The Festival of Blades is an annual week-long festival that hosts feasts, tournaments, and street entertainment of all varieties. While Mivon is usually an insular city with few outside trade partners, the Festival is one of the only times of the year where the city is opened to everyone. River kings, Brevic nobles, and tourists from all over gather for the festivities.
The first day of the Festival begins with the Settling of Grievances. Here, any person, noble or commoner, may challenge someone to a duel over a matter of honor. It’s very rare, though not unheard of, for a commoner to challenge a noble, and even rarer for one to win.
There are three types of duel: to the loss, to the blood, and to the death. A duel to the loss is judged by a magistrate, who awards points for nonlethal strikes with blunted blades. There are magistrates all over the city who may judge these duels. A duel to the blood continues until one competitor has drawn the other’s blood, and ends thereafter. Such duels are rarely fatal, but death in a duel to the blood is not unheard of. Duels to the death are exactly that. They are fought until one competitor is dead and the other is the victor.
In My Campaign:
One of the PCs holds a grudge against a minor nephew of House Garza, and the lordling reciprocates his hatred. This will be the time for the two to duel, and the manner of the duel will be left up to them. Regardless, the Garza nephew is going to try to kill this PC during the duel. I'm interested to see how it unfolds.
Days two through seven of the Festival are where the Challenge of the Suitors takes place. I have generated March Madness-style brackets (single elimination for the Houses Major, double elimination for the Houses Minor) to track the rankings of all Houses in the List of Suitors. On the second day of the Festival, the first three seeds of the Houses Major will duel, along with the first seven seeds of the Houses Minor. Each day thereafter, there will be one duel each day for the Houses Major, and seven for the Houses Minor. Day seven will have the final duel for the Houses Major, and the final three duels for the Houses Minor.
The Festival concludes with the option for the champion of the Houses Minor to challenge any lord of a Major House. If the Minor lord wins, their House ascends to one of the Major Houses, knocking out whomever they defeated.
Next up in this thread: The adventure hooks I have for my party during this festival. So far, I've got a demon attack that leads into political intrigue, a seemingly unconnected murder mystery, and a political shakeup in the works—the Vincitori are ready to make their move...
One of the PCs that joined my group for RRR is a Mivoni Swordlord of a rather low-ranked house. I took some inspiration from published materials, and heavy inspiration from Redcelt's work on this subject. I threw out most of the published canon on Mivon, specifically the names, as I found them not to really fit the flavor I was going for in my Mivon. Feel free to use this for your own game, and tell me how it went!
For my game, I wanted Mivon to have a strong flavor, very different from Brevoy. My players have spent some time in Brevoy and the Stolen Lands, which in my game are very inspired by the English and Scottish countryside and political landscape. For Mivon, we ended up with a strange blend of Italian and Spanish culture.
The upper echelon's of Mivoni society are heavily infused with Italian. The common people speak Spanish, and this is looked down upon heavily by the elite. I wanted to play up that the Swordpact had strangled Mivon's growth, and the staunch conservatives in the Council are unwilling or unable to see that change is necessary to keep Mivon alive.
I liked Redcelt's idea of breaking the Houses into factions, but I found his work a little to complex for my game. So instead, I've broken the Houses down into three simple factions that I know my players will remember. Credit goes to Redcelt for this idea and for the naming conventions.
For those of you who actually speak Italian, I apologize for my butchery.
Il Sangue (the Blood) are the traditionalists and conservatives among the Swordlords. I started with the base assumption that, in order for Mivon to be in the stagnating stasis the PCs find it in, it needed to be ruled by a group of insular xenophobes. Enter il Sangue. The base assumption is that, unless a Swordlord has a reason not to be a member of this faction, they belong here. They vastly outnumber the rest of the factions, but only because of their lack of uniform ideology.
The Vincitori (Victors) are the warhawks of the Swordlord Council. They are led by Lord Vittorio Nicovante, the second-ranked Swordlord of the nine major houses. For years, Vittorio has been quietly amassing power, allies, and wealth in order to overthrow the traditionalists of il Sangue. He plays himself off as a loyalist to the Comte, but has only been waiting for the right opportunity to challenge the Old Trout for rulership of Mivon. If his plan goes right, this year will be the year...
Il Mercante (Merchants) are those who believe Mivon's future lies in moving away from the Swordpact and making trade allies in the world. Their cause is led by Lord Arturo Scarlatti, leader of the third-ranked Minor House and one of the most charismatic people in Mivon. He shows kindness and respect to the PCs and believes that helping them will help Mivon in the long run.
That's it for now. Next up in this chapter, my notes on Mivon's biggest annual celebration, the Festival of Blades! Here is where the Swordlords compete in the List of Suitors, anyone from Mivon is able to settle grievances through duels, and the city teems with tourists who fill the city's coffers and pump new blood into the economy!
Here's my update for our next session. We will be running through the Monstrous Feast encounter of Dudemeister's Monster Kingdom. My group was particularly fond of skill challenges a la 4th Edition D&D, and we used them quite successfully last chapter. So I've decided to make the negotiations at the Monstrous Feast a skill challenge.
I made a few changes to Book 1 that have rippled over into this book, so I'll run through those rather quickly.
My Changes:
First things first, Tartuk is a reincarnated druid. He was a dwarven druid (my group generally eschews gnomes) who was reincarnated as a kobold. He dedicated himself to teaching his pacifist ways to the Sootscale kobolds.
Chief Sootscale was a stupid, ruthless chieftain who sent his best men to die at the Old Sycamore. Mikmek was the only survivor, and carried a vendetta against the chieftain. He used the centipede venom procured in the mites' den to poison Chief Sootscale and his loyalists.
Very quickly, Mikmek established himself as a skilled assassin and leader of the militant arm of the Sootscales. Naturally, Hargulka will be appealing to him and his followers.
The key to this exchange is Mikmek. As the tribe's war hero and the quintessential example of kobold superiority, Mikmek has become the leader of the traditionalist wing of the Sootscale tribe. Tartuk, meanwhile, has been leading the progressive wing, and while his teachings are bringing prosperity and peace to the Sootscales, kobolds are not meant for such pastoral lives. Many within the tribe feel restless, discontent with Tartuk's pacifism and lack of bloodlust. Chief among these fundamentalists is Mikmek. If the PCs can appeal directly to him, and persuade him, this whole negotiation becomes markedly easier.
Skill Challenge Rating: Difficult
Complexity: Hard. This challenge requires the PCs to attain 10 successes before 3 failures.
DCs The DCs of this skill challenge are custom-tailored for my group. At least one, the antipaladin, is built for social encounters and has rather high modifiers for the relevant skills, so I'm building around that.
Here are a few of the skills I've decided that my players can use to make their arguments. Feel free to chime in and contribute more! They'll need access to more skills to use, as they need 10 successes and can only use each skill once.
Bluff: Con the Sootscales into following you. Lie to them outright, if you must.
Diplomacy: Convince the Sootscales that they are better off with the PCs and Tartuk.
Intimidate: Scare the Sootscales into following you. Rule of the strong! Convince them that you are scarier to cross than Hargulka!
Knowledge (History): Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise? The Sootscales may be swayed by memories of their ancestors, or of stories of troll butchery in the recent past.
Perception: Something is off... A successful Perception check reveals that Hargulka is being whispered to by a will-o'-wisp! This is Nyrissa's agent, but the Sootscales know all too well of the devil-lights in the bog! If brought to their attention, the wisp will flee, and this will count as 3 successes for the party.
Sense Motive: Discern exactly what Hargulka isn't saying in his promises. Carve apart his arguments before making your own!
And here are Hargulka's corresponding arguments!
Hargulka's Arguments:
Hargulka's Arguments
Bluff: "In my kingdom, you would not be second-class citizens relegated to some backwoods silver mine. You will be treated as the fearsome dragons you are, given honors and treasure, and yours would be the traps laid to keep our land safe and feed our people!"
Diplomacy: "My friends, look at your hands. Your claws, fearsome blades meant to rip and slash. Your scales, gleaming iron the depth of night, a mark of your right to rule. You are Ilthuliak's own children, not some halfling troop to sing and dance on the command of Men! Join me, and your ancestor will smile upon our mission!"
Intimidate: "These men have no care for you or your noble ancestry. They would see you enslaved, used only for your labor, and they would take from you your silver and your honor. They do not even know of the ways of eer en verplichting* ("honor and obligation"). They know nothing of the eer you have earned in your service to them, nor of the plicht they have to you. They would work you as slaves, and when you were used up, they would cast you aside like rats."
Knowledge (History): "I have been to the Ebonfang Caves. I have seen the origins of your tribe painted in blood upon the stone walls. When Great Ilthuliak, whose hunger could not be sated and whose scales made midnight quake, built her hoard and conquered her kingdom, she created you, her children, to carry on her legacy. You are the progeny of the Black Devourer, the rightful heirs of her might. Join me and you will have the chance to rise to her glorious purpose!"
*One of my players, who speaks Dutch, canonized pretty early on that Draconic=Dutch. This phrase (which I have plucked from Google Translate and which I am sure is language butchery) is meant to mean "honor and obligation," a concept I am shamelessly stealing from Robert Jordan. I wanted to play up that the kobolds are Lawful Evil, and have an ancestral tradition of upholding their honor and fulfilling their obligations. In the most evil ways possible, of course. I'll write more about this sometime, if it becomes necessary.
While we're taking a break from KM now and playing through some tasty Ravenloft goodness, I've hit up on some inspiration for my future chapters.
First, some changes that might not be popular.
Rewriting Vordakai:
I'm axing Vordakai. Or at least, I'm axing Vordakai as written. What's the point of having a lich that can't rejuvenate and whose phylactery is no longer functional? Might as well have made a cyclops dread zombie or skeleton lord. No, if my players are going to fight a lich, they're going to fight a lich.
So if the choice is between axing the lich aspect of Vordakai or axing the cyclops, then I'm afraid it's the cyclops aspect that goes. But that's okay! I have something a little cooler in mind.
So in my version, Vordakai is a former court mage of the fallen empire of Azlant. See, some 10,000 years ago, the aboleth nearly brought the world to an end. Azlant, the ruling superpower at the time, was home to many powerful diviners and seers, and among them was a powerful mage named Vordakai.
A year before Earthfall, Vordakai experienced a vision of fire and destruction, followed by an infinite darkness. Filled with fear and believing that he could stop this from coming to pass, Vordakai stole away with the oculus of Abaddon from the vaults of Azlant and secluded himself and his compatriots in the Candlemere research center. There, they used the oculus, the nexus of ley lines converging on Candlemere, and the magic of the elfgate on the island to bind their magic to a comet that passed over Golarion, and which would intersect the Starstone and protect the world from the extinction they knew would come.
This comet, which is now known as Acavna's Tear, returns to Golarion's skies only once every ten millennia, but the magic they bound to the comet twisted it forever.
The ancient elves interrupted the ritual in a violent attempt to reclaim the Candlemere elfgate. The interrupted ritual backfired in a burst of necromantic destruction. The magi assisting Vordakai were twisted and corrupted into undead monstrosities. Vordakai himself felt unspeakable pain as his soul was ripped from his body and instilled within the icy comet.
Understanding the damage that had been done, the elves bound Vordakai within a chamber of their own making, sealing the tomb with the very magic of Acavna's Tear that kept Vordakai animated. The tomb, they were confident, could not be reopened until the comet returned to Golarion far in the future.
Within the tomb, Vordakai's undead body radiated the cold hell that his soul was trapped within. Now, ten thousand years later, Vordakai's dark and icy tomb is reopening, its doors reflecting the runes carved upon the face of Acavna's Tear.
So what does this mean?:
Vordakai's phylactery, believe it or not, is Acavna's Tear. The PCs will be able to access and destroy the comet through the elfgate at Candlemere. How will they destroy it?
No idea. That's gonna be up to them.
Vordakai's tomb is being rewritten with a heavy icy, alien flavor.
I'm going to introduce Vordakai's tomb by having my players make new PCs, all starting at 5th level. These PCs are going to be doomed from the start. They have discovered the entrance to Vordakai's tomb, and believe it to be potentially filled with treasure! This will give the players a chance to experience the tomb's lethality—which I will not be pulling away from. I have every expectation that these throw-away PCs will die horrific deaths, and will probably show back up as undead for the real PCs to deal with.
All cyclopes will be replaced by undead elves and azlanti. The mages who assisted in the original ritual (probably five) will become Vordaki's lieutenants, and will carry out his will throughout the Stolen Lands.
I definitely welcome thoughts and constructive criticism on this rewrite. What do you guys think?
Well, technically they've only claimed a small portion of the Stolen Lands, but yes, you have a good grasp on it. Rather than the verb being "Kill Hargulka" I might say Build your empire and defend it from outside threats.
I agree, but I wanted to make a definitive statement rather than leave a vague goal in mind. I suppose kill Hargulka or negotiate a peace would be more apt.
I'm starting to rethink Hargulka's rewrite as an orc. I might actually save that for Armag in Book Four. What do you cats think? I'd love some opinions!
I had a conversation with one of my players last night that helped to sharpen my focus and perspective with this campaign, so I want to get a few things written down.
What's This Book About:
Kingmaker seems to suffer from a somewhat disjointed design when it comes to this simple phrase: "What's it about?" For anyone who watches Matt Colville's videos on Youtube, you understand what I say when I ask "what's the verb?"
The main theme of Book One seems to be "explore the Stolen Lands and claim it from the Stag Lord." The problem, though, is that "explore" is a really poor verb—it's too open-ended and doesn't really set out a definitive goal.
For Book Two, I want to set out a couple of clear goals using powerful, definitive verbs. I think this is what I've settled on: "Build up your empire and kill Hargulka before he can take it from you."
The PCs have already claimed the Stolen Lands. Now, they need to hold them. This is where Hargulka's Monster Kingdom fits in. He will be trying to take the Stolen Lands from the PCs by allying or subjugating the native inhabitants of the Stolen Lands.
Thanks for the support! It's nice to see that other people are liking the story my group is writing! We've taken a step back from Kingmaker to play through a Ravenloft game one of my players wanted to run. It works out for me, since I now have some time to massively revamp RRR. Here's some ideas I have so far!
Hargulka as an Orc!?:
I'm largely rewriting Hargulka as a character. I wanted to have my campaign world reflect my players in various ways, and I think I've hit up on a good one with this rewrite.
In my version, Hargulka isn't a troll. He's an orc. Or rather, he's a half-orc who has successfully played himself off as a full-blooded orc. This is supposed to be a dark reflection of my half-orc antipaladin's character: he resents his orc heritage, his previous enslavement, and... well, virtually everything about who he was prior to becoming Sir Mercer Kingsley.
Therefore, Hargulka is a burgeoning warband chieftain who is assembling his own version of a Monster Kingdom. Along with the tribe of orcs he has conquered, he also holds the support of a family of trolls led by their matron, Nagrundi, a troll fury druid. Throughout the book, he will woo Howl-of-the-North Wind and his twisted pack.
My plan, at some point, is to have a piece of information slipped to the PCs that Hargulka is a half-breed, and allow them the opportunity to attempt to rip control of the warband away from him. In fact, I'm going to try to set it up so that Mercer is in the position to assume the role of chieftain for this tribe. This would have several interesting outcomes, including him indulging in his orcish heritage, the kingdom assuming connection with an orc warband (a dangerous and possibly cataclysmic proposition depending upon their choices in the rest of the book), and exploring the nature of the kingdom's imperialistic land-grab and its consequences for the natives.
The Elvenroad:
Amarand's player has, on multiple occasions, stated that his character's primary goal is to reopen the trade routes with Kyonin that were sealed off by the Stag Lord's presence. With the Stag Lord gone and his bandits wiped out, order has once again begun to retake the Stolen Lands.
My goal is to really hook this player and his character early in this book. I fell a little flat on making him feel included and giving his character moments to be "part of the group," so I want to try to make up for that with this opening chapter, which I am dubbing "The Elvenroad."
The chapter will begin with an envoy of elves from Kyonin arriving in the PCs' kingdom. The envoy will be led by Lady Taranya Nevarris (Elf aristocrat 5/ranger 3), who has been tasked with determining whether it is worth the expense to Kyonin to reopen trade with a kingdom so young and untested. She will take several months to make her decision and report back to Queen Telandia. During this time, she and her elven entourage will inspect the kingdoms' books, observe their people's dispositions, review trade ledgers—in point of fact, the PCs' kingdom is going to be audited.
Complicating matters is the presence of Naeven Teril (Elf slayer 5), Amarand's rival and resident hardass. Where Amarand always excelled at killing them all and letting Ketephys sort them out, Naeven is methodical, calculating, and cunning. The points where he and Amarand overlap are their talent for killing and their zealotry for elvenkind's superiority and reclamation of the world. To Naeven, however, lycanthropes don't count as elves.
To that end, Naeven's keen instincts and how the players handle Kundal will likely tip him off to Amarand's affliction (and the group's acceptance of it). He will spend a large amount of time following the group thereafter, trying to see with his own eyes Amarand's affliction so that he may stand before Lady Taranya and say, without a doubt, that the kingdom is rotten to its core and that the emissary they believed they had in Amarand is tainted with dark magic.
Further complicating the kingdom's audit will be the presence of Grigori, who will be a spy for Mivon rather than Pitax. He will be striving to stir unrest in the kingdom, knowing full well that relations with Kyonin hang in a delicate balance. His goal (and that of his employers) is to force the PCs to turn to Mivon, rather than Kyonin, for trade and alliance, and hopefully force a royal marriage or else secure some other political high ground.
More to come later. I'm tired and I wanna go to bed.
No post in a long time because I got a bit disheartened with the events of Book One.
Long story short (and I'll expand on this later), my players successfully snuck into the Stag Lord's fortress, bypassed most of the combat, and executed the Stag Lord in his sleep, thus negating the vast majority of work I did for the final battle. Needless to say, it had me pretty bummed.
Next is prepping RRR. I'll be heavily stealing from Hargulka's Monster Kingdom and Orthos's Dresden fairies rebuild.
The Stag Lord never received a name. He never made it to the Naming Ceremony that marks a man's coming of age for the Sightless Eye clan. He was cast out from his family, his people, and all he had ever known for one single mistake, one misstep that cost him everything.
But he made them pay.
The Sightless Eye had few rules governing their ancestral code. Protect the land. Maintain peace with the fey. Let others do as they will, so long as they follow the first two laws. But perhaps most importantly, a law taught even to the youngest children among the clan, taught through nursery rhymes and bedtime stories: Enter not the Forest of a Thousand Voices.
Since time out of memory, the Sightless Eye kept that law. Their people maintained the defense around the forest's border, keeping watchtowers and regular patrols. None were permitted entry, and nothing was permitted to leave. Even birds that took flight out of the forest's canopy were shot on sight at the border, lest the evils that lurk within Thousand Voices breathe some whisper of their existence through even the meekest of creatures.
So then why, when the boy had gone chasing after his only-half-trained elk, had the patrols been missing? Why had a lad of only thirteen been able to walk right into the forest without even the realization that these were the woods of Thousand Voices? No one knows for certain.
The boy became lost, and in time, he stumbled upon a hut in the middle of a sun-dappled glade. The smell of candied apples and roasted venison drifted from the hut's open window, and the boy lost what little of his wits remained. He crossed the clearing, heedless of the sigil-marked stones he stepped over in doing so, and approached the hut.
The kindly woman within gave him food and warmth, and spoke kind words to him as he ate and warmed himself beside the hearth. Then, when he was ready to leave, she told him the path to follow to leave the forest, and gave him three gifts so that he might remember her. The first was a ring—some sort of bizarre crossbreed of a hare and a dragon-creature devouring its own tail. The second was a magical sword, so that he might protect himself in the dangerous forest. The third was the shard of a broken mirror, which she promised would show him nothing but the truth.
When the boy came out of the forest, he found a half dozen arrows leveled at him, and the looks of a half dozen pained rangers behind them.
The boy was taken to the Elders, where he was stripped of his gifts. His shirt was torn from him, and the Elders chanted ancient rites while one of his clan pressed a red-hot iron to his chest. His mother wept, hiding her face in his father's chest. His father looked at him for only a moment, then ripped his gaze away.
The red-hot metal sizzled against the boy's flesh, and the boy screamed. His scream was full of pain, to be sure, but it held profound grief as well. This brand would forever mark him an exile, cast out of his people and the life he had lived. As the iron came away, the shape of a stag's skull remained behind, red and angry against his pale flesh.
The boy was cast aside forever, cut away like tainted flesh. But his gifts did not abandon him, and he woke the next day with his sword, ring, and mirror shard.
It would be many years before he returned to his people, and when he did, he carried the title of the Stag Lord. With his gifts, his newfound power, and a loyal following of men behind him, he slaughtered the brothers and sisters of the Sightless Eye clan, and burned the towers around Thousand Voices, so that the birds might once again fly free.
The campaign began on Arodus 18, with the wedding of two minor members of Houses Lebeda and Garess. The immediate implication was supposed to be that something didn't make sense about the match. House Lebeda was second only to the Surtovas and Orlovskys, and Garess were in a position near the bottom. Why then would Dame Sarrona agree to such a match? One player posited (correctly) that Lebeda wanted Garess under their thumb in order to demand something from them later. Some shenanigans later, and King Surtova himself presents the party with the Greenbelt Charter.
The group arrived at Oleg's, dealt with the bandits, and followed the survivors back to Thorn Ford. They went straight after Kressle, and while I had to pull some punches to keep my first level PCs alive, they came out on top. They offered Kressle's fate to her men: they decided whether she lived or died. Ultimately, they let her live, and took her back to Oleg's for rehabilitation. Svetlana put her to work upgrading the fort's defenses.
Rova 19: The group, now calling themselves the Orlovsky Expedition, discover the kobolds at the radish patch. After interrogating them, they make their way to the Sootscale Caverns. They are first ushered in by Tartuk loyalists, who introduce the party to the kobold holy man. He tells them to meet him in a clearing outside the cavern later to speak freely. Then they are ushered into the "throne room" of Chief Sootscale, who blusters and pounds his chest about his warriors' triumph over the mites of the Old Sycamore and his eternal success. Cut to the next scene outside the caves, and Tartuk reveals to the party his true identity: a reincarnated dwarven druid bent on helping the Sootscales redeem themselves from their wicked ways. They agree to rescue his loyalists from the Old Sycamore, and in return, once his people overthrow Chief Sootscale, he will offer the tribes' allegiance.
Rova 22: The party raids the Old Sycamore and clears out the mites, finding only the murderous Mikmek among the survivors. Mikmek, a former Sootscale loyalist, swears to kill the chief for putting him through the hell he has endured. Using the centipede venom retrieved from the mites' pets, he assassinates the chief and his key supporters. Tartuk takes control of the tribe, with Mikmek as his second in command.
Lamashan 4: The group discovers a group of bandits heading away from the Farm with a case of Muse, as well as a captive (an original NPC of mine): an elf woman and member of a local druid circle. The group deals with the bandits, take the woman back to Oleg's to recover, and bring the Muse with them. As they realize how expensive it is, and the limits of the local economy, the begin to wonder: just who, exactly, is the Stag Lord selling all this to? During this time, they also have a random encounter with a werewolf, and Amarand and Mercer are both bitten.
Lamashan 9: The group raids the Farm and, with the help of a now-armed slave revolution, overthrow the bandits and kill Dovan. They secure what moon radishes they can and burn and salt the earth behind them. At this point, the players are already foreseeing something I had planned to implement. They are wondering where the money for founding a new settlement is going to come from. Will they be beholden to one or several groups for taking favors up front? They begin to speculate that maybe they won't need to, and can spread their civilization on a foundation paid for by Muse.
Lamashan 16: Amarand transforms into a werewolf for the first time. Both he and Mercer, having been bitten last month by a werewolf, trek out into the middle of the wilderness and shackle themselves with silver shackles. Mercer shows no sign of transformation (a +8 Fort bonus at level 2 will do that to you). Amarand, however, transforms. I ran him through a skill challenge a la 4th edition D&D in order to maintain his sanity. He succeeded, and managed to get some cool wolfy powers out of it. I'm hoping this will hook this player a little bit more and bring him into the game more fully.
Lamashan 19: The group meets Akiros Ismort at the Temple of the Elk. He informs them that he knows who they are, and that he wants to help them. The Stag Lord is a cruel and sadistic man, but Akiros cannot abandon the men he has under his command. He promises his aide in defeating the Stag Lord, and provides the PCs with his own map of the area for reference. They now know where the Stag Fortress is, as well as some other key locations they had not yet discovered.
Lamashan 20: The group decides to lure that Stag Lord and his single remaining lieutenant into a trap. A pair of Akiros's men informs the Stag Lord that the PCs were spotted at the rickety bridge, trying to fortify it and rebuild it. The PCs are hoping that this will lure Auchs out and allow them to ambush him on their own terms. Little did they know that the Stag Lord's plan was far crueler than that.
Lamashan 24: The group waits for four days before the Stag Lord's men show up. A dozen of them attack the PCs, but with careful positioning and tactical advantage, the PCs secure victory and a prisoner for interrogation. When questioned, the prisoner informs them that they were sent to keep the group occupied while Auchs led a force "to some trading post to the north." The collective "oh sh*t" moment for the group when they realized what they had done was absolutely spectacular. The group sets off at a dead run, burning through three days' travel in only two through forced marching. They arrive, but I did not yet reveal what state they find Oleg's in.
Scene change: I handed each person an NPC character sheet and proceeded to run them through the Siege of Oleg's. Auchs and his men were ruthless and came at the old fort with a battering ram. Meanwhile, one of Kesten's men was paid off to slip poison into the food, drastically dwindling the number of defenders the party had on their side (and PCs I had to run). We ended last session on a bit of a cliffhanger, as everyone was fading (most of all myself). Several bandits had headed into the main house to try to secure Svetlana and Oleg, while Auchs single-handedly tried to massacre the party. They've managed to take him down to almost-dead, but the bandits may very well be able to secure some hostages before they flee.
I've made, and am planning to make, enough changes to this AP that I think it's necessary to get them down in writing and out of the vacuum of my own mind. Any and all feedback is welcome to help flesh out what I've got going on, so please feel free to chime in!
My Kingmakers:
Amarand Fen (elf slayer): Amarand is a proud elf of Kyonin, trained in the ways of survival and the hunt. If Geralt of Rivia was an elf, he'd be Amarand. This player took the Elven Arrogance alternate racial trait, and has been roleplaying that up quite heavily. The player tends to enjoy the gritty survivalism of this campaign, and doesn't exactly have a set trajectory he would like to take his character on. He enjoys the slog, doesn't mind if his character ends up dead, and is willing to take extra risks because of this. Recently, he was infected with lycanthropy, and while he has managed to hold on to his personality and use it to his advantage, I am going to make sure that the extra buffs he gets from the Lycanthrope template come at a price.
Ari Orlovsky (sylph rogue): Ari is a member of House Orlovsky and a scion of an ancient connection the House has with a certain djinni who will become important later. This player is what I consider an "audience member." She has fun and shows up to every session, but largely stays out of the spotlight. I have no problem with this. Her character is going to prove vital to establishing the legitimacy of this new kingdom, and her selection of House Orlovsky has inspired to small amount of political turmoil in the background. All of this I will get into later, of course.
Cal Longheart (half-elf arcanist): Cal is curious, naive, and a fresh-faced magic boy in the harsh world. He is learning quickly that most things want to kill him or be left alone. Magical tattoos kept alight by bi-hourly prestidigitation makes for an interesting physical display. He also recently multiclassed using the variant multiclassing rules into Oracle. This player is my largest roleplayer, constantly pushing for in-character interactions and scenes, keeping both his own and others' meta-knowledge at bay, and striving to make mechanical choices informed by his character, rather than the other way around. Overall, a fun guy to game with.
Mercer Kingsley (half-orc antipaladin [insinuator]): THIS guy. A half-orc antipaladin with the insinuator archetype. He's played himself off rather successfully as a paladin so far. I don't know how far past the first book he will be able to (or plans to) keep up the charade, but it's certainly been an interesting ride. This is my most experienced player (and the DM for our group most of the time). He has the greatest degree of system proficiency, and is essentially my assistant-GM as far as bookkeeping goes. This player cares most about the story unfolding, and his character's part in it. He has spent hours upon hours fleshing out his character's backstory, keeping an in-character journal over on Giant in the Playground, and planning his future in the campaign world.
Changes to Book One:
First and foremost, the Stag Lord is not a drunken belligerent ne'er-do-well. He is an exiled ranger from a clan that once kept this land safe, before he hunted them down and murdered them. He is brutal, dominating, and not afraid to get his hands dirty to keep what he views as his. He is also, thanks to some creative re-imagining, a burgeoning drug kingpin. I've drawn heavily on Negan from the Walking Dead for inspiration. To keep him in-line mechanically with this, I have rebuilt him as a Ranger 3/Slayer 3 (CR 5) enemy.
The drug that the Stag Lord is building his empire out of is colloquially called Muse, and while it is a magical drug with a convoluted mumbo-jumbo explanation, the TL;DR version is this: it's magical, alchemical, based largely off of Dune's Spice (grants limited prescience, highly expensive, highly addictive), and it's primary ingredient is moon radishes.
My Stag Lord is played by another person. I am feeding this person information about what the Stag Lord knows, and he in turn is telling me the Stag Lord's responses. This is an easy way for me to guarantee a proactive villain.
The Stag Lord's lieutenants play a much larger role in the first book. Kressle was taken down by the party in the first session, and was taken back to Oleg's for rehabilitation. More on her later. Dovan was in charge of "the Farm," a large moon radish growing operation using slave labor and poor morals. The party killed him without mercy. Akiros is stationed at the Temple of the Elk, which I have expanded and made into a sort of refining factory for the Stag Lord's Muse operation. I've completely abandoned the Guardian of the Temple subplot in doing so. Auchs is reworked to be less of a lovable idiot and more of a Gregor Clegane figure. He's huge, angry, strong as an ox, and lacks a single strategic bone in his body. The only thing I've kept about his backstory as written is his illiteracy and his general lack of intelligence.
Changes to Come:
As Orthos suggests in this thread, I am taking a few pages from Jim Butcher as far as reimagining my fey lore. A few important aspects to note for now: Nyrissa is an exiled member of the Summer (Seelie) Court, she's bound in a prison in Thousand Voices, and (as suggested by Nevarre, she has shattered a magical mirror and is using it to spy on the outside world.
More shameless Jim Butcher thieving. Castruccio Irovetti has no ties to Numeria, but is in fact empowered by the Seelie Court as the Summer Knight. He acts in direct opposition to Nyrissa. When he took over rulership of Pitax, it was because Nyrissa was using the chaos there to strengthen her own hold on the area. The Summer Queen intervened and placed Irovetti on the throne as a security measure. As such, his motivations and connection to Nyrissa have to be completely reworked.
I want to expand Candlemere into a bigger deal than it is. The tower itself could be more than just a single encounter, and could, in fact, by a cool cyclopean dungeon crawl that hints at the presence of the Great Old Ones.
I'm not sure I like Vordekai as written. Or the Oculus of Abaddon. I'm thinking of changing that artifact into an "Oculus of Yog-Sothoth" or something like that. I think I want to tie Vordekai in with the Lovecraftian horror going on in Candlemere, and make Varnhold more of a Lovecraftian reference (Innsmouth, I believe it was?).
While perusing the possibilities for rebuilding Tartuk, an idea struck me. So, after considering it for a bit, I've decided to sit down and hash out what this idea would look like. I present to you: Tartuk, the reincarnated druid.
Tartuk's Story:
In my version, Tartuk was not an evil, spite-driven gnome reborn from his people's desire to bring him back. Rather, he was a dwarven druid (reincarnated druid archetype) whose family was murdered by kobolds. He swore vengeance upon the creatures, and came to believe that it was his duty to protect the natural world from the exploitation of all "vicious little beasties." He died while successfully defending a gnome village from a group of marauding goblins. The gnomes gathered to give their protector a proper burial, and were shocked when his body crumbled to a fine dust that blew away on the wind.
Several days later, the druid was reborn in the body of a kobold. He was, at first, completely disgusted with his new form. He looked into his reflection in the pool in which he was reborn and wept—or would have, if kobolds had tear ducts.
But after some contemplation, he realized that this form was not a punishment; rather, it was an opportunity for him to continue his mission. Convinced that, upon his death, he would be reborn in the best form to defeat the evils presented to him.
After some searching, the druid found a tribe of black-scaled kobolds, descended, he was sure, from the wicked black dragon Ithuliak. With his mission first in his mind, he plunged himself into the world of the cruel reptilian devils. In doing so, he uncovered the tool of the wicked creatures' demise: a nearby nest of mites.
With a zealous glee that he could kill two birds with a single stone, the druid took for himself the kobold name Tartuk and set about pitting the kobolds and mites against each other. He cleverly used an old statuette to manipulate the kobolds, then convinced the kobolds that the statuette was stolen by their mite enemies. So began the conflict between the Sootscales and the Sycamore mites.
I wanted a far more morally grey landscape for my Sootscale kobolds. My players have themselves convinced that these kobolds are the exception to the "usually Lawful Evil" paradigm kobolds fall under. To rid them of this illusion, I have decided to play up Chief Sootscale's penchant for LE tyranny and cruelty, while showing that Tartuk is a destabilizing force that drives the tribe away from their LE tendencies.
If the PCs ally themselves to Chief Sootscale, they will have the typical kobold allies the books entail. If they ally themselves to Tartuk, however, he will try to convince them to kill Chief Sootscale and the rest of the tribe with him. This, of course, will push all of their alignments toward Evil. Should they manage to convince him to spare the tribe (a Diplomacy check on their part), they will have kobold allies with an alignment geared toward Lawful Neutral, and with Tartuk as the new chief.
Should the PCs slay Tartuk and ally with Chief Sootscale, he will return to life and swear vengeance upon them, leading to difficulties later on in the campaign. If he is slain along with the rest of the tribe (an act of genocide on the PCs' part), then he will die with thanks on his lips and, when reborn, will trouble the PCs no further. They will hear rumors from their spymaster about monster tribes tearing themselves apart in the area, and may have the chance to track down Tartuk.
I always like to have musical inspiration for my campaigns, especially during my own prep work. Does anyone else do the same? Jumping right in, here's some of my (growing) selection, with a brief note as to which song is which.
"The Legend of Ashitaka" from Princess Mononoke — Primary theme of the Stolen Lands.
"Kaer Morhen" from the Witcher 3 soundtrack — Theme for Oleg's Trading Post.
"Hunter's Pursuit" from the Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind — Battle theme for Happs and his bandits, and the subsequent hunt that my players went on to find their main camp at Thorn Ford.
"The Trail" from the Witcher 3 soundtrack — Theme for the Stag Lord as shown to my players. I have an instrumental theme to show my players for this villain and a lyrical song to inspire the character on my end.
"Indestructible" by Disturbed — My inspiration music for the Stag Lord. I've upgraded him to a more hands-on villain and done away with his more passive backstory. This song has inspired a backstory I'll detail in another post and link back here once it's done.
More to come as I write and find inspiration! Still looking for N's ideal music, plus the major villains of all the other books. My group just started the Stolen Lands this week, so there's definitely going to be more to come.
One of my players is a scion of House Orlovsky, a niece of Lord Poul. While thinking of political plotlines to add to this AP (my group is very keen on a heavy political atmosphere), I came across a bit of Scottish history that may just work, if I can get some advice on how to make it work.
Background: Poul Orlovsky has been holding out on swearing allegiance to Noleski Surtova as king of Brevoy, as the Orlovsky line has been loyal to House Rogarvia for centuries. Recently, a House Lebeda daughter married into House Garess under the promise that in exchange for Lebeda's wealth to ease their suffering, House Garess will support House Lebeda in future Land Council meetings (think Landsraad from Dune).
Highly Abridged Scottish History Lesson:
In 1692, Clan MacDonald was one of the loyalists to the now-deposed King James. King William, the new king, gave the highland lords a set deadline to swear their allegiance to their new king.
Lord MacDonald of Glencoe was the last to swear fealty. He first swore in front of a local magistrate, but some time after was told that was insufficient, and that he had to travel to a nearby village to swear in front of a higher ranking official. He attempted to get there before the deadline, but was caught in a snowstorm, and arrived six days after the deadline. He was assured it would be fine, no need to worry.
Some time later, a contingent of redcoats from Fort William showed up at MacDonald’s doorstep. They were offered shelter and food, as per Highland hospitality laws, and slept at Glencoe for two weeks.
On the last night, the redcoats waited until the MacDonalds were all asleep, then proceeded to massacre the entire clan present at Glencoe. They violated every known hospitality rite in Scotland under King William’s orders.
I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. I'm thinking that a House Garess contingent is forced to act as a patsy for House Lebeda, who are themselves Surtova loyalists. They will massacre House Orlovsky and make an example out of Lord Poul.
I'm thinking that what happens next is that, rather than forcing the rebellious faction of Brevoy into submission, it galvanizes them. They try to recruit my PC Orlovsky as some sort of leader against Noleski Surtova or something like that, and my players need to decide how their alliance lies. If they side against Noleski, Brevoy will be plunged into civil war that spills over into the Stolen Lands. If they side against the rebels, King Surtova will be an ally and newly-made tyrant.
