Reign of Winter GM log - Spoilers!


Reign of Winter


Hey all,

I have just started running Reign of Winter for one of my groups. I have not found a lot of logs/journals/etc for this AP, and I found them immensely helpful in preparing for the Curse of The Crimson Throne game I am running.

Hopefully I will be able to keep this running and end up with a journal that goes beyond book 1 (where a lot of the journals I found end...).

I am planning on sticking pretty close to the plot of the book, but I have a number of changes already in mind. My hope will be to smooth out some of the abrupt transitions between books and keep things moving forward.

We had our first session this week. It was a short session, because a part of it was spent finishing up character sheets and talking over schedule/expectations etc.

We are playing with a 5-person party:

Fae - human sorcerer (arcane bloodline). A beggar, from a line of beggars spanning several generations. but somewhere in the family was a powerful arcane spellcaster that causes magical talent to appear every few generations. Each of these are born with a specific birthmark.

Cato - human gunslinger (musket master). Cato is a poor shepherd boy, who stumbled on a strange musket in the fields one day. no one else has seen such a weapon, but Cato quickly learned how to use it and how to make the things needed to fire it. He swears these designs were spoken to him by the gun, which he fears and worships like a deity. whether it really is a talking gun, or if the boy just has a knack is still to be seen.

Avid - Half-Orc cleric of Sarenrae. Avid is a half orc that tries very hard to blend in with human society. He has spent most of his life trying to hide his more orcish appearance and to learn to be refined in his speech and actions. But under the surface he still has a latent orc rage that comes out when it has been bottled up too long. One such event ended in the death of a classmate, and led to a period of travelling and seeking redemption.

Homer - human Bard. Homer is the old man of the group at 63. He has lived most of his adult life in Heldren, where he owned the local tavern until recently. He loves telling wild stories, and made the best cider around. But recently he has come on hard times, and is suffering greatly from depression because his daughter ran off with the son of Homer's best friend. After the boy poisoned his father. Now Homer seeks to leave it all behind and go back to his roots as an adventurer.

Zo'Lil - Aasimar Bloodrager (fire elemental bloodline). Zo'lil is unusualfor her kind. Instead of a mix of human and celestial, Zo'lil has celestial and fey blood. This heritage leads her to be somewhat detached and capricious, often making rash decisions without fully considering their consequences. She is not fully good and kind, but is also not evil. She is prone to bursts of rage, combined with fire. She has the least tie to Heldren and is just passing through on a Walkabout to find her place in the world.

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These 5 strangers are all in the tavern, hearing some of the odd rumors of cold weather, strange animal sightings, and the passing caravan of Lady Argantea. Suddenly, a heavily injured man stumbles through the door, yelling for help.

After rendering some aid and getting the man something warm to eat, the group talks ot the man enough to learn that his name is Yulin, and that he is the only survivor of an attack on Lady Argentea's caravan. He is somewhat incoherent, talking about the winter-touched, and wondering how they followed him so far south and what is happening to the world.

Avid is able to get him to slow down and answer a few questions, which leads the party to understand that the Lady has been kidnapped and her guards killed. This was done by a band of a dozen men plus an unknown number of winter sprites with ice in their hearts (and we got our first player saying "like in Frozen!" just wait…. Haha). Yulin gives his cold iron sword to Zo'lil to help aid in rescuing his Lady.

When the group goes to investigate, they find several carriages wrecked in the road, with bodies everywhere. One of them has been frozen into a statue and is missing his arm. Homer finds the arm and a masterwork longsowrd in its grip.

Fae hears some noise coming from one of the carriages, and decides to investigate. He doesn't listen to Avid who is concerned about a trap and just pops the door open. 2 zombies are inside, but are quickly killed by Zo'lil and Avid.

A large number of foot prints very clearly lead into the forest, so the group decides to follow. They find a chest on the side of the road, but are much more cautious this time and see the tripwire. At this point, they realize none of them has a clue how to disable a trap, so they throw stuff at the rope until it triggers. They see an empty chest, but figure out pretty quickly that the treasure is underneath. They find a weapon cache of all of the looted caravan arms and armor.

At this point, they realize it will be dangerous to go forward in the snow, and backtrack to get some cold weather gear, sell off the weapons, and check in on Yulin. Avid spends his magic for the day healing Yulin, and the party asks him to come along. He is still hurt from his frostbite, but his desire to see the Lady Argantea safe leads him to come along despite the pain.

The group is ambushed by an arctic tatzlewyrm, which does a lot of damage to zo'lil, but is driven off by a fear spell from Avid.

Further down the path, Fae notices some odd fetishes hanging from trees, which turn out to be crows skewered by tiny little arrows. They heard voices speaking from all sides and dancing lights all around. Fae and Zo'lil both understood Sylvan and attempted to talk to the sprites. They took a guess and told the sprites that they were here to help drive out the winter-touched, which of course was the wrong side to say they were on, and the sprites attacked.

The battle took quite a few rounds as the sprites were difficult to hit, but they also didn't do much damage and were eventually beaten. The final blow was caused by a huge hit from Cato's musket that obliterated one of the fey.

Shortly after this battle, they saw hoofprints crossing over the human prints they had been following. A good knowledge role from Cato identified them as stag prints. There was some debate as to whether it was worth diverting from their course to find a stag, but the vote swung towards checking it out. They found the white stag, and amazingly it could talk!

They spent a bit of time talking to the stag who answered very few of their questions and tried to get some answers of its own about why these people were wandering the woods. The party stayed respectful and answered everything that was asked of them. They managed to glean the fact that the bandits had gone to the Ranger lodge further in the woods. The party and stag parted ways with a bow. Now I have to decide if the stag will make another appearance later, or just raise an alarm and be done…

The party headed towards to lodge, picking back up on the bandit trail. Before they could get to the lodge, a river stood in their way. There was a snowman with a sign on its neck that had a spell rigged to warn off intruders that approached. The party decided to back track and try crossing at a different point. The ice here was weaker, however and Yulin fell through the ice. Several others quickly got him some rope and hauled him out, but two ice elementals popped up to attack them.

The elementals were a surprisingly quick fight. Zo'lil quickly took one of them down with a fire-infused longsword hit, and then Yulin rolled a massive crit that destroyed the second one with almost maximum damage.

At this point the small bits of damage were adding up, and spells were running low. The party decided to retreat for the night and push back in the morning. Also time was running late, so we ended the session here. Next week this new party will get to the lodge and try to locate the kidnapped Lady!


For our second session of Reign of Winter, we were going to be down 2 players. Both Avid and Zo'lil were out for real life reasons. I was willing to run a game as long as there were at least 3 people present, so we gave it a go.

I was a bit worried about how deadly this one might be with only 3 players, especially seeing the number of people who have obituaries from the Sentinal Lodge.

Session 2:

I went ahead and statted out Yulin who would be going with them. I used the stats for a Caravan Guard from the NPC codex, but swapped some feats out. As a 2nd level fighter he had a good bit of punch, but with the con drain from frostbite he only had 12 HP.

With a party consisting of a gunslinger, sorcerer and bard, the players went about this session very cautiously, which is rare for them.

On the way to the lodge, they spotted a campfire with 3 bandits. They discussed for a while, and eventually came up with a plan to lure one into the woods to get some information. They made a decent plan and the dice were with them. Most of the group hid deeper in the woods, while the bard used Message to whisper to one bandit and convince him he was hearing the voice of Shelyn who was asking him to come into the woods to receive a personal quest. The bandit rolled low on sense motive, so he excused himself and went into the forest.

Down the trail a ways, he stepped in a bear trap and then was hit by a magic missile and went unconcious. They tied him up, dragged him off and questioned him a bit. They learned that the bandits did indeed have Lady Argantea, and that it was done under orders from the Fay. They also learned that the bandits were lead by a necromancer named Rohkar.

They went back and made quick work of the last 2 sentries, even though they were on alert after one of their guys wandered off.

Approaching the lodge, they party spotted the tripwire and avoided the crossbow trap. They sent Homer the Bard in to peek in a few windows, which let them see both bedrooms and the main room without being seen. When he looked in the kitchen, Ten-Penny spotted him and raised the alarm.

The bandits in the main room came running out the front door, into the line of fire of the party's gunline. 2 light crossbows, a musket and a heavy crossbow (along with a bear trap just off of the porch) killed them off quite fast. Yulin charged in and finished the last one with his longsword.

At this point, Ten-Penny and 4 weakened, sick bandits came out to help. There was a bit of a bottleneck and shots were traded back and forth. Ten-Penny got in a flank on Yulin and dropped him with a sneak attack, leaving him at -5 hp. This panicked the rest of the group who were scared to get in melee with their one tank down. They did a firing retreat towards the forest. The retreat was slowed down when Cato had to stop and reload his musket.

Luckily the dice smiled on Cato this session. He rolled a critical that blew one bandit away, then the very next round used fast reload plus an alchemical cartirdge to fire in back-to-back rounds, landing ANOTHER critical, this time on Ten-Penny. 4d12 is a lot of damage for a low-level combat, and he ended up doing 37 damage, instantly killing off the half-orc thief. Guess they'll never know how helpful she could have been!

After finishing the bandits, they walked into the lodge and started looting. They were unable to get into Rohkar's locker or the cellar (someone In this party really needs to take some levels in Disable Device!). Soon, a frozen skeleton came down the stairs. And died on a bear trap at the bottom of the steps. Rohkar yelled some threats down the stairs, the party tried to intimidate him by lying and saying that they were sent by the winter-touched. Unfortunately they tipped their hand when they guessed Izoze's gender wrong, and Rohkar tried to trap them.

He went invisible and walked around them while they were trying to set up an ambush at the bottom of the stairs and force him to come down to them. He walked right past them and into the yard, where he raised up 4 bandits (including the headless Ten-Penny). He came back in with his unit of undead and had the second frozen skeleton join from upstairs.

The fight was surprisingly short as the dice landed in the party's favor. The zombies and skeleton were handled quickly, and Rohkar didn't have a lot of punch without them. He got up his shadow double from the trickery domain, but it didn't cancel a single attack. He got a bit of damage off on to Cato, but not enough to bring him to 0. the party dropped him to 2 HP and he surrendered.

They tied and gagged him, took his gear and looted the rest of the house. They are going to interrogate him to start off the next session. They didn't notice as he palmed his holy symbol, so I don't think they have any chance of figuring out his actual class. The players are all pretty new, and wouldn't likely piece together the abilities and spells he used during the combat.

The party found lady Argantea and let her out. She had a little more information to give them, but not much that hadn't already been discovered. They found the map in the planning room and copied it down. They also found a captive winter-touched sprite, but were unconvinced that it would be a good idea to let it out. They haven't decided yet what to do with it. Fae and Homer want to see what they can learn from it, Cato thinks that keeping a fairy around is likely a terrible idea.

The group brought Lady Argantea and Rohkar back to town. Yulin gave them some gold, and took his leave to escort his Lady on the remainder of their journey.

At the end of this week's session the party leveled up (I use milestone advancement, so even the people who aren't there on a given week will continue to advance with the group). Next week they will question Rohkar and hopefully push on towards the winter portal!

The group handled this session really well considering they were short 2 players. Some creativity and a really good ranged attack group really made quick work of what could have been a dangerous scenario. The only one to go negative this time around was Yulin.


This week, once again we were down to 3 of 5 players. This time we had Zo'lil, Fae, and Cato. Hopefully Avid is still in this campaign, I'm a little worried he might be flaking out on us. Oh well, it happens.

This week we made a huge amount of progress, partyl because the lack of real role play options and partly because a few combats were circumvented.

session 3:

The session started with an interrogation of Rohkar who was tied up and poisoned last week.

He gave them what information he could, while still trying to make himself look to be the victim. He hid his nature as a cleric, and told a story of being coerced into captureing Lady Argantea. He didn't know much about the plans of the Fey, but knew who the two leaders were, and gave what info he could.

Sadly for Rohkar, it wasn't enough to save his life, and he was killed at the end of the conversation….

The party had a brief fight with Izoze as they tried to cross the ravine to head to the winter portal. They scared her off, but couldn't quite finish her off due to her fast healing. They wanted to follow her, but following a flying creature is tough.

They killed the 3 skeletons pretty quick, then skipped the fight with the frost firs which they left in peace. They found the hunter's body and were able to locate his traps. I moved the weasel to this point, and they tracked it following a blood trail. In the end they managed to not fight it. They instead gave it some food and ran away.

Next they found the guardian doll's house which was quite a crazy encounter. Zo'lil's player hates dolls. She thought this was an incredibly creepy setup. Everything about this doll was raising her hackles. It was great.

They asked some very good questions of the little girl's image, and found out both her name and her mother's name, so that will be fun in book 2.

After making it through the ice blocks, Zo'lil wasn't going to give the creepy doll the chance to follow them. After a bit of dancing lights and talking, Zo'lil had enough and attacked the doll.

This fight was a mess. Cato managed 3 (yes, 3!!) misfires in one combat. That's 6 rounds without firing a shot, plus spending 3 grit points on clearing his musket.

Fae got paralyzed for most of the combat. Zo'lil had to do all the work, and eventually finished the thing off, thanks to bloodrage. It was still a much longer combatthan it should have been. At the end, they retreated to the lodge to sleep it off.

The next day they made it all the way to the winter portal. I didn't make them fight a random encounter, but they saw some wolves and some sgns of larger predators following them.

At the portal, I went a bit leient on the environmental rules, which are quite hard for my group of entirely new players. I cut their visibility to 15 feet, but didn't make them slow down as much as they should have.

It was still a very tough fight. The atomie oracle caused a lot of trouble with hit and run attacks. He also deafened both Cato and Fae. Teb Knotten came very close to knocking out Zo'lil, which could have led to a TPK. Her bloodrage kept her in the fight long enough to finish him off. Luckily, she is a fire elemental bloodrager, so Teb wasn't nearly as hard to cut down as he could have been.

After collecting the loot from his cave, they moved to check out the portal. A black rider came stumbling out and fell from his horse into the snow. I ended the session here, and will have them all level up for the next session!

It was a fun session, but at least one of the players was annoyed at how there didn't seem to be a very clear goal for this section, or a good reason why they should care about the winter weather enough to go tromping off after some fairies.

Hopefully I can draw them back in with some (highly edited and trimmed down) exposition from Black Midnight next week.


After a brief delay due to real life health problems In the family, we got back into this campaign! This week we again had 3 players, Zo'Lil, Fae (who changed his character name to Nemo this week, as it became really apparent that having a character named "Fae" in a fey heavy campaign was going to be a pain), and Homer.

Session 4:

The session began with the Black Rider having just fallen off of his horse at the feet of the party. He called out to them and they came over to speak with him at length.

I won't go over the whole conversation, as it went pretty much by the book. They tried to help him by giving him healing potions, he told them it was too late for him, as he had been attacked by a white witch who had tried to turn him into a winter-touched fey with a shard of ice. If he lived, it would eventually work into his heart and give Elvanna control of one of the riders.

He laid out the situation, with Baba Yaga missing, Elvanna tring to spread eternal winter, the hut being captured, and the plan to fall back to Artrosia.

I did away with the Geas, 'cause I think it's a heavy-handed solution and I'm playing with a very new group of players who would not like it very much I think. They have had trouble RP'ing much simpler mind control effects, so I decided to just let this be a naturally railroady AP instead of forcing it like that.

I also significantly changed the Mantle. I made it an actual item. My group is using a higher than recommended point buy already, so adding more to their stats didn't seem like a great idea. Instead I made the mantle a magic item that grants Darkvision (seemed suitable for a midnight fey), and allows them to take on the appearance of the black rider once per day. Taking his appearance doesn't grant any powers, but does show to anyone they are talking to that they are the black rider now. For better or worse!

After the long conversation it was through the portal! And into a fight with a giant mantis. They were intimidated by the large size, but it died very fast to a raging elemental strike from Zo'Lil.

The woman fighting the praying mantis thanked them for their help, and asked how foreigners dressed for summetime arrived in this part of the forest. Nemo indignately pointed to the cold weather gearthey were wearing, and Nadya just laughed and said clothes like that wouldn't last a night in Irrisin.

During the conversation, the party quickly realized this woman was the mother of the soul that had inhabited the creepy doll they destroyed last time. They debated how to tell her the news, but held it to themselves for now, and accepted Nadya's offer of hospitality in Waldsby.

It was too late in the day to go immediately, and the group set up camp. Not long into the evening, a female fey bard strolled by, and asked to share their fire in exchange for songs. The party accepted, though Nadya was very hesitant. The party asked her why and she said she didn't trust the fey.

The party liked the bard, Mierul, well enough and enjoyed having her join them. Mierul asked a lot of questions, and again the party thought it was strange that people noticed so easily that they weren't from around here.

Homer especially took to the fey woman, and the two bards played many songs together, then retired to Homer's tent to make more music…

In the morning, Mierul was gone, and the party continued to Waldsby. Along the way they were attacked by ravens. The birds didn't do much damage, but Nemo was blinded! For 4 days!

Once in Waldsby, the group wandered around and checked out the little village. The welcome was not very warm, but the party barely noticed when they were too busy looking at the similarities between this town and Heldren.

They found themselves in the tavern where they were told they should leave town immediately… and it almost worked. Both Nemo and Zo'Lil failed their saves against suggestion, but luckily Homer saw what was happening and stepped in with a song that snapped them out of it. They were angry but didn't come to blows and just left the tavern, planning to leave the next day.

In Nadya's house that night, the party finally sat her down for some hard news. It took a couple tries, but they eventually got out the fact that her daughter was nto being held captive in the Pale Tower, but was dead, and her soul captured and used for a guardian doll.

Nadya was stunned into silence, but someone else didn't take the news quietly. Suddenly dishes were flying off of the shelves and a tiny voice cried out in agony. Nadya revealed the little house elf that lived with the family and who had a great fondness for the little girl. He was furious and swore revenge on the witch that did this to his best friend. He asked the party to please smash the soul gem and release Thora to the afterlife so she couldn't be used in any more dolls.

Nadya spent the night gathering supplies, ready to bring the fight to Nazhema in the Pale Tower and get her revenge for the fate of her daughter.

Unfortunately before they could set out, soldiers arrived in town, going door to door and looking for travellers matching descriptions of the party! 3 of them came to Nadya's door, and after threatening her son got into a fight with the party. The soldiers were quickly dispatched, and the group plus Nadya left town as fast as possible.

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