Blue Eyed Devil's page

So my PCs just encountered Vaddrigan Pol, and he escaped alive. This isn't the first baddie to escape the PCs, Earl Vernisant did similar in the Birthright Betrayed prequel session I ran, and they won the verbal duel against Count Lotheed, leaving him alive (he could be broken out of imprisonment).

What I'd like to do is set up essentially a league of evil that holds a grudge against the party specifically for defeating them and forcing them out of power. Rallied by Duke Panivar Lotheed, I think it would make a fun and interesting added encounter in Zimar in Book 4 to face off against an assembled party of 10th level villains they've fought before, while serving to reinforce the threat of the Immaculate Circle.

The question is, would this work better as a stand-alone encounter in Zimar (don't want to blow their cover, but given this party's track record they'll probably do that themselves), or is there an equivalent encounter to a 10th level Cavalier on a lion mount, 10th level Mesmerist, and 8th level magus that I could sub in somewhere in the book? I'm currently drawing a blank.

While running the second book of the campaign, I was introduced to a comic called the Black Monday Murders, about a cabal of bankers who worship Mammon and control Wall Street. This got me to thinking that Mammon is poorly represented in the campaign, barely appearing until you actually encounter Sidonai's contract.

And so I want to reimagine the Council of Thieves as a cult of Mammon. It makes more sense than Sidonai Drovenge deciding out of nowhere to make a deal for a tiefling son, given Cheliax's opinions on tieflings. This way opens a door on various soothsayers having dreams about "the golden child" coming to rule Westcrown, as well as providing more Mammon story earlier in the campaign.

Mammon is such an underappreciated demigod, and the Council Members using his worship early on (as early as the Asmodean Knot sessions) makes the idea of evil rich people so much more flavorful than just generic Asmodeus worship and gives the campaign a good lead up to the otherwise sudden appearance of a Son of Mammon.

To that end, my current plan is to rewrite the Asmodean Knot to be more focused on Mammon - changing the previous mayors to be Mammonite council members to introduce the Argent Prince as earky as possible.

I'll expand on this as my campaign.moves forward. Just curious to hear other GM's thoughts.

Midnight mirror is one of my favorite Paizo modules, and its thematically a perfect fit for the greater campaign, as well as a way for the party to get an edge of experience and magic items to help them in dealing with the Asmodean Knot in book two. So, I figured I would share the work I did in case anyone else wants to do the same.

Following Raynulf’s suggestion, I dropped the module in between books 1 and 2.

The setting requires some jimmying, but the tallowthroat outbreak fits the city just as well as the small town, and ending it can give the Children of Westcrown some extra early good press.

Prominent landmarks from Karpad (Boroi Manor, Shade Row, the chandlery) can all be dropped into a neighborhood of Westcrown without any real alterations. I changed the Boroi family to House Ghivel, setting up Vuiper for later, but any House you want to focus on will work.

The Shae rebellion I amended to be not centuries ago, but rather decades - the shae and fetchlings trapped in the mirror were rebels against Sivanshin’s power, native shadow denizens that fought to keep the vampire from conquering their dimension. I had already had shae crop up as essentially huntsmen, using shadowgarms as hunting hounds. Depending on how much you want your players to know, the prisoners of the House of Night can know as much or as little about Sivanshin as necessary.

The intriguing possibility here is that your players may make a deal with Nicosar or the fetchlings. When the House of Night crumbles, every living thing is shunted back into the material plane. If the party strikes a bargain with the shadow creatures, they may become valuable allies, even joining the Children of Westcrown and fighting to free their people from the control of the Totemrix. Nicosar, however as a neutral evil being, will only agree to help the Children of Westcrown if he is allowed to kill Stepan.

Default fetchling is a rogue, but I sprinkled some fighters and sorcerers in among Nicosar’s children, as they would have more training than the common fetchlings on the first floor. The three fetchlings on the ground floor are already named, but not the six upstairs. I went with Zasen, Truco, Zorzoru, Yoctivis, Vogne, and Qratol, all generated by Fantasy Name Generator’s fetchling list.

I'm currently running Bastards of Erebus, and my PCs came up with an intriguing method of finding information. Bestiary 5 gives us Liminal Sprites, urban fey that live in the exteriors of buildings and love watching mortals. My PCs sought out a liminal sprite and made a deal with him to meet the faerie court of Westcrown.

So at this point I had to improvise a bit, but there are plenty of urban fey (and faeries make every campaign weirder). So the party got some information setting up Delvehaven from the Faerie Queen of the city in exchange for dealing with a disrespectful morgodea, and now the city has a certain air of wonder to it, what with the faeries and magical creatures lurking in the background.

Has anyone else dropped an urban faerie court into the AP? And if so, any fun side quests I should include?

I've got a fairly specific question about the spell/s.p.a. Plane Shift (and by extension Janni's Jaunt). Besides "eight willing creatures," is there anything else a planar traveler can take with them? Obviously gear travels with you, so does it function like teleport (50 lb/lvl limit)?

My players picked up a (small) boat and want to take it with them between the Material and Elemental planes. If there's no weight limit, I can envision it playing like the fight sequence from the end of Thor 2, with cars getting sucked along between realms and whatnot.