Mixing Rivers Run Red with Down the Blighted Path (spoilers)

[Sunderstone]

At the moment, I'm compiling ideas for my new campaign which will be either Kingmaker or Carrion Crown. My group has been reading the Player's Guides to these campaigns and will decide between the two by the end of the week.

In between making notes, I happened to read through some of the newer modules and loved "Down the Blighted Path" by Monica Marlowe. It seems like the perfect add-on for Kingmaker with more Fey based antagonists and the one thing the campaign was missing.... a Darklands trek.

Behind the scenes...
1) Zohir and Hargulka are both agents of Nyrissa involved in a two-pronged assault on the Southern Greenbelt. The Dancing Lady is another of Zohir's minions and is awaiting her arrival. Unknown to Zohir, she secretly reports directly to Nyrissa hoping for an elevated position of power later.

2) The Dwarven outpost (area R) was overrun by Hargulka and his Trolls, forcing the remaining survivors to split into two groups. One group trying to return to Davarn for reinforcements, the other group fled to the old elven tower led by Erna Stoneheart (area G), to seek help from the new surface kingdom they have heard rumors about.
The dwarves managed to send a message to Jubilost that they would be temporarily holed up at the old elven tower until soldiers from Davarn were dispatched. The dwarves that fled to the tower had no idea that it was occupied by the Dancing Lady and her minions. They also have no knowledge of any evil fey let alone Nyrissa or her plans for the region. Narthropple arrived too late, his Dwarven friends were killed to the last and he was the only survivor of his expedition trying to bring relief supplies.

Area specific changes.....
Area C. The Narthropple Expedition's only survivor Jubilost is looking to recruit help from the fledgling kingdom's assistance on behalf of his trade partners, the Dwarves of the far off Darklands town of Davarn. Jubilost Narthropple has been a long time surface contact for Davarn.
Davarn will become a permanent ally of the kingdom if the PCs liberate their outpost from Hargulka and destroy Zohir and her agents/recover Firebrand etc.

Area G. This will be the location of the Darklands entrance. The dwarves are supposed to be temporarily at the abandoned elven keep (instead of their trading outpost which is currently in the hands of Hargulka and his trolls) currently controlled by Zohir's forces led by the Dancing Lady. Furthermore, Rigg Gargadilly is the brother of Vashana the Swift (in Blighted Path). Drop the Insanity trap in G7 and possibly replace it with some Bone Legion warriors sent by Sarxa/Zohir.

Alterations to the Down the Blighted Path module.....
Skip the whole festival and Davarn proper. The adventure begins when the PCs defeat the Dancing Lady and clear the old elven tower ruins.

They come across the body of Erna Stoneheart, and find a journal on her. The journal explains that the Bone Legion dwarves were originally the barebone guard detachment left at the Redoubt as it was a place of honor. It further details her plans to ask the fledgling kingdom for assistance until forces from Davarn could be sent for. The journal also contains a rough map leading through the Darklands to the redoubt.

This adventure fits perfectly with RRR with the exception of XP advancement of course, but I'll probably go to the Slow XP track during the blend. Same with Varnhold/Fellnight.
Hope someone else finds this appealing too. :)

[aiglos]

If you are going to go Slow XP for parts 2 & 3, why not use slow XP for part 1 as well, and substitute Falcons Hollow for Oleg's Trading Post. This will make the campaign far more political, as the Lumbar Consortium can be a Surtova or Garess affiliate, and so the PC's kingdom will be stuck between Hargulka and the Lumbar Consortium.

I would place the Droskar Mine in the same hex as the potential gold mine, and the tomb of the Azlanti noble can be on Candlemere. All the encounters in the forest of Dark Moon can be in the Narlmarches. The only change to Falcons Hollow would be to remove the river, and perhaps place Olegs in the south east corner, as a small piece of good independance in the Hollow. You could even have the Lumbar Consortium sponsoring the Stag Lords bandits as a way of keeping other loggers and settlers away from their expansion into the Narlmarches.

[Sunderstone]

Aiglos, those are awesome suggestions. I might use all of it depending on how crowded it gets in the Greenbelt. I don't want to overdo the amount of interested parties in the area.
In my outline I already have Hargulka and Zothir in the south along with the Scythe Tree as an agent of Rhoswen from Realm of the Fellnight Queen which is mixed into Varnhold Vanishing. I'm upping the Fey involvement with multiple subplots between proxies of Nyrissa with their own agendas so they basically do trust each other.
As for the human factions, The Stag Lord and his flunkies are already involved (even if they belong to Nyrissa). Same for Irovetti and Pitax, Lady Quintessa and Daggermark over in Fort Drelev, etc.
Old Bedame is a special story imc. I'm having her real name as Bedilia Adrissant, little sister to a certain gentleman named Adivion. Also with genius level intellect who attended schools in Ustalav becoming an expert on Fey and planar travel. Her experiments left her as a hag and she has all but forgotten who she used to be. Bokken is her twin. My plan is for the group to discover her real name triggering some recall in her along with bouts of sanity and coherent conversations. She could be valuable as a sage of the First World etc.
She is mostly insane though and will be an avid baker of cakes and pies made from a secret ingredient... Fey creatures she kills mercilessly during the recent increase of Fey activity in the area. The idea of more neighbors irks her.

I do like the idea of using Falcon's Hollow in place of Oleg's outpost. Oleg's was always a bit too small for my liking. A tiny hamlet with another trader or two was in the cards.

[aiglos]

Glad you like them!

One thing to remember is that those 12 mile hexes are enormous. You could fit the whole of Paris into Oleg's hex with room to spare! The whole of London inside the M25 would fit into five hexes roughly.

I would actually place Falcons Hollow one hex to the west, closer to the Narlmarches, with a road joining the South Rostland Road at Olegs. If you give Falcons Hollow a Lumberyard (Ultimate Rulership, Legendary Games) and control over the nearest three forested Narlmarches hexes, that puts a small power to the north of the PC's kingdom at the start of Books 2. The PC's will know it is evil, but I would suggest that the Lumber Consortium will not expand any further until the PC's kingdom looks like a threat, ie they look like they are going to gobble up the rest of the Narlmarches or get too close to the Lumbar Consortium area.If you use Venture Capital, I would suggest using the offer of large amounts of BP from the Lumbar Consortium so that the PC's kingdom avoids the Narlmarches. Having the Lumbar Consortium be a Surtova affiliate brings the Brevoy problems closer to home, particularly if the PC's kingdom threatens Falcons Hollow. Of course the Lumbar Consortium hates Olegs, because it brings travellers and adventurers into an area it wants to dominate and effectively destroy. Having the bandits putting pressure on Oleg or even trying to destroy his place would all be part of a Consortium plan for the area. You could even have vague references to this found in the Stag Lords Fort.

It has always struck me that the Stolen Lands is supposed to be a dangerous area and yet not much in Book 1 looks that dangerous for four 20 point buy PC's. Having two Kobold tribes would actually make the Kobold threat that much more real, particularly if you forshadow it well. Have the PC's find, on one of their first forays out of Olegs, the results of small skirmish between the two Kobold tribes, a few corpses, except that the Sootscales have come off worst. You could even have the Radish Patch be the site of another skirmish between the two tribes. This makes the Kobolds a real problem. It will also make how the PC's deal with the Sootscales an iinteresting roleplaying problem.

If you integrate all the Falcons Hollow stuff and Down the Blighted Path into the AP, it will not only make the Stolen Lands that much more dangerous but also bring home that it has significant past history and that it hasn't always been so uncivilised. It also brings the Dwarf presence significantly into the area. I could never understand what the Dwarves were doing really at Hargulkas stronghold!

I would make Hargulkas stronghold the entrance to the Darklands, otherwise there seems to be no good reason for the trading post being there otherwise. The rest of the dwarves could have gone to Area G because it is the only other significant landmark and source of shelter in the area.

Hope this gives you further ideas, Sunderstone!

[Sunderstone]

Hargulka's area is another darklands entrance as well as the old elven tower. I will probably add a couple of other entrances throughout the other volumes of the AP. Davarn is a subterranean city, and I am ramping up the Dwarven presence. Irovetti has his humanoid allies, why shouldn't the PCs get some as well.
As for the Sootscales, they are primarily a refugee tribe. At one point I was going to add some Mike Shel's Dragon's Demand into the campaign scattered through the first half of KM. The Sootscales fled to the Greenbelt to escape Aeteperax and his Grioths when they realized they might end up on the menu. Leaderless, they fell right into Tartuk's hands, etc.

I probably will go Kingdom in the background tbh, my group will be meeting infrequently but for marathon sessions over whole weekends. I'll see if they want to play the minigame.

[G.ame O.perational D.irector]

I've used falcons hollow and the crown of the kobold king in tandem with it and it worked wonderfully my players never knew what hit em and the delving into the same dungeon time and time again made them want to burn me at the stake