Nualia plans


Rise of the Runelords


hello everyone!

can someone explain Nualia plans again please? i am not sure i understand, why she needed her father remains, etc, etc

i also want to make sure i can explain it to me group and maybe also remind them what and why they are fighting the story is a little bit complicated for me anyways and usualy people loose interest when thwy forget why they fight

Silver Crusade Contributor

She sacrificially burned the bones in a demonic ritual (hence the adventure name, "Burnt Offerings") and in return, Lamashtu transformed her hand into that claw. Once she and her goblin crew assault and burn Sandpoint, she believes that the Mother of Monsters will transfigure her entirely into a demon.

Does this make sense? ^_^


awesome thanks so much!!! the mother of monster has a name i just cant recall atm


Lamashtu = Mother of Monsters.

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

One more thing: it's not just that she believes that Lamashtu will turn her into a full demon. Lamashtu has already guided her to Malfeshnekor, one of her servants from the Age of Thassilon. She's already started to make good on her promise, having turned her left arm into something demonic. This isn't just faith - there's signs that Lamashtu has every intention on following through with her promises, if Nualia is able to deliver.

Of course, as the DM, you're free to say that Lamashtu is just stringing Nualia along, but I think it's more powerful that the Mother of Monsters transforms her servant into a full-fledged demon, after doing so many acts in her name.


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At least that's the plan - until those interfering kids adventurers get in the way! :)


haha bellona! its funny all players have kids including me, but we are all still kids haha

just another question,

why was sandpoint choosen?


for two reasons:
Sandpoint is the city where Nualia grew up and the city she learned to hate, being an outsider to the community.
Also, there is a runewell of wrath underneath the city and the destruction of Sandpoint would power the runwell and grant Nualia an army of Sinspawns


For one thing, there's a number of hidden Lamashtu chapels/temples in the vicinity: Erylium's temple underneath Sandpoint and the temple at Thistletop.

Secondly, it was from Erylium that Nualia got her Lamashtan training, and it was near Erylium's temple that the teenaged Nualia conceived her "demon-tainted" child (the still-born one).

And Nualia basically hates Sandpoint and its people. She had an awful childhood there. One of the better non-map fan-made resources on the Burnt Offerings thread (Community Resources, I think) has a two-page hand-out which contains excerpts from Nualia's childhood/teen diary, which builds on Nualia's backstory. A party can find this either in Sandpoint, or among Nualia's stuff at Thistletop.


francois bourque wrote:

haha bellona! its funny all players have kids including me, but we are all still kids haha

just another question,

why was sandpoint choosen?

Hmmm... This suggests you may not be following the entire backstory. Which given it's strewn across 6 books in the AP is not all that surprising. Why was Sandpoint chosen for what? Chosen by Nualia for harassment? Is that your question?

I think you might need a primer on how all the parts fit together but I don't want to try to write that up if its not needed.

Oh, and I think Bellona's reference is to an old cartoon - Scooby Doo where a group of teenagers were always breaking up crazy schemes of criminals pretending to be ghosts and other mythical/horror creatures. When the criminals are captured, they frequently complain that they would have gotten away with it if not for those meddling kids.


If you're the GM, I'd recommend that you re-read the Adventure Background section of the adventure. If you have the Anniversary Edition, the campaign synopsis is on page 6, and the summary of "Burnt Offerings" is on pp. 10-12.

If you're not the GM, I'd recommend that you talk with your GM rather than asking the Internet for spoilers! ;-)


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
Bellona wrote:


And Nualia basically hates Sandpoint and its people. She had an awful childhood there. One of the better non-map fan-made resources on the Burnt Offerings thread (Community Resources, I think) has a two-page hand-out which contains excerpts from Nualia's childhood/teen diary, which builds on Nualia's backstory. A party can find this either in Sandpoint, or among Nualia's stuff at Thistletop.

Yeah, I found one somewhere (not sure where, it was the last couple months of last year that I was gathering internet resources to start Rise). I had to add/edit a bit as I'm running this in my homebrew, but I think I ended with nine pages of journal entries. By the end of reading it, most of the players were like.."Well, she's bat-shit crazy, but I understand where she's coming from, and wtf, and eww...". I was pretty pleased that all the players were engrossed in in and passing the pages around the table. As all of my party were locals, I got to include lots of little elements from their own back stories into it as well.

Totally worth it.


The diary stuff really helped. (Although I did change some of the dates.)

My first group captured Nualia, and wanted to point out to the authorities that she was insane (as well as evil). Although my second group managed to kill her, certain members did feel very sorry about her situation and want to track down the responsible person(s). :)


no worries i am the DM!! haha

its just when you get the book and start reading about it and planning to run the adventure, everything is really abstract

i completely forgot about page 12 nuelia story LOL, i will really read it again more carefully this time

just to make sure i am not totally lost, if i am at page 35, catacomb of wrath, it is normal that my players are NOT aware of 2 points that you guys mentionned

1)Lamashtu has already guided her to Malfeshnekor, one of her servants from the Age of Thassilon

2)runewell of wrath underneath the city and the destruction of Sandpoint would power the runwell and grant Nualia an army of Sinspawns


1) they should have read the name Malfeshnekor in Tsuto's journal, iirc. but no details about him or his connection to the Runelords.
2) smart players with the right Traits and Knowledge skills that ask the right questions and have very high rolls can come to that conclusion after they find the runewell but personally, I think that is very unlikley and the AP assumes they don't.


excellent thanks so much!!


ok so the PC now are going to ask about nualia

the old townfolks will know about her right?

they will know she didnt have a nice childhood and she might have develop some kind of hate tower sandpoint?

Silver Crusade Contributor

They would definitely remember her, but I don't think they would suspect the hate. (I'll have to check.)


the people assume she's dead, they don't know she survived the fire. but yes, they remember her as the daughter of the cleric, the one touched by Desna.

Silver Crusade Contributor

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On top of that... I suspect they wouldn't remember her accurately.

The people of Sandpoint never really saw her as a person, like them. Their memories would probably be skewed towards remembering her beauty, and the little miracles they all believed in, and all sorts of other things about her being "god-touched". They wouldn't suspect the hate - in fact, I doubt they'd even believe that the miracle girl could hate them. And as far as they knew, she had a fine childhood.

Only the Varisian lad saw her as something else... which is how things went the way they did. She put all her faith in him, and he abandoned her. And her father was cruel and hurtful, and on the edge of blasphemy in how he treated her. And the people saw her as something else.

Looking in from the outside... no wonder she snapped.

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For an idea of what life must have been like for Nualia, go watch Phenomenon, starring John Travolta. It's not a great movie, but there's a scene where he starts demonstrating his abilities to people, and they all start clamoring for him to help them. This scene goes on for less than a minute, but it's clear that his character is overwhelmed by their demands for his supernatural assistance, some of which he can't provide for them.

Have you seen that scene yet? It's probably on YouTube somewhere. Good.

Now imagine that, non-stop, for the first twenty years of your life and you may have an inkling into why Nualia wants that side of her removed. For twenty years, everyone was taking from her - the people of Sandpoint wanted her to solve their problems, Father Tobyn wanted her to be a nun, and the Varisian rake wanted her body. All of them used her as a tool, and gave her nothing. At least with Lamashtu it's a two-way street - do this terrible thing for me, and I'll remove the spark of Heaven from you, and replace it with the Abyss.

How telling is that, the Mother of Monsters is the first person in Nualia's sad life that actually follows through on the promises made to her?

Silver Crusade Contributor

Nailed it. ^_^


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Misroi wrote:

For an idea of what life must have been like for Nualia, go watch Phenomenon, starring John Travolta. It's not a great movie, but there's a scene where he starts demonstrating his abilities to people, and they all start clamoring for him to help them. This scene goes on for less than a minute, but it's clear that his character is overwhelmed by their demands for his supernatural assistance, some of which he can't provide for them.

Have you seen that scene yet? It's probably on YouTube somewhere. Good.

Now imagine that, non-stop, for the first twenty years of your life and you may have an inkling into why Nualia wants that side of her removed. For twenty years, everyone was taking from her - the people of Sandpoint wanted her to solve their problems, Father Tobyn wanted her to be a nun, and the Varisian rake wanted her body. All of them used her as a tool, and gave her nothing. At least with Lamashtu it's a two-way street - do this terrible thing for me, and I'll remove the spark of Heaven from you, and replace it with the Abyss.

How telling is that, the Mother of Monsters is the first person in Nualia's sad life that actually follows through on the promises made to her?

This is certainly a valid interpretation of the narrative details provided in the AP but it's hardly the only one. Though my objections are primarily in the flavor, they may be useful to someone trying to work through presenting the AP.

Spoiler:

First off, Phenomenon is not a good comparison - in the movie Travolta's character has actual powers. Until well after she leaves town, Nualia does not. To suggest the people of Sandpoint continue to seriously pester her looking for something she has no history of actually providing is to suggest the people of Sandpoint are colossally stupid. Even more so when you recall there are plenty of clerics, oracles, druids, alchemists, wizards, etc. that have actual magical powers that are readily available and used to service the citizens of Sandpoint. Not saying some few in Sandpoint didn't react to her obvious celestial background with awkward expectations but to assume it was oppressive hounding may be a bit much.

Tobyn certainly comes off poorly as presented though at least some of that comes from Nualia's diary - which we might suspect has a certain bias. But lets recall the situation - Tobyn is confronted with an unexpected teenage pregnancy - many parents struggle in this situation without being awful parents - but worse, the pregnancy ends in an obviously monstrous failure and Nualia refuses to name the father. You don't have to possess a lot of ranks in Knowledge Religion to suspect the influence of Lamashtu. Trying to get Nualia more attached to another diety doesn't seem all that irrational of a parenting solution.

Nualia appears to have been a socially awkward and isolated teenage girl. That she fell into the arms of a teenage boy hardly seems surprising and while the boy may have been an absolute cad, he also might have simply been a boy who ran in fear of an unexpected outcome (You got the minister's daughter pregnant! What were you thinking?!?! Etc.) Let's recall he pays the ultimate price for this mistake.

Despite suggestions about Lamashtu's "follow through" let's be clear, she is fundamentally the source of the problem here. The corrupted pregnancy triggers everything else. All other events equal, if the child had been healthy, many things may have been much different. A struggling girl comes into her own via motherhood is not an uncommon story. Who knows how Nualia, Tobyn or even the father might have progressed with a healthy child in the picture?

Even with the failed childbirth, Karzoug's rising and the surging runewell of wrath were the last straw - transforming an otherwise peaceful artist into a serial killer and changing both Nualia and a local nobleman into murderers.

Nualia is a pivotal character in the AP. She is the first glimpse into how absolutely horrible Lamashtu and Karzoug are and what they represent. You can see the Lamashtu family model in full flower at the Graul homestead and both Jorgenfist and the fractured remnants of Xin Shalast reveal what Karzoug thinks about social structure and what should be expected should he return to power. Nualia signals how desperately Varisia is going to need heroes.


About the first paragraph in your spoiler, in my game:

Spoiler:
Nualia was a paladin. She could actually heal with touch (lay on hands), and she fell in disgrace when she became a demon worshipper and traded her Paladin levels for Antipaladin levels

Also, I made a bunch of changes in the story, specially around Tsuto and Nualia.

Spoiler:
I removed the varisian rake. Nualia and Tsuto were in love as teenagers. I did this also because a PC in my group, a witch, was in love with Tsuto as part of her background, and that's why she went into witchraft, trying to learn to make love potions from Madam Mvashti (unsuccesfully). She saw Nualia as a "competitor" for Tsuto's love

What's important about Nualia and Tsuto, is that Lonjiku discovered the (innocent, teenager love) flirting between them, and blackmailed Nualia with threats to tell it to Father Tobyas. It's Lonjiku who got laid with Nualia, and make her pregnant, but later forced Nualia to go to Hanna's to provoke an abortion. This is important, because another player in the group, a Tiefling Oni-Spawn Samurai, has a background as a samurai Bodyguard of Kaijistu's family. His father was a samurai of Rokugaru, Ameiko's grandfather, and he'll be now facing with the fact that his official Daimyo, Lonjiku, is a total a&%&!+%.

Later, Nualia found the catacombs of Wrath (Lonjiku used the smuggler's corridor to have their sexual intercourses), found the shard of wrath inside (I'm mixing Shattered Star and Rise of Runelords), became wrath-infused, and a demon worshipper, burned the church, with his father inside, and started the whole process for Burnt offerings

My PCs are now at the begining of The Glassworks, and are discovering the whole mess. I'm still debating myself about making Nualia pregnant again. This could be a strong moral dilema for some PCs, as killing her implies killing the baby. I'm still assessing if that would be too much for one of our characters (the players themselves wouldn't have a problem, we are used to mature content like this, but that character might have a real problem facing that decision)

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