Season of the Runelords—The Story So Far

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Time to catch you up on the story so far in Season of the Runelords! (There be plot spoilers below.) While I'm discussing SotRu, allow me to apologize for the persistent delays in its release schedule. We're working hard to improve the process for subsequent products, and the entirety of the season will be available for play at Gen Con.

The season begins with a lowly party of wannabe adventurers banding together to visit the town of Sandpoint, with an eye toward becoming famous heroes like those who defeated Karzoug, the ancient Runelord of Greed. (This adventure is loosely based on the events of the Pathfinder: Dark Waters Rising comics by Jim Zub.) Sandpoint being Sandpoint, you run into some nasty, filthy goblins before you even get into town. These particular goblins are even more disgusting than usual: they're covered in oozing, mottled pustules that have a tendency to pop.

After you dispatch the goblins, you barely make it into the city limits before the mayor turns you around and sends you after the black dragon who's treating Sandpoint's cattle farms as his personal all-you-can-eat buffet. Unfortunately, instead of vanquishing Black Fang and saving the day, you just make him really mad and he swears vengeance against the town. Being a hero is not as easy as it looks.

In an attempt to curry favor with the town council, you investigate the matter of the mutated goblins, and discover that someone's been up to no good in the wilds around town. After suffering goblin explosions of various types, you discover that a devotee of Lamashtu has set up her own mutant gobbo factory as a first course, feeding the goblins some sort of heinous potion to turn them explode-y. The main dish will be her spawning some sort of abomination linked to the Mother of Monsters. It's nice when it's easy to tell what the right course of action is, huh?

With the Lamashtu-spawn and its incubator taken care of, you return to Sandpoint to find the council member who led you into the goblin trap. Turns out he's the manipulator behind all the shenanigans, and he needs a good thumping before he uses some of the aforementioned potion on the dragon that's got it in for the town. It would be great if you could stop him before that happens, wouldn't it?

Ah, well. Beating down mutant dragons is good practice for heroes like you.

Having saved/wrecked the town of Sandpoint, you feel ready for a greater challenge/would like to avoid being run out of town on a rail, so you make for Magnimar, famed City of Secrets. (This adventure is inspired by the City of Secrets comics, also by Jim Zub.) You arrive just in time for Xanderghul's Night (he was the Runelord of Pride) and just in time to save a wedding from some demonic party crashers.

Your convenient heroics bring you into the orbit of Lieutenant Kasadei of the City Watch, who has a number of tasks for irregulars with good instincts and timing. Kasadei sends you into Underbridge, a promising-sounding area of Magnimar, where some rogues' guilds are having a bit of a turf war. Your diplomatic abilities, though rusty, should prove sufficient to the task of fairly divvying up whatever they're fighting over.

Next up is an investigation into some shapechanging shenanigans, in which some prominent local citizens are being impersonated. Turns out the creepy doctor with the sanatorium is behind it all, which is completely shocking. The prominent local citizens are pleased with your work, so you are promoted to guarding a special exhibit at the Museum of Ages from the expected assaults of some Cultists of the Crimson Eye. The Pathfinder Society (and local luminary Sheila Heidmarch) are pleased with your work, and remunerate you well. Time to head to Hollow Mountain!

Well, once you figure out who's murdering all these priests of Sarenrae, anyway.

Ever since you decided to become heroes, you've had your eye on Hollow Mountain. It's imposing, it's isolated, and the top of it is carved to resemble Alaznist, the Runelord of Wrath, who is said to have reigned over her territory from the mountain itself. (This adventure is loosely based on the encounters at the end of each Hollow Mountain comic by various awesome authors.)

You pay a ship's captain to drop you off on the shores of Rivenrake Island, home to both the Mountain and the ruins of an old Thassilonian city, Xin-Bakrakhan. Time to plunder the ruins for sweet loot! Surely everything that lived here died a long time ago.

Wrong. Wrong. You were wrong about everything here being dead. This place has angry, angry inhabitants. Because you're mighty adventurers, you triumphed, but that was not a pleasant experience. Some things you can't unsee. Still, you found a passageway that heads down into the stone, and therefore theoretically into Hollow Mountain. Heroic stories tell you that secret ways are better ways for exploring, so you set off.

Hey, this cavern has a big tower in it! Towers mean mages, which means pricy magic items and other valuables. As it turns out, it also means some sort of clockwork sentries and a nasty tower guardian. The cavern also has other stuff in it, and it messes with your stuff and tries to kill you, because that's the sort of place this is. This is what you wanted: adventure and danger and glory. You repeat that to yourself as you wipe splattered polyp and fungal spores off your face. Soon, you'll be inside the mountain, and you'll make your bones and feature in all the bard's songs.

Until next time, Pathfinders!

Tanis O'Connor
Adventure Card Game Designer