GM Harrow’s Curse of the Crimson Throne - AE

Game Master GM Harrow

I think the Myrmidarch is the Magus archer archetype. An Academae student could be a lot of fun. I don't think I've ever seen anyone play someone who was an actually student and not someone that got kicked out or dropped out.

Howdy! Glad to have y’all.

I personally have no strong feelings on what anyone plays. Play what feels right to you

I argee that an Academae student could be an interesting addition, but remain firmly in the camp of Play-whatever-is-the-most-fun.

For my part, I’ll almost certainly go with the switch hitter Sable Company Marine ranger, Elric Rivers.

I found the Ilsurian Archer archetype which meshes great with Sable Company Marine and the flavor I was going for.

I’ll update my character profile with stats and backstory, and then we can figure out how to mix Elric in with the group. Should not be too difficult at this point, he can just be assigned as some kind of military liason. Since he is a marine, he can share a NPC connection to Bartholomew with Audria.

As others have said, play whatever sounds fun to you, Cwethan. I'm just a guy that likes bouncing ideas around with people or in my head.

If it helps, I've been toying around with the idea of taking a couple of levels in bard. I think Levels 4 and 6. I'd be picking spells that help with mobility and getting around.

Oh, and Woo! Glad to see that I was able to help there a little bit. Sorry if that got a bit overwhelming, Jacob.

Cwethan, if you do go the Academae Student route, there's an NPC of mine that you could tie into, Jessica L'More, and you may recognize Audria, Eliana, and Brother Theolan from when they came by the Academae after some imps dropped some alchemical gloop in their hair and had to have it all cut off.

Okay, I think I'll go with my initial Brawler/Rogue concept then (though no need to worry about pushing me into other builds - I only listed things I'd like to play!)

I'll get everything aliased up and rarin' to go for tomorrow!

Oh, and Woo! Glad to see that I was able to help there a little bit. Sorry if that got a bit overwhelming, Jacob.

Thanks again for your help and feedback, Adam. And no worries, thinkering with the gazillion of different character options in Pathfinder is part of the fun for me.

I still need to decide on a few details, but Wolflair Support was able to point me towards the right HeroLab pack, so I now have all the relevant rules in my own verison.

I'll have a "secret identity"-thing going on (subject to GM approval). I'll spoiler all info relating to this from here on out. The GM and those players who don't mind having such ooc knowledge are welcome to read along. (I'm a notorious spoiler-reader myself, btw, but try hard to keep player and character knowledge separate).

A couple of questions for the GM regarding character creation:
- Traits: Do we pick any two or does on have to be a campaign trait?
- HP: How do we handle hp after level 1? (both for PCs and animal companions)
- Gear and wealth: I'm assuming 3.000 gp as standard starting wealth for level 3.

HP's a little weird. We got max at second level, but then we got average at third because of a GM switch. I don't know if that's how GM Harrow wants to handle it or if some of us should knock some points off our max HP. (Audria's still got the Max for 1st and 2nd level and average for 3rd.)

Happy to have you both join the campaign, Jacob and Cwethan!

- Traits: since Lamm is dead, any two traits is fine.
- HP: to keep things consistent, max at levels 1 and 2, average +1 at subsequent levels. So if you're HD 8, that would mean 8+8+5=21 before any Con and FCB bonuses.
- Standard starting wealth for level 3

Jacob, if you're on Discord we can back-and-forth on your character - @kittenmancer.

Happy to have you both join the campaign, Jacob and Cwethan!

- Traits: since Lamm is dead, any two traits is fine.
- HP: to keep things consistent, max at levels 1 and 2, average +1 at subsequent levels. So if you're HD 8, that would mean 8+8+5=21 before any Con and FCB bonuses.
- Standard starting wealth for level 3

Jacob, if you're on Discord we can back-and-forth on your character - @kittenmancer.

Friend request sent on Discord.

This is Elric's profile. I've added updated background info, but still need to change his stat block.

Awesome. I will introduce both new PCs with the next assignment from Kroft.

A tl;dr of what the party has been up to so far:

After mysteriously coming into the possession of Harrow cards that bore a message referencing their nemesis, they congregated in the house of a Varisian fortune teller, Zellara, who told them the current whereabouts of one Gaedren Lamm, infamous child kidnapper, abuser and petty criminal.

After killing Gaedren and his minions, the group rescued most of the children just as riots triggered by the death of King Eodred erupted throughout the city. Two of the items they found in Lamm's lair were especially significant - one was a brooch that belonged to the queen, the other was Zellara's severed and rotting head. Once they returned to the fortune teller's home, Zellara shared that she was indeed dead, killed by Gaedren's thugs just as her son had been. She had used the party as an instrument of her revenge, but also urge them to keep protecting the city and rooting out evil.

Over the next few days they tracked down the remainder of the children taken and abused by Gaedren Lamm and pursued various personal objectives, establishing the Sanctuary of Shelyn in North Point as a meeting point and base of operations. Once the riots were quelled through the combined actions of the Korvosan Guard, the Sable company and the Hellknights, they were invited to the castle to attend an event organized by the queen, called Eodred's Remembrance. The party joined Brother Theolan from the Sanctuary of Shelyn as his entourage at the event. The Shoanti shaman Thousand Bones was also present, as was Marcus Endrin's daughter Keyra. The party was able to meet with the queen and present her the brooch they had found, for which they were rewarded.

After the event, the party went shopping and stumbled across an acquaintance of Abella's, a watch sergeant called Grau Soldado who was rather drunk and possible a deserter. After returning him to Citadel Volshenyek and meeting Field Marshal Cressida Kroft in the process, the party crossed the river to Trail's End, a village-sized community living outside Korvosa proper, to check on Grau's sister and her children as well as return two of Lamm's former Lambs to their homes.

After returning to the citadel, Cressida Kroft asked the party to look into the case of another deserter, Verik Vancaskerkin, who had taken four other guards with him and had gone rogue in North Point, taking over an abandoned butcher shop and giving out free meat. When they investigated the place and subdued the former guards, they found out that some of the meat had a horrifying provenance - from victims they beat up and killed as part of their mercenary work. Verik Vancaskerkin professed ignorance of the whole thing and surrendered when faced with proof of his underlings' misdeeds. The five of them have just been turned over to the Korvosan Guard, together with all the items found in the butcher shop (a sizeable collection of coin and precious items, as well as a silver dagger and a note from Verik's mysterious benefactor and potential lover, M.).

Now the party has gone to rest before meeting with Cressida Kroft again to debrief her on their mission.

Stats for Elric and his hippogriff Galewing added. Will post an introduction in the gameplay tomorrow.

I think Elric's going to be fitting in just fine. I do think once his secret's exposed, Audria's going to be a little shocked.

Pava / Nips at Heels is all built - I'll write up a few NPCs in greater detail, but to preview they'll be some members of the Korvosan Shoanti community (esp. some members of her family), an ex that they still get along with pretty well down in Old Korvosa, and a do-gooding noble sometimes-benefactor who's maybe not totally reliable...

They will probably be known to the group as Pava at first, but use Nips at Heels as their name among other Shoanti, and their birthname Ayotah among family and other intimates. (The additional Chelish-ish use-name isn't traditional practice, but their adult name vs. birth name distinction is)

Looking forward to seeing their background.

Introduction posted. I'll leave it to GM Harrow to handle the actual introduction to the rest of the gang.

@GM Harrow, what is your policy on encumbrance? Once Elric is mounted, I have a hard time keeping Galewing out of heavy encumbrance, which means hefty penalties to his speed and skill checks. It's going to seriously hamper his ability to fly as well.

Encumbrance: I would get a second backpack and put in it stuff that you don't need in the city: the hammock, mess kit, stove can and whatever else you'd only need on a field trip, then in HeroLab Choose container -> Dropped to ground for that backpack. You can also swap the waterskin for a canteen (saves 2 lbs) and tick the option No Coin Weight in character configuration. That should put Galewing at medium encumbrance with room to spare.

Good idea. I’ll tweak his loadout in Herolab tonight.

I assume Elric has some kind of quarters in the Great Tower for the time being.

I was just about to put something up and saw we moved on to the following day. I'll have something else up later too.

Hey all, I'll be posting later this evening to get Audria back at the Sanctuary and back together with everyone.

GM, is it alright if I assume that Trinia got Audria cleaned up with a prestidigitation spell? I don't think she'd like having a mud-caked paladin dirtying up her bed linens.

Sure thing, Trinia cleaned up Audria and removed her boots before tucking her into bed. :)

Welcome, Elric and Pava.

GM, you asked us a while ago to keep an eye on wealth by level and let you know if we were falling behind. Looking at what a PC can afford with the 3,000 gp standard for creating a character at level 3 makes me realize that the original three PCs are indeed slightly behind on WBL. Shrike* has roughly 1400 gp worth of items and coin, Audria roughly 2,000. Hard to tell with Abella, but possibly even less than either of those.

We haven't used many (any?) consumables, so that isn't the issue. Overall, I think the discrepancy is just the result of having more PCs than the standard 4, and multiple characters leaving after splitting loot with them. We also have always split gold proceeds evenly with current PCs regardless of whether they participated in the adventure where the loot was acquired. With Pip's departure, we'll definitely want to reassign that unused wand of cure light wounds if possible, which I think he was holding but was paid for entirely out of the Lamm treasures acquired before he arrived.

There was no chance these characters were going to keep the Cow Hammer Boys loot (/evidence) that any decent person would want given back to their victims or victims' families (but that a Pathfinder module probably expects us to keep for ourselves), which means we'll likely fall behind even further, so I thought I should bring it up now as something to be aware of.

*Shrike is probably not as affected by this as the other two, because of what we discussed with Thorn.

I was troubled by a date discrepancy that I think was my fault or perhaps GM Pinvendor's fault originally, so I worked out a more complete summary of our activities in the days since Desnus 8, when we first received cards from Zellara. The short version is that I think the current game day is Fireday, 15 Desnus, 4708. I used this calendar to figure out the definitive days of the week for Desnus of 4708.

Thank you for taking a look at the wealth. I increased the queen's reward and Cressida Kroft's reward with an eye to this, and I have other ideas to catch you up to where you should be.

If anyone wants uncommon or rare magical items (beyond protection, resistance, stat increases etc.) let me know.

Edit: yes, the CLW wand should stay with the party.

Edit #2: just saw the chronology post. I keep a calendar in spreadsheet format and I thought I got the dates right from the gameplay thread, but I must have missed something. I'll adjust that and use the correct dates from now on.

You sure have had an eventful week. No wonder Audria was exhausted.

@GM Harrow: Elric’s gear has been rearranged, with the field gear left in a sack in his quarters as suggested. I have also ditched the saddlebags on Galewing.

Another minor adjustment: I have dropped Powerful Maneuvers in favor of Weapon Focus (longbow) in order to offset the lower accuracy when using Rapid Shot and Deadly Aim. I may pick up Powerful Maneuvers again later, especially if I can get my hands on an adamantine lucerne hammer (aka heavy armor can opener).

Well, I feel like a jerk.

Welcome to the game Elric & Pava!

No worries, Chapel!

I know you have a lot on your plate right now. How’s the family and the new dog?

Thanks for doing the math on that, Shrike! I really appreciate it

Just a heads up that I’m going to be out of town with family on the 24th through the 27th and that I’ll be having outpatient surgery on the 3rd so will probably be conked out for a few days

Safe travels and good luck with the surgery, hope you have a swift recovery!

Woof - that's quite a week and a half Abella! Hope it all goes smoothly.

Thanks for the welcome Dal (and all)!

@Audria - I find these days that I usually collect facts, truths, and lies about my characters instead of a narrative backstory - it helps keep me from putting too much of the meat of their stories in the past instead of what comes ahead.

Some of those I'll dole out as the campaign goes, but I'll gladly throw a few out now!

*Nips at Heels lives with their family in a four generation household.

*Pava normally stands sideface on like a duelist to whomever they're talking to, but adopt a squarer stance when they're actually in a brawl.

*Pava doesn't bother with swords, but has still often been seen near the Orsini Academy.

*Nips at Heels has light tattoos of a heavy rain running down their face, and the whorls of windstorms lending speed to their limbs.

*Pava is not currently wanted by the Korvosan Guards.

*Pava won't give the shirt off their back to someone in need, but will ask some very pointed questions of the nearest tailor about exactly what they're going to do to help out.

*Nips at Heels wields it lightly, but would be devastated if their Cut-Down Klar were destroyed.

As other's have said, that's a packed couple of weeks. Hope you have a safe trip that that everything goes well with the surgery and recovery.

Nice collection of background tidbits, Pava. Love the visual of the face tattoo.

Elric is sporting quite a collection of Marine Corps style ink himself, although most of it is not visible when he is wearing armor. All of his tattoos have a link to his service as a marine, his status as a hippogriff rider and his love of Korvosa. I’ll post a list with full descriptions in his profile.

@Pava: Sorry, I think I missed your edit. I think for me it depends on the character. Audria here has been through a lot in her short life, and made a number of connections because of it. Some characters I play don't have much of a background to begin with, or even at all. Sometimes it's just some characteristics and personality traits that I keep in mind when playing them. Then there are other times where I just start with a name and a situation and things just happen to come up as I play them. Dal and Elric saw this with an NPC in the game I'm running and I'm still pretty tickled that everyone's taken such a shine to Meep.

I do like that approach and I think I'll be trying it the next time I make a character to play.

Re:Ink: Well, Audria has discussed tattoos before. She doesn't have any mainly because she really doesn't want to deal with the pain. She does have an impressive array of fine scars on her back from the beating Lamm gave her, though. She's self-conscious about them, beyond her tendency towards being modest in her dress anyway, and tries to keep them hidden. Abella's the only one that I think has seen them, and that was mainly because Audria was so worn out from Hell Night that she didn't even realize Abella was in the same room as her when she was changing and didn't put two and two together at the time.

That said, if someone wants some tattoo designs, she'd be more than happy to make some.

Thanks for pointing out that conversation, Audria. Very interesting.

While Keyra’s father may not want his daughter to get any tattoos, he likely has a few himself (and so does Bartholomew). Military tattoos have a long tradition, especially among sailors and marines. At least in the real world. They are used to signify unit allegiances, specific roles like scout, sniper or gunner and combat deployments.

I got an angel on my right shoulder during my deployment with Nato forces in Bosnia back in 1999-2000.

Now that you mention it, he probably does have a few, and some he's probably not proud of. He's originally form Lastwall and ran with a gang there before something terrible happened and he started trying to turn his life around. He meet Olga, his wife, when she came with a Shelynite mission to provide aid, and before it left, the two of them were married and Bartholomew was on his way back to Korvosa.

If I had to say, I'd say he has one or two from his days in the gang, something dealing with the Sable Company, something related to Iomedae, the goddess he serves, something related to Shelyn, his wife's goddess, and something related to his wife. Now I'm picturing him in his younger years (early twenties) getting drunk and getting a portrait of Olga as a saint tattooed across his back.

How long has Elric been in the Sable Company? Has he kept up with Bartholomew after his retirement? I'm trying to figure out if he may have heard about Audria from him.

I have a rather busy weekend ahead myself, but I'll try to post today.

My tattoo is one of the Arabic words for "cat', in the shape of a cat.

How long has Elric been in the Sable Company? Has he kept up with Bartholomew after his retirement? I'm trying to figure out if he may have heard about Audria from him.

- Elric has been a marine for about 3 years now, with his last 6-12 months spent on naval deployment. He began training at Ilurs' Arena at age 17 and joined Sable Company when he was 19.

- He is unlikely to have had much contact with Bartholomew, especially not during his naval deployment. It's also unlikely that Bartholomew has mentioned Audria to Elric.

- Like Bartholomew, Elric also has Iomedae as his primary deity. Ilsur's Arena is sanctified in the name of Iomedae. Three times per day all fighting must stop for one hour to allow for prayer.

Okay, that makes sense. It'll be a fun bit when they find out they have a common acquaintance.

Happy belated solstice!

Everyone gets a Harrow point as a holiday gift.

For our new joiners, the Campaign Info tab has a summary of Harrow points. I'll have to do a Harrowing for Elric and Pava soon.

Thanks GM, I've marked the Harrow point and moved the cure light wounds wand to Abella in the loot sheet. Happy belated solstice to you as well. I probably won't be able to post again until Tuesday the 26th. Merry Christmas to all celebrating!

P.S. I think the dates were incorrect or inconsistent in the gameplay thread starting from at least Moonday the 11th, in my posts at least. (I think the 11th was repeated as a date from Moonday to Toilday.) So if you had your information from there, that's why it's confusing. Sorry about the error(s).

Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope you all find peace and joy this holiday season.

I assume Kroft will introduce Pava and Elric when the time is right.

I assume Kroft will introduce Pava and Elric when the time is right.

Yes, sorry it's taking so long! Kroft will introduce Elric as their liaison, and I was thinking of introducing Pava as the liaison from the Field Marshal's friend.

Yeah, we've got a band of not very trustful, good-natured rogues, and the one person who isn't one is absolutely terrified of the person we need to talk to.

On the bright side, I've been looking forward to this part ever since I got picked!

Merry Christmas everybody. :)

Another last-minute tweak to Elric before he enters play: Switched out Mounted Combat in favor of Pushing Assault.

Pending GM approval, of course.

Just an update: family is now visiting through tomorrow. I’m currently off my meds due to prep for surgery on the 3rd so I have the energy of a deflated balloon. I will post as I am able

@Elric: sounds good.

@Abella: good luck with the surgery!

Just an update: family is now visiting through tomorrow. I’m currently off my meds due to prep for surgery on the 3rd so I have the energy of a deflated balloon. I will post as I am able

Hope you are able to enjoy yourself, at least. I wish you luck with the surgery.

So, I finished reading through the thread early this morning before getting some sleep. I noticed that we never sent word back to Captain Sabina Merrin about Tayce and Brienna Soldado and Audira hasn't sent Eliana the things she asked for. GM, could we have some downtime before/after this so we can wrap up Merrin's request and Audria can wrap up Eliana's request? I'm just looking for a bit where we can do a post, or I can do post since I was kinda hoping to have Audria visit Eliana again, and Audria can handle both of those things.