The morning in Limen dawns cool and grey with cloud and fog this later Lamashan morning, and the light stays wan even as the mist slowly dissipates, bursts of scattered showers intermittently spitting down cold from the heavens above. Fortunately, the common room of the Martyred Manticore – the best place in town for a traveller to hire a room and a place at the board, as the staff proudly maintain – is bright and cozy nonetheless. In the drizzly late morning, the inn is even quieter than the streets outside: apart from a few farmers and foresters indulging in a more relaxed start back home or into the woods after transacting some business in town, and a handful of travellers (some rougher-looking than others) heading up or down Rostland way, only a barmaid and the landlady, Agatha are around, wrapping up a covered dish destined for a poor soul that needs it, since no brownie or other good neighbour helped themselves overnight.
Through the windows of the inn, passers-by that can no longer put off needing to brave the weather can occasionally be seen: scholars and civil servants on their way to the library or to the town hall, workers heading to the curtain wall slowly being built around the city, or to any number of businesses, and of all backgrounds. Elves, whether the more bookish, clerical sorts or the wilder resettling from further south in the Narlmarches, rub shoulders with half-orcs as well as humans and gnomes, kobolds from the Sootscale tribe, and even one or two wary lizardfolk traders from downriver, looking somewhat grumpy as the year turns relentlessly to the cold seasons.
Ausra:
You arrived too late last night to at least introduce yourself in person to another Pathfinder you’ve arranged to meet in town today, a canny half-orc named Ulisha introduced to you by friends in the Daggermark lodge, who put the two of you in touch as likely people to approach the council of Helikia about establishing a new lodge for the Society in Limen. In the letters you’ve exchanged, it’s become clear that Ulisha is as paranoid as a clever, opinionated native of Daggermark ought to be, and that adding an elven voice to the petition to the leaders of Helikia, and not least to its Lady Hyalinnea, would be a shameless but effective play to said lady’s sympathies. Since there are strong druidic and fey influences on the council, Ulisha has suggested offering Helikia the first opportunity to bid on an enchanted sickle that’s come her way from an ancient druidic site she discovered in the course of her travels, as a way of sweetening the deal.
You suspect there might be more to it than that, since she’s insisted on establishing a series of code phrases, although maybe that’s the Daggermark paranoia showing. Things like, “The hawk is unhooded,” or “The path is clear for the well-prepared traveller,” or “Even the shallowest ford is slippery footing.”
The rumours say that Lady Hyalinnea has spent some time with the Poisoners’ Guild, though you’d guess it was too recently for her to be much help with your personal investigations into what happened that the sister guild betrayed your mother. Still, if the occasionally alarming gardens that even a weary (but knowledgeable) traveller would notice on their way into Limen are anything to go by, and the town’s much more welcoming air than some parts of the River Kingdoms you’ve seen, she’s rather open, and might at least have some insight on recent guild and herbalistic developments.
First things first, though, and you’ll have to see if Ulisha’s up, because she doesn’t seem to have surfaced yet, and it’s getting late.
Tabitha:
The capital of Helikia is quite a place, from what you can tell after spending a few days here, having been tempted out in this direction after hearing of the new River Kingdom from another traveller braving the weird forests of Uringen. For now, Helikia’s idealistic Lady seems to be accepted by her people despite her lofty pretensions and her open practice of witchcraft, and you can only wonder how she does it, or if it’s bound to come crashing down sooner or later as the ungrateful masses balk against even the best guidance. Maybe there is something here that you can take back to your home-in-exile to help give the bloody revolutionaries at home their comeuppance?
The trick is getting introduced to the movers and shakers here. It’s a small town, and the council seems to be alarmingly accessible, but that doesn’t seem to extend to, well, extended interactions with those not already of their circle, necessarily. You’re putting in the work to get to know the locals that might provide an in, or at least a chance of running into the right sort of person: the herb and spell component dealers, along with those providing the prerequisites for a suitably civilized lady’s life. You haven’t run into the Lady yet, but surely it’s only a matter of time, if the proliferation of dangerous plants in gardens across Limen is anything to go by. She’s either incredibly trusting, or counting on the idea that it would be unwise to turn to herbal mischief in a town whose leaders are well-informed about the uses of plants.
It’s still all very strange, and even the clear fey influence – which would surely delight the Circle back in Gralton – isn’t enough to set you at ease. There’s something – not in the water, no, but somewhere in town that sets your teeth on edge and a shadow of painful buzzing in your ears, and it seems to get stronger the closer you get to the improbable patchwork building of the town hall, whatever that means.
As you ruminate over your plans for what’s left of the morning, in front of the fire or over a cup of something hot, there’s a loud thump and sudden draft as the wind catches the inn’s opening door. With a soft clash of armour accompanying their steps, two striking individuals enter in from the weather, a handsome, black-haired human man with stern, sharp-cut features, and, rather less confidently in his wake, a young elf woman whose blonde locks frame an unnervingly beautiful face, as if she were a doll or statue come to life. Xys has the perfect alternate racial trait, fyi, but I couldn’t bring myself to give up elven magic to also take creepy. :)
Knowledge (local), DC 10:
The human fellow is, of course, Kesten Garess, the Warden of Helikia. He doesn’t normally look so dour, and you get the impression that he’s not particularly keen on this visit to the Manticore.
Knowledge (local), DC 15:
In addition to recognizing Kesten, you recognize Ruisxys Ververe, one of the hangers-on who’s managed to attach herself to the court of Helikia’s ruling council, as some sort of devout warrior-mage. (I mean, obviously you’ll get to know her much better soon, but just for giggles.)
As the locals look up and warily move towards the edges of the room as they notice the new arrivals, you remember that some of the chat in the common room last night recounted, with ghoulish relish, some sort of business in this very inn involving a werewolf running wild. It’s not that armed guests are infrequent at the Manticore, but this looks rather official.
“Good morning, Agatha,” the man says tersely with a nod to the landlady, before considering the common room and booming out, with a hint of frustration, as if to suggest that he’s wasted on but resigned to this errand, “If Ulisha the Chronicler is here, let her know that the Lady and Council of Helikia are waiting to give the audience she requested.”
Maybe a bit more than a hint.
“I haven’t seen her this morning, Kesten,” Agatha says from behind the bar, her tone pitching up and her eyes widening as she glances towards the stairs leading to the rooms on the upper storey, betraying her unease that her inn is about to see more excitement than she would like, again.
I have just a quick question on my GM’s behalf about some possible houseruling that bends the rules of archetypes. Would anything break too terribly if one allowed a paladin to take both the Sacred Servant archetype and the Oath against Fiends, especially if said paladin planned to multiclass out before ever getting the 8th-level aura/ability?
(I think that’s where the conflict preventing the archetypes stacking would come in, though I know that strictly speaking whether or not one ever gets an ability or class/feature on a particular character has no bearing on whether one can combine archetypes.)
For full disclosure, I’ll be playing the paladin, and my kid brother’s taking a turn instead of me in the GM seat for our home group, so I’m trying to avoid undue influence by virtue (vice?) of an older sister’s authority. The lunatic idea is to dabble in arcanist and head for mystic theurge eventually (and perhaps the evangelist prestige class, if we can come up with a suitable obedience for Yuelral, but that’s another homebrew question altogether).
As the title of the thread indicates, I'm hoping someone might be generous enough to offer some advice on how one might be able to create a character who uses both primal magic and hexes, because I had a crazy idea pop into my head yesterday evening.
In particular, I was wondering if hexes are strong enough to carry a character over the awkward middle levels of a build that starts with the hexcrafter magus and then switches over to primalist wizard levels. The idea is to be more aggressive for the first few levels, say, Hexcrafter 4, and then do some debuffing with hexes while catching up with wizard levels, up until Primalist 16 at the end-game, at which point the character would be more of a support wizard, with spellscar as a nice capstone spell. I know it's very much non-optimal, but could it work? Also, the character for which I have this in mind is an elf, and might dabble in firearms for a nasty surprise for opponents that get too close.
Incidentally, I'm assuming that prerequisites for magus arcana and witch hexes are by class level, not character level, so Extra Arcana shenanigans wouldn't work, or am I wrong?
Or should I just bite the bullet and try to work something out with the mystic theurge, say oracle / hexcrafter magus or witch, or shaman / wizard?
I have a crazy idea for a character that I’d like to see how I can best work out, so I thought I’d ask for second and third opinions. It’s not quite an optimization question, except to the extent of my wondering if there’s a way to make this work without too much trouble for a casual gamer.
Alternatively, I guess I could deal with thinking of this as an optimization problem with severe constraints. These include being an elf, a warpriest of Calistria, a 20-point buy, and having enough skills to represent social graces, a priestly education, and some sneaky stuff.
I’m trying to avoid too much book-keeping, so at the moment I’m thinking of trying to make the best of the “Cult Leader” archetype, and I’m wondering if such a character could aim for feats like Dazzling Display and Slashing Grace and still dabble in some two-weapon fighting. Thoughts on this, or ideas for which feats to take in general, would be welcome.
I am open to multiclassing suggestions that might occur to people – I’m thinking of taking a level in swashbuckler early on to get Weapon Finesse without spending a proper feat, especially since I doubt the campaign for this character will get to really high levels very quickly.
