend time leading them on a few red herrings to muddy the waters here, until eventually all roads lead to the Skinsaw.
3. Confronting the Skinsaw Cult itself. The initial confrontation here should set the scene, making it the moment that the players know they're finally on the right track and everything is falling into place.
4. Ironbriar being revealed. This is a fairly big dramatic moment, and it should be treated as such. When he finally steps out of the shadows to confront the PCs head on, it should be in a situation where he is utterly confident he has the upper hand and can end them to keep his cover in tact.
5. Xanesha, and the conclusion in Magnimar.
So #1 is where we are right now, and this is what I'm intending on doing; Like I said, Ironbriar will meet the players, my hope to make them see him a bit like they see Hemlock, a crusader for the law and one bent on stamping out violent crime. He'll talk the players through a series of leads he's working on, violent crimes or reported rumors all around Magnimar for the players to investigate for their connection to the current threat. These will, in truth, all be either other cults or gangs that the Skinsaw would see brought down to make their jobs easier, or personal enemies or loose ends of Ironbriar's who he may have framed for personal gain. All, he hopes, will yield prisoners he can sacrifice for Xanesha.
I'm planning on combing my published adventures, Dragon and Dungeon magazines, and all of my resources for things I can use here. I'm particularly interested in dropping in some Pathfinder society (the in-game group, not like, PFS organized play) stuff to run on the side because I just really like Sheila Heidmarch and want to use her if I have the opportunity.
If anyone has any suggestions for little things that can be dropped in here, I'd love to hear them. Adventure seeds or plots either dealing with cults, gangs, or urban things. Anything that doesn't take place outside city walls or can be easily adapted.
It's been a while, so I'll spend some time explaining where the group is now. This is actually 2 sessions wrapped up.
They set out on the trip to Magnimar, as per Kasadei's instruction. She gave them her "badge" (it's got some ID stuff and official Magnimar guard credentials) which should allow them passage around Magnimar and open doors for them. The trip to Magnimar itself was fairly straight forwards. I acquired the Community Created map of the road between Sandpoint and Magnimar allowing me to flesh out the travel a bit more than I had, so along the way they just rested at an Inn that was really not special at all. A passing mention that there seemed to be some sort of Merchant caravan parked outside, and they noticed one of the carts was a Fortune Teller's wagon, which is a regular sight in Varisia. So they decided to sit in for a Harrow reading. So I ran one (thanks to CoCT, I am familiar enough with Harrow readings that I can do it on the fly), and specifically used a few cards to answer character questions about their backstories. It worked surprisingly well, and the players took a lot of information away from it, most self-interpreted.
They got back on the road, arrived in Magnimar the next day, and realized that their credentials didn't actually work the way they had been told. Actually, the guard treated the ID the players carried with more suspicion than anything else. But eventually they worked their way to meet Ironbriar, who received them in the way you might expect. He already knows of the players and their exploits, and has already assembled his plan for them. They went straight out and told him everything they knew about the situation, including the clues they found at Habe's, etc. Full disclosure, basically. Ironbriar took all this in and basically told the players that based on their demonstrated usefulness, he wants to make them his tools in ending the cult violence in Magnimar and bringing the criminal organizations down, to which they agreed. The first step, though, was that he needed to make sure they follow orders and properly report directly to him, so he explained how he he has assembled a list of crime dossiers which all fit the bill of some sort of unsolved murder or activity that could be connected to the cult murder they're following, and they're going to have to help sort through them. The first of which is more of a "test" for them, which is the unsolved murders and escape of the "Swan Street Slicer", a rash of brutal killings of minor nobles in the Alabaster district that could potentially be related to the recent killings in Sandpoint.
The players accepted the terms and went into the city to carry out Ironbriar's task, though first they wanted to visit the address they had gotten from the imposter at Habe's. The address led them to a warehouse in one of the cramped merchant districts which has been out of commission for a while, locked doors and piles of forgotten merchandise in crates that haven't been touched in a while. Really, I hadn't planned what I wanted to do with this place (I did have a map if combat would happen, but decided against it), and what they discovered was a.) that someone had recently come through and removed a number of heavy crates. They were able to use Survival tracking to follow the movement as far as the street where it was likely loaded into a cart of some sort and taken away. b.) the actual content of the boxes seems to be mostly imported goods, a large amount of which are Chelaxian. My logic here is "Skinsaw Cult is from Cheliax, I figure they probably imported a lot of their stuff (the masks and costumes and stuff) from there over the years."
So the group spent some time investigating the Swan Street murders, and their trail led them to the manor of an old female noble who was bitter and resentful. One of the murder victims was her daughter's husband, and through some negotiation by the bard the party got themselves invited to a dinner party where they can actually question the mother about why the suspect in the murder was caught outside her house.
The group then spent the rest of the session getting their custom-made tailored clothing and having the Bard make them jewelery so they can go to their dinner party looking all nice. We left off with them walking up to the door of the party.
Really, from here, my only concern is finding out what happens next. Not like, the Swan Street Slicer thing, that is actually ripped from Dungeon #128, so I know how it ends. I mean what happens in the city after that, what Ironbriar has them do, and what kind of cult things happen behind the scenes. I haven't really had time to plan the next bit.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
Sounds like things are going great so far.
Unless you're looking for LOTS of padding here, I'd let Ironbriar send them on say 3 missions +/- before setting them up.
Ironbriar never sends them anywhere close to his stuff.
Like the Harrow reading, get them an NPC or two to talk to and discuss their thoughts - swipe your players best ideas and put a twist on them based on your knowledge of the situation. Its a great DMing trick as long as you use it sparingly.
the Lorax wrote: Sounds like things are going great so far. That they seem to be, I just hope I can keep it interesting.
Quote: Unless you're looking for LOTS of padding here, I'd let Ironbriar send them on say 3 missions +/- before setting them up. Yeah, I had basically decided that it was going to be only a few items around town that Ironbriar pushes them for. Ideally, I'd like to have every "official" mission coincide with one "unofficial" clue or event that lets them have a small piece of the real puzzle, while realizing that each Ironbriar task is just a dead end. So by the end of it, they'll basically be left with almost no trust in Ironbriar and their own picture they've pieced together. I also want to have him making moves in the background, things happening that progress the Skinsaw's goals but aren't readily obvious. I just...have to decide what those goals are.
Quote: Ironbriar never sends them anywhere close to his stuff. Yeah, he's very obviously just using them for his own personal ends. In fact, the Swan Street Slicer (a mute Gnome in the service of Lady Dromdal, the mean noble hosting the dinner for them) is a very keen and obedient killer, so Ironbriar wants him captured alive specifically so he can use him as a tool for the Skinsaw. The nobles are notoriously greedy, so someone adept at slipping in and out of their midst and murdering them while evading capture would be a fantastic tool for preparing greedy souls for Karzoug. But to the players, they're just capturing a dangerous criminal.
Quote: Like the Harrow reading, get them an NPC or two to talk to and discuss their thoughts - swipe your players best ideas and put a twist on them based on your knowledge of the situation. Its a great DMing trick as long as you use it sparingly.
I actually had been planning just this. There's a Shae Rogue (lifted from Dragon's Demand) that's been trailing the party's Slayer for a few days. He's caught glimpses of her around, but thinks it's an enemy tailing him. She'll reveal herself eventually, after the dinner party likely. I had written her as something of a curious traveler, taken with observing the comings and goings of the city and noticing how out-of-place the party is. She'll be a friend the party can go to in town, but one that isn't tied to anything official or any organizations, so she'll be one of the only really neutral friends they have.
Alright, so back to pouring over my module stock, and there's a few great ones I found that I'm trying to figure out if I can use or not. But right now, my big goal is to find events I can run that have a lot of story both happening up front AND behind the scenes. Things that can progress both narratives forwards at the same time. And right now, I'm thinking Mad God's Key.
So here's what I have in mind:
While the players are spending their days preparing for the dinner party, Ironbriar got in contact with his superior, Xanesha, and explained to her how the party was stumbling their way onto the trail that might lead them to the cult, and that's no good. Xanesha explains to Ironbriar how she requires something from the ancient library vaults of Magnimar, a locked tome that contains information (specifically, information about Karzoug and the Runewells, but she doesn't tell Ironbriar any of that) that is now precious to her, having been resigned to simply leaving this information under the protection of a lock who's key has been lost to time in the corner of some musty vault under the city. But with a group as resourceful as the players on the scene, she wants to make sure the information cannot fall into their hands, and she gets it first.
The reason this book is on her mind is because recently she came into the knowledge of a magic key held by an unwitting locksmith, with powerful magic that allows it to open any lock. This key, should she have it, would not only help acquire and keep her tome safe, but also provide much more useful in future endeavors.
So on Xanesha's orders, Ironbriar sends members of the Cult to recruit a small-time band of thugs to do the job of stealing the key from the locksmith. It's actually going to be the Pathfinder Society who becomes involved with the party and the adventure when they attempt to respond to the break-in and theft, having the two secondary burglars already captured to be interrogated. Since the players are currently "deputized" by Ironbriar, I like the idea of a subtle thread that may unravel his entire tapestry being pulled here, as the Pathfinders go to the PCs as guards to take care of this situation. In my mind, this is actually something Ironbrair would absolutely not want to happen and would demand they stop and let the actual guard handle (his personal men), but as it would happen without his direct knowledge, it could easily become the one little loose end that sets the entire thing spiraling down.
The actual content of all this I'm still writing, but I figure this is a nice little adventure to pillage and can potentially set up a lot of interesting interplay between Ironbriar, the party, and the Pathfinder Society.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
With as in deep with Ironbriar as your PCs are, you need SOMETHING to unravel things.
Especially if, perhaps, the PCs recognize one of the thugs as being one of Ironbriar's men.
It actually didn't even occur to me before, but I've been wracking my brain trying to think "What comes next? What are the villain's motives? How do I get from here to there?" this morning, and it kind of dawned on me; I've got the Pathfinder Society coming in, I've already teed the players up with the Shard of Wrath (though they don't know it yet), and I've got Xanesha currently seeing the PCs as a threat to her work for Karzoug. There's really only one obvious place to go with this, and that's the Shard of Greed.
So here's my thoughts:
-Xanesha uses the Skinsaw Cult/Brotherhood to steal the Mad God's Key and an old, old journal on Thassilonian excavations within Magnimar, her goal being to get to the Shard of Greed because it can potentially infect many souls with the the curse of greed, allowing them to be harvested for Karzoug.
-Her initial goal is the old lore tome, but this is only so she can find the exact location of the Shard itself. The key is needed to get to it, as any Thassilionian keys will likely be lost to time.
-Sheila Heidmarch will help the players so they can discover the location of the Shard, likely by the same method detailed in Shattered Star (place an ioun stone in the shard, focus on it to get a vision of the location of the others) using the Shard currently held by Brodert Quink in Sandpoint.
-The party will follow Xanesha's men to the Crow, where basically we'll run through the lower Thassilonian dungeon levels from Shattered Star's first book (bypassing the Tower Girls and the wererats).
-The players will emerge from the dungeon with the Shard.
-This upset is what causes Xanesha to order Ironbriar to have them killed, which is when Ironbriar starts sending the actual Skinsaw Cult after them.
-Ironbriar will send them on one more "task", which is really a set-up/ambush to wipe them out.
-When this fails, the PCs will finally confront him at the Sawmill.
What do you guys think? I know it sounds very, very round-about, and that's my major concern. I love how nicely some of the stuff fits together, I'm just worried that the players might forget some of the other details in all the chaos.
This is the basic plot I came up with this morning, though. I would love to hear some feedback on it.
So I guess it's time to update a little bit. It seems to me as if every time I come up with a need for some sort of plot movement, I end up adding a chunk of new content. Now, this is all just stuff for myself, because I like long, winding plots with lots of moving parts, but once I complete the book, I think I'll put it all together in a very stripped-down version for anyone who wants to run my alterations without any huge amount of extra content. If you're less concerned with the more fiddly bits of the story and are content with just handwaving away a lot of plot movement or just having things be a little less subtle and more straightforward as befits a normal hero story, the overall book will be able to be run using pretty much just the content included in the published version, just moved around a bit. Like, there's no reason for someone else to run the Shattered Star bits for the Sihedron Shards, if you haven't decided to add that to your game.
Anyway I'm not really gonna give an in-depth recap of what the party did. I don't know if I recounted the dinner party (part of the module Shut In from Dungeon #128), but it ran pretty straightforwards, with a lot of roleplaying and the party taking a surprising shine to the NPCs. It went swimmingly, as long as you ignore the part where they completely forgot to interrogate the Lady of the estate about the murders. They were kind of twisting in the wind at the end of it without much of a way to proceed, so I introduced my Shae friend of the party to give them a little information and plant a seed of trust with them.
The next session, the party returned to the house the evening after the party, and were greeted by the daughter of the house running out of the house insisting there was someone inside. They investigated, found the Slicer in the mother's room, fought and subdued him, and then completed the investigation to realize that the mother was insane and had orchestrated it all, keeping many of the victims trapped in her secret basement. A good session, all in all. At the end, they turned the Slicer in to the custody of the city guard, as Ironbriar has asked for him alive. The party does not know, but Ironbriar plans to re-purpose the Swan Street Slicer, a deranged mute halfling named Peck, into a murderous tool of his own.
However, when the party returned to Ironbriar the next day, they found him out of his office, and only his clerk there to receive the party. The clerk (Geoffry Wine) had recently been given a collection of files, and he mistakenly thought they were for the party, so he handed them over. In fact, Ironbriar had given him those files to bury in storage or destroy, with the intention that they not be seen by the party. The reason being that those files contain a lot of old cold cases, most have nothing to do with anything the players care about. Three of them, however, specifically relate to murders performed by the Skinsaw.
Now this is something I'm tying in, mostly because I need the party to actually find a "real" lead soon, and so what I made up is a bit of event that absolutely makes no sense to anyone who is intimately familiar with the Skinsaw Cult and the murders as detailed in the book. I needed a way to have the party stumble onto one related murder that would help them understand the scope of things going on, so I pulled a detail from an old 3.5 mod called "Murder of the Seven Points", which is exactly what you'd think, a serial killer murdering seven people at specific points around town to make a big pentagram-thing. So I buried 7 murders around the city, all unrelated except for the cult ties, all the bodies found in different locations, all marking a point of the Sihedron in large scale in Magnimar. I'm fluffing this a a big "consecrating" ritual or something Ironbriar did. The why is not important, it's just a mystery for them to unravel to pick up more information on how the murders (the ones they observed in Sandpoint) are not isolated, and are part of a larger thing. This is not meant to be something they uncover all at once, but rather in the background as other things go on.
The OTHER thing I added was another little module I stole called "Darwell's Tower", because I wanted to get a little bit of the "party doing Ironbriar's bidding to remove enemies of his" flavor in there. So in my mind, Xanesha told him to accelerate his plans when the party started getting closer to them, and so he's going to do that. Part of this means removing enemies he's let linger in the city. One of these is going to be a Necromancer named Darwell Umbruskor, who poses as an eccentric wizard/sage and has a tower in town. Ironbriar is aware that he recently purchased a powerful magic object, as Ironbriar has had guards stationed ad Darwell's tower as part of a deal the two had, Ironbriar let him operate in town in exchange for favors from Darwell. He accelerates his plans to remove the wizard when Darwell receives a letter (from Carlizu). Basically, Ironbriar just sends the party to infiltrate the tower and get the item (a magic orb with the power to control large amounts of undead), which they will agree too because it's evil.
This particular part isn't hugely plot-relevant, it's just a bit of padding. A dungeon crawl designed to take one or two sessions while the players figure other things out.
So yeah, that's where we are right now.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
Sounds great so far.
With "Darwell's Tower", I assume that you are actually including Darwell, and re-skinning the Hobgoblins. The chain ghoul is a nice tie in back to Aldren, so it looks like that will fit in nicely.
The clerk handing over the wrong files is just the kind of inadvertent screw up that your plot needs to begin to unravel things for Ironbriar.
the Lorax wrote: Sounds great so far.
With "Darwell's Tower", I assume that you are actually including Darwell, and re-skinning the Hobgoblins. The chain ghoul is a nice tie in back to Aldren, so it looks like that will fit in nicely.
I'm amazed anyone but me had even seen the mod, much less know what's in it.
Yeah, I'm going to include him in the tower. I figure the party deserves to fight a Necromancer to make up for the one they missed. I hadn't decided what to re-flavor the Hobgoblins into, but likely just some brand of gang thugs. I'll have to dredge up something that I might be able to bring back later.
Quote:
The clerk handing over the wrong files is just the kind of inadvertent screw up that your plot needs to begin to unravel things for Ironbriar.
Yeah, that's basically why I wrote it. The actual purpose of the screw-up is slightly different, though. The clue it gives will be relatively minor and slow-moving, but the immediate pay of is more interesting; Ironbriar is very quickly going to discover what happened, and have Geoffry killed off. He'll be replaced by a newly promoted clerk the next time the players see Ironbriar, which I hope gets them a little suspicious.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
Askren wrote: I'm amazed anyone but me had even seen the mod, much less know what's in it.
Ironbriar is very quickly going to discover what happened, and have Geoffry killed off. He'll be replaced by a newly promoted clerk the next time the players see Ironbriar, which I hope gets them a little suspicious.
I hope you use a Skinsaw Cultist as the new desk clerk, one who acts weird and twitchy.
I loved those little booklet adventures, they always had filled a nice place, giving you more story than you needed and a bit of an adventure, they filled an evening pretty well, and are the perfect size for your Ironbriar bogus missions. There's enough story behind things for you to have information in case the party wants to look into it more, or it could just be one more link back to Ironbriar.
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