This week marks the start of the third chapter of the Season of the Righteous storyline for the Adventure Card Guild. Season of the Righteous is a complementary story to the cataclysmic events of the Wrath of the Righteous. The heroes who brave its dangers are fully as powerful and important to the plot as those who go through the main AP, but they deal with other events of the Fifth Crusade.
Where is the Herald of Iomedae at the start of Wrath? Kicking demon butt with you, of course.
Who finds the Lexicon of Paradox? The saints and martyrs who complete Adventure 3, premiering at Gen Con this Thursday!
The Story So Far (beware—this way lies season spoilers!):
Adventure 1-1: Herald's Chosen
The Herald of Iomedae, also known as the Hand of the Inheritor, has divined that demons are up to no good. When are they not? The Herald chose the best and brightest crusaders available (and maybe a Darago or two who snuck in.) You cleared the fortress city of Kenabres of a gathering herd of fiendish minotaurs, as well as a gaggle of demon-summoning, polymorphing witches. You then cut your way past the Fiendish Tree ruler of Storasta to save Fort Clearwater from both itself and demonic invasion. By the end, you were not only granted mythic power for your deeds, but also hot on the trail of an obvious trap, and the Herald totally knew how to safely spring it.
He made the Arboreal Blights. Have fun killing him!
Illustration by Anna Christenson.
Adventure 1-2: War for the Worldwound
Sound the horns, beat the drums, and let sing the tenors of war! With a Rallying Cry, and over the bodies of a few demonic mongrels, you gathered a powerful army to your side. You led them fearlessly against armies of cultists, undead, and demons in order to reach Raliscrad. But the Herald's confidence proved to be hubris: he sprung the demons' trap and was somehow spirited away. Even as you did all you could to keep your army alive, the wardstone in Kenabres shattered. You laid waste to armies of evil, but the demonic hordes are seemingly endless. With the loss of the Kenabres, the line of wardstones, and the Herald, have you already lost the war?
The Lexicon of Paradox
That brings us to the current adventure. Your only hope of stopping the demonic hordes from flooding through the Worldwound is to find the Lexicon of Paradox, the powerful artifact that originally opened the Worldwound. Queen Galfrey would not ask you to undertake such a dangerous quest without assistance. The renowned adventurer Count Varian Jeggare and his bodyguard Radovan Virholt are also looking for the Lexicon, and the queen is sending along one of her most powerful paladins, Captain Oparal.
Radovan: Listen up, you mooks. You die, makes me look bad. You know how much I like to look good.
Varian: Some choose to wield the sword, others the grimoire. I note that we have two hands.
If these heroes and this quest sound familiar to you, it's because they're the stars of several Pathfinder Tales novels by the outstanding Dave Gross, who helped us write the text for this adventure. More details about the events in Adventure 3 are recounted quite directly in Pathfinder Tales: King of Chaos. (Prince of Wolves, Master of Devils, and Queen of Thorns precede that novel, but you don't need to read them first.)
Hope to see many of you at Gen Con! I'll be at the ACG Open, as well as bouncing between the Paizo booth in the exhibitor hall and the ACG area in the Sagamore Ballroom.
Get out there and take back the Worldwound, my crusaders. It's demon-clobbering time!
Keith Richmond
Adventure Card Game Developer
