Happy Anniversary, Korvosa!

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

The Founding Festival is upon us, and what better way to celebrate the city of Korvosa than with a preview of the updated Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path that made it (in)famous?

As with the hardcover edition of Rise of the Runelords a few years ago, one exciting element of revising Curse of the Crimson Throne was the opportunity to look through all the comments people posted on our messageboards over the years. Feedback, observations, obituaries for dead PCs, obituaries for dead villains, complaints, misunderstandings, corrections, and so much more awaited discovery as I made my way through all those posts in the early days of work on the revision project. But one thing stood out over and above everything else—folks had fallen in love with the city of Korvosa so much that they hated leaving it!

While the journey into the Cinderlands and the exploration of a certain infamous castle very much remain integral elements of Curse of the Crimson Throne's hardcover revision, I took to heart the complaints folks had about leaving Korvosa behind for two adventures. The fact that this occurred after your player characters likely gain access to fast travel spells like teleport, wind walk, shadow walk, word of recall, transport via plants, and so much more only further complicated the issue. After spending half an Adventure Path defending a city, why would heroes abandon it when returning is often just a spell away?

There's all sorts of tiny new additions to the campaign, the single largest addition to Curse of the Crimson Throne takes place between books 4 and 5. I won't go into great detail about what this addition consists of, but it DOES involve a return to Korvosa to take care of two particularly vexing groups that your PCs will grow to love hating during the campaign. Expect to encounter some familiar faces, some brand new foes, and at least one established Korvosan NPC who may or may not have a brand new secret (and a lot of brand new powers) to be surprised by!

Illustrations by Miguel Regodón Harkness, Bryan Sola, and William O’Brien

And while showing you illustrations of some of the foes your characters will meet in this new section will spoil those surprises... I can't NOT show off some of the new art from the new book! See if you can recognize some of the new looks for old friends and enemies!

James Jacobs
Creative Director