DM Baktru's page

It is the morning of the long awaited harvest festival in Sandpoint.

As the sun rises, the air is definitely getting a bit chill now with autumn fast approaching. As the morning rolls on though, the sun's warmth burns off some tendrils of fog that were floating around the village street and a chill early autumn day turns into a nice, warm late summer day.

There is a tangible feeling of excitement hanging over Sandpoint, as today, with the Harvest Festival and the consecration of the newly built temple, the village will not forget about the events of half a decade ago, the Late Unpleasantness as it is still sometimes whispered about, but they will finally be able to put the horrors of the Chopper stalking the streets and the massive fire that burned down the old temple and some surrounding buildings, behind them.

As far as plans for the festival, there are to be the usual speeches from the usual bigwigs in front of the new cathedral at noon, to officially open the festival, with as it is whispered an extra surprise from Father Zantus. After that there will be stalls selling all kinds of food, clothes, local crafts and trinkets and souvenirs throughout the village, various games and activities , food offered by Sandpoint's inns, and a big farmer's market at Sandpoint Market with prizes for those farmers who brought the most amazing products.

As night falls there will then be the official consecration of the new temple followed by a big bonfire Yes that IS ironic I know on the beach next to the Hagfish, with local and wandering bards performing.

With the opening speeches still some time away, Sandpoint is all but quiet as the various merchants are finishing setting up their stalls, and some are even seen to already, or rather still be stumbling through the streets after an early celebration the night before at the Fatman's Feedbag.

Still some time left on this morning in Sandpoint. Anything you want to do before the story really starts off, now's the time

Discussion thread open.

Now that I've gotten my feet wet, well moist at least in another game, I'm certain I can run two in parallel. I'm a longtime DM, especially in West End Games Star Wars, and Dnd 3.x. PF is fairly new to me but not that different from DnD 3.5 anyway.

I'll be running Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition for a group of 4. I may be convinced to have more but that is not certain.

Player expectations:
- Level 1 characters, 20 point point-buy.
- PFS legal characters (this is to keep the options somewhat limited and the power levels in line with what the adventure was designed for)
- 2 traits, having one from the ROTRL Player's Guide is preferred but not mandatory.
- Post daily. At least usually. Sometimes things happen, that is to be expected. Don't disappear on me for a week without notice though.
- Rise of the Runelords is not PG-13. I will not clean it up. If you cannot handle the gore on the level of an early Stephen King book, please do not apply.
- No evil characters. I do not make exceptions to this. The goal here is to have fun and work together towards getting through the AP. Evil characters disrupt this.
- Character must have some background and a reason to be in Sandpoint for the harvest festival and grand opening of the new cathedral.
- No need to have an alias set up yet before acceptance but I will only accept people with a finished character sheet and short background/personality.

Do note that English is my second language and I post from the European timezone.

Slowly, but surely the days are shortening... Dawn a bit later, dusk a bit earlier every day and those autumn chills are starting to make people huddle in their cloaks.

Luckily for Kassen, the harvest is going well with the bounty from the grain fields near the river and the village looking firm and plentiful.

And the time for the harvest festival, to celebrate a successful farming season grows near.

The leaves on the trees are changing, from vibrant green, to dull green and some yet to oranges and brown. Winter is upon us and with winter, a time of uncertainty always comes. Did we do enough? Are the stores well filled?

As the season changes though, there is always a highlight before the snows. The harvest festival. A celebration of a good summer, a summer that filled the food stores with enough bounty of the land to make it through. In a simple remote village as Kassen, a good harvest means a good winter. As longs as the Orcs from Belkzen don't get too feisty, it should be a simple winter. The harvest seem to have been plentiful, and the hunters and rangers around the village have managed to bring in fair amounts of deer and boar meat to be salted for the long cold season.

The fishermen had a good summer as well, catching enough pike, and halibut, and trout and even salmon to have built up a reserve of salted and smoked fish to see the village through the cold season.

With no external threats from Orcs or other humans, and with the food stores filled as much as one could hope for, all of Kassen is looking forward to having a great harvest celebration. Who knows maybe there will even be fireworks!

But first traditions must be paid their dues. A remembrance of when the young village of Kassen was threatened to being extinguished by a band of mercenaries lead by a mighty fighter holding a grudge against its founder. Days when the very existence of the village hung on a thread so slim, it was almost invisible.

And they overcame, but not without the sacrifice of the life of their founder.

Busier at work today than usual so I didn't get around to doing this earlier.

Oh well.

Discussion thread open.

Hey all,

Wall of Text alert...
This turned out a lot longer than I expected.

Who am I?
First off let me introduce myself. I'm a longtime TableTop RPG player and Dungeon Master. After I moved to a rather small town however, there seem to little to no opportunities for RPGs, and especially Pathfinder nearby. As such, I want to try my hand at PbP. I like the format from what I see here on the forums (and some others) and spent quite a bit of time reading through some PbP threads for inspiration. I'm in Europe by the way so bigger posts would typically be around evening my time.

What do I want to run
A beginner's adventure. Last I DM'ed a DnD 3.5-ish game, Pathfinder was still brand new and we essentially played kind of halfway between 3.5 and PF. As it will be my first PbP I want to limit the difficulty level for myself a tad so I can keep this rolling.
Note that this is pretty much a classic dungeon crawl with puzzles, traps and enemies.

What I expect of you
Mostly, frequent posting so the game can keep rolling. The typical a post a day expectation, let's say.
Be nice to each other. We're here to have some fun with Pathfinder, and I like my games friendly. I've had games in the past where IC player conflict was common, but that was with a group that had been playing together for years.
No experience with PbP is required, but I do expect that everyone that is new to this, has read this post: [url]http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qciy?Building-a-Better-Doomed-Hero-Painlords[/url]
Note also that I will be expecting you to keep track of your current stats/buffs/debuffs/inventory etc.
And of course, hopefully have fun with this little adventure.

Characters
Level: Brand new fresh level 1 adventurers.
Races and classes: Core only (Monk, Rogue and Barb can be unchained) (again, to make this more manageable)
Build: 20 point point buy.
Hitpoints: Max for 1st level, average rounded up for 2nd and up.
Starting Wealth: Average for class.
Traits: 2, anything Paizo goes.
Archetypes: Allowed.
Feats: Anything Paizo.
Optimization level: Note that this is a fairly easy adventure so you shouldn't need to overly min-max.

Backgrounds
As this is part of the story, your character is young, on the cusp of adulthood, and currently lives in the town of Kassen. You didn't necessarily grow up there all your life, but you are a current resident. Also as part of the whole story, you are not an adventurer yet, just a villager who may or may not be looking to become an adventurer. So your background can be short, just some explanation who your character is, what you currently do and what your character is looking to become.

Story
You all live in Kassen, a small village of less than a thousand souls, in the remote Fangwood. The main industries in town are logging, farming and fishing, although the local inn also sees some good trade whenever ships travelling the Skelt have a stopover, or a party from one of the cities comes hunting for boar and deer in the woods.

The village itself was founded by a retired adveturer named Ekat Kassen, some 200 years ago. Way back then, when the village was still very young, a band of mercenaries lead by a man named Asar Vergas, started harassing the populace of Kassen's Hold, as it was named then, apparently for vengeance of some slight years before when Ekat and Asar adventured together. After 2 months of raids and harrasment, the villagers learned where the mercenaries were camped. They assembled a militia with Kassen at its head and went to drive the mercenaries out of the area. As the town failed to find a diplomatic solution with Asar, fighting broke out...

The battle was terribly bloody, with only a few townsfolk coming back to tell the tale. In the end, Asar was slain and his mercenaries scattered, but Ekat suffered a mortal wound. He died 2 days later, on the 11th day of Neth, 4535.
In honor of their beloved founder, the townsfolk buried Kassen in an ancient nearby crypt, interring his bones in a place of honor. Above his sarcophagus, they put an eternal flame and over the years since it has become the target of a tradition...

Every year, 5 days before the autumn harvest festival, a group of 5 able people will make the trek out to the crypt, to go and light Kassen's antique lantern from the Everflame and bring it back alight, so that the spirit of Kassen may guard the village during winter, as symbolized by his lantern hanging, and shining from the roof of the Greathall. The five of course are then guests of honour at the festival, as they are the bringers of the Everflame.

Usually the five are chosen by drawing lots amongst all adults willing, but not every year... When sufficient young people in the village are coming of age, they may be sent instead as a sort of rite of passage. Could this year be yours?

Some background on the larger area around Kassen: Nirmathas Wiki