Protectors of Golarion (Wrath of the Righteous AP)

Game Master Sensen

She could've if she wanted to, but that wasn't necessary. If she did, I'll try to make things happen to suit the dedication. It'll probably be something small, but...

Color coding implemented. Red is used. Let me know if you would like your color changed to someone else. I tried to choose a color that was not painful to the eyes for everyone.

Elyda did use some of the holy water for the cleansing. :)

Sorry about not revealing stuff earlier, Thesius, but I honestly missed your roll for the information about the area, and only just saw it. I thought it might be an interesting chance to fill in some details about the local culture of the forgotten children, and help Thesius continue his archeological studies, so to speak.

How's everyone doing? It's been a couple days since we've gotten posts. I hope everyone's doing well, but I do want to try to keep at least 1 post/day.

Apologies. For some reason I thought I had posted yesterday. Turns out it was the day before. I'll have another post up today and I do appreciate the architecture/history stuff for my character. Thank you.

Sorry, I still wasn't feeling very well yesterday. Plus I had unexpected paperwork come in that required me to dig through years of files. >.< Fun times.

Oof. My sympathies, Merixia.

So, like a week later, I have just now realized that as a tiefling with no special Pass For Human trait, Merixia's creature type is actually outsider (native), not humanoid, and enlarge person shouldn't have worked on her at all. What's more, it won't work on Elyda either. And Verene should have known that. Sorry, that's a big mistake on my part.

Oh, shoot, you're right. I totally forgot that myself.

Let's say it's lingering magical influence of Terendelev, assuming it was her who saved us :)

Whoops, I should have caught that too! Guess Thesius gets the enlarge person from now on.

I say we enlarge myself and give me a greatsword, just so the enemy shoots me first while our real threats close the distance :P

Re: using the scale twice on two different people, I think Worldwound GM said here when we were discussing the align weapon scale that Elyda and Merixia could share the power within the same day. But to be fair, we haven't tried that out yet, or tried to have two casts of the scale-magic up at the same time. So, Verene's magic-saving idea might not work. Up to the GM.

Also, just knotting the rope and having the wall as well would probably be fine, but I got the impression that Aravashnial and Anevia would need more help than that, and having them levitate skips the possibility of having them fall and get reinjured. Even on the other side, and even if they somehow fell or were pushed, if they're levitating they can't fall. :)

You can use the scale to cast levitate, so to speak, with the cloud-walking bonus (that it gives concealment to those below the target), so... I don't see why you couldn't use it on multiple targets. And yes to both the question about Aravashnial's spellcasting and to the idea that levitating them would be easily the safest option.

EDIT: Do remember that Lann and his fellows are rather concerned about Neathholm. And they are actually rather good at stealth! So they're not being too reckless. I mean, they're still being reckless, but...

I’ll post tonight (my time) as it’s been a very busy day and I’m tired. Sorry for the hold up.

At the moment, it looks like Horgus, Merixia, Thesius, Verene, and Elliot are all going down into the chasm to climb back out, with one of them (Thesius, it looks like) climbing out on the other end with a knotted rope.

Aravashnial and Anevia are using the Cloudwalking Scale and maneuvering themselves along one of the walls - probably the same one that Elyda is using, and Elyda herself is clambering along the edges.

Is that correct? I'll give it until tomorrow to get answers, but then I'll move us onwards.

Only adjustment I think would be having Anevia undo the rope prior to them moving out once those going down have made it safely to the floor. They can use the rope to help guide them and then Thesius can make his ascent on the other side if they feel it necessary to tie the rope off or toss it up to Elyda if she is already there.

Sounds right - Thesius won't have to make the climb back up without the rope, if Elyda and Anevia and Aravashnial are all up there already, yes?

Sounds right. If Elyda can reach the other side before those in the pit, then she can help her companions get out of the pit with the rope (by either securing the rope tossed up by Thesius so they can climb out, or, pulling them up by the rope?).

Alright, I'll get a post up early tomorrow morning. (My time. So 10 or so hours from now.)

Just occurred to me that Verene is under medium encumbrance, so those checks are at an additional -3. Hopefully, with the rope it shouldn't matter.

Yeah, with the ropes she'll be fine. Just.

If Verene asks, Merixia will be happy to take some of the load. That goes for Elyda too. But she doesn't want to embarrass either one by offering and implying that they can't handle it.

Verene will definitely seek Merixia out the next time we have a rest and give her the masterwork backpack / ask her to carry the things putting her over a light load. She just doesn't want to hold the group up right now with repacking two packs and shifting everything around. (It should still work out to the same or a little more carrying capacity for Merixia, even, since the masterwork pack adds ten pounds to her light load limit but only four to Verene's.)

"For the nonce" is an archaic idiom meaning "for the time being." I know the last word is a pretty nasty slur, though.

Thanks for clarifying as I was unsure of the meaning in this situation...

Yes, I should really have clarified it in the post, but I forgot. So I'm glad you reminded me - it's not the sort of thing that I'd want to call anyone, even in game. Or perhaps, especially in game.

*ominous music intensifies*

Those of you who are using light armor may want to take their masterwork chain shirts, while spiked gauntlets are... acceptable weapons, at best.

Shoutout to Kingmaker for that example! Anyone else blown away by the apparent callousness and evil of Pharasma's (a nominally Neutral god) actions there? :)

I'm not sure I get the reference specifically enough to comment, though I will say that the Kingmaker video game does a few gods injustices - Shelyn smacking Valerie with a scar for rejecting an obsessed stalker in a reasonably passionate display of anger, for instance.

Not that APs are immune to that either, but... well, spoilers.

I actually haven't played enough Kingmaker to be familiar with the reference. Pharasma definitely strikes me as the kind of deity who doesn't really care what goes on in the Material Plane unless it has to do with undeath, though.

Verene has a good point, but Merixia is more than slightly biased here.

Oh, in the game, Pharasma curses a barrister's wife with infertility because her husband defended a necromancer in court. You meet her and her husband as side characters in a quest where you're following the trail of a (quite evil) Lamashtu cultist you incorrectly think is causing monsters to appear in your kingdom. The cultist has promised that woman and several others also struggling with similar situations that her goddess will cure them and allow them to deliver healthy babies. And indeed, if you let her complete her (non-human sacrifice!) ritual, the promise comes true... but the price is that the children are murderers, or otherwise monstrous, etc.

I did think the Valerie sidequest depicted Shelyn in an unfairly negative light, because that "paladin" who attacks you clearly should have fallen long ago, and more importantly, it seems like all of the other Shelyn-servants agree with this clearly evil proposition that Valerie owes them something. But it's also clearly the case that even outside of that game, in Golarion canon, sometimes Neutral or Good gods do terribly evil things (Nethys, Sarenrae...) and worshipers of good gods can do evil things without their gods smacking them down (e.g. Cult of the Dawnflower, the Iomedaean Burners, etc.). And I don't know, the Lamashtu-cultist quest may be unfair to Pharasma, but that sort of thing does, I think, go a long way toward explaining people who still do turn to demon-worship in a setting where the good gods explicitly exist and do things in the mortal world and do talk to people... just not to everyone.

And yep, I wouldn't expect Merixia to agree. She faced extreme hardship and still chose right, even when the easy path would have been giving in to her anger, after all. :)

That's not even getting into how jerkish Aroden was, and he wasn't evil, either (though I think he probably tended more towards it than he did towards good).

That said, I think that that particular quest represents Pharasma unfairly, in that... it's petty. I could buy a priest of hers doing it, but the goddess herself? No way. She's too distant from Golarion to bother doing that.

Long, taxing day and my head isn’t in the right place (due to exhaustion) to post. I’ll make a posting in my morning. Apologies.

Decided to reference Ember from the game adaptation of WOTR, partly because Kingmaker was already discussed above, also because it's part of the inspiration for Elliot's backstory.

I'm not entirely sure how Hulrun as the head of the inquisition is supposed to be in this AP as written, though I remember reading the player's guide in that he was very over-zealous and that this description didn't contradict that story. Though it's true that perhaps there were some unknown circumstances to it I'm currently unaware of.

However... the in-game adaptation of him is someone I just can't symphathize with, even if I try to go into the mindset of a 'harder' lawful good character. You get dialogue options with him that directly confirm he burns innocent victims, heavily implied without trial or investigation, and that he has zero quelms or remorse about this, for the reason of that he doesn't want to take any chances whatsoever.

He also ignores a warning about the coming attack from a supposed friendly party, ignores it, then when said party attempts to intervene in a defense weakness, he brands them heretics. And when demonic attack happens regardless, he wastes time trying to track down and kill these informants who by any reasonable logic are allies.

And at the same time, instead of fighting back against demonic invasion on the surface, he stands Idly by one of the rifts in the grounds just in case more of them come out of the hole, and has to be convinced by someone wielding an artefact to head back into the city proper and maybe save whatever citizens remain in the city literally burning around him.

...Among other things. I suppose he has meme-status in the Discord for a reason :') Imho, he's the personification of a character so far down the deep end of self-righteousness and tunnel vision that I believe he's unaware he's arguably become equally evil and dangerous to the people of Kenabres than the things he claims to fight.

I know literally nothing about Hulrun except what was in the first post about him and that he leads the Burners/Inquisition from the short story "Certainty," and that was enough to convince me that in actual morality terms, he is Lawful Evil and I will die on this hill. You don't knowingly, unnecessarily inflict a torturous death on a bunch of innocent civilians (to say nothing of the cats), for any reason, and stay Good or even Neutral. Slippery slope, and all that.

Also I hope that wasn't too presumptuous in the comment about Elliot's fears. He may not talk about his nightmares, but it has seemed clear even just in the gameplay thread so far that fear and doubt about his own worthiness are pivotal to his character.

Yes, canonically Hulrun is Lawful Neutral, but I am personally baffled as to how he hasn't fallen out of Iomedae's favor. At the moment, the only reason I haven't decided that he has fallen is because I don't know how I'd handle it under these circumstances.

In Owlcat's game, I don't know aught about him, but I do know that there's a fair number of changes to the default AP, and I'm still debating on which I'll follow, if any.

I haven’t played the Owlcat WotR game either. But just from what little I know by reading the Player’s Guide, I agree that Hulrun probably fell a long time ago and someone else is granting his prayers. Merixia is still pretty new to Kenabres and hasn’t interacted with him much, and from what she’s heard she wants to keep it that way.

There's a thought. The trouble with kneeling before your source of power is thus: "If that spirit is usurped, you may not even know it. And then, you become a victim, a tool, manipulated to serve unknown purposes.”

Excerpt From: Steven Erikson. “The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen.”

Anyways, I don't think he's likely to be a demon cultist himself. More likely to have grabbed ahold of Asmodeus or Zon-Kuthon. Possibly some other archfiend... well, we'll see.

Given how much devils hate demons, I can totally see Asmodeus or one of his archdevils looking at the fallen (but still Lawful) Hulrun and going “You know what, I can use this guy.”

Reminds me of a different character i have in hell's rebels
... he is an infiltrator inquisitor. Thoee get a special nonmagical ability that makes their alignment always detect as a specified one despite their actual one, along with a latge bonus to bluff and diplomacy. 'No sir guard, there's no way i'd ever try to murder my sovereign tyrant, er, rightful lord' (detects as lawful wearing the sign of Asmodeus)

Guard: understandable, have a nice day!

I can see some high up inquisitor being able to get away with very sketchy things with those skills. 'Hm, that does seem a horrible thing to do, but he's still lawful good and his abilities still workx so obviously Iomedae approves?'

The game definitely provides ways to circumvent normal methods of deducing a persons character. Even going so far to help circumvent lie detectors.

Though only the most paranoid ones might do so. To be fair, if Hulrun were fallen, he would have tremendous reason to be paranoid, given where he is.

Of course, all of this assumes he survived. Many didn't.

A heads up, if any of the items on the loot sheet get used. Feel free to mark them as "Used" in the Status column. The coloration is automatic so it will change the line to red automatically.

Level 2! Hurray! Maybe combat won't be quite as one-shot now, hahaha.

How are we doing HP? Roll or take the average?

Half plus one is what I think I said in the recruitment thread, but given how long ago that was, I don't even remember if I specified. If not, well... now I have!

EDIT: Also, remember that you get two ranks of Background skills per level - I don't know if anyone forgot, but it's the sort of thing I might forget if I wasn't careful, so I figured I'd remind you all.

Should we mark new ability uses as used for the time being?

Hm... No, you can get them unused for the day - it's not likely to be relevant, but in the future, when you level up, your new abilities, etc. aren't pre-used - I may make an exception for spell slots, so that our spontaneous casters don't have an advantage over our prepared ones.

For example, Thesius would get his extra two uses of Archeologist's Luck, but not his spell slot for the day, because Verene and Elliot wouldn't have prepared the additional spell, if that makes sense?

Makes sense. Unfortunately though Archaeologists do not get extra uses of Archaeologist's Luck per day through the class. I'll be picking up an extra use from favored class though. Eventually I'll use some other abilities later on to help extend it as well should he survive that long.