Gilium's page

Oh god, so many changes.

I started by going through a few activities at the Swallowtail Festival. Nothing too complex, just gave them the opportunity to have some fun at the festival.

I stole the idea of Ironbriar being Tsuto's father from this thread, so when the PCs dragged Tsuto in to be arrested Ironbriar had come back from Magnimar with the Sherriff to 'check on things' (actually he wanted to check in on Nualia, having put Tsuto on loan from the Skinsaw Cult) - so the party got to meet him early.

I trimmed down a couple of things in the Catacombs of Wrath after reading on this thread that from the entrance you can bypass the whole dungeon and go straight to Erylium. I decided to add something to the Runewell though - if a PC touched it, they were hit with visions of everything that happened when the well was awakened: The Chopper, Lonjiku killing his wife, and depending on how well they rolled they'd get various flashes of what happened to Nualia. Since one of the PCs was playing a sylph he felt a particular attachment to Nualia due to the outsider blood and they way he'd been treated growing up in Sandpoint. After the visions the person would have to make a will save or immediately attack the nearest person, so that was fun, it's made the entire party paranoid about any 'well' that they encounter going forward.

The party kinda snuck into Thistletop and made a precision raid against Nualia (who had kidnapped the love interest of the sylph arcanist after a dream sequence where he tried to redeem her). They succeeded and basically booked it after that, so the whole plot with Malfeshnekor didn't play out - he's going to show up later with the Shard of Wrath.

For the farm I had the daughter of the farmers show up, talking about how people had come in and started eating her family, and how her brother got bit. Otherwise ran pretty much as written.

Because the druid has a T-Rex companion I've added a whole subplot where dinosaurs and other such things are showing up across Varisia (for reasons relating to a crazy homebrew add-on). So the Lord Mayor's Menagerie was full of dinosaurs, and the party decided to stage a jailbreak. Cue Ironbriar showing up again, this time with Xanesha disguised as a political player in the city who is trying to become mayor, and the two offer to help the party by getting guards out of the way in order to make the Mayor look bad because he can't keep control of his Zoo. Serves to introduce the characters early, and remind the party of who this judge they met one time is.

The party is currently at Foxglove Manor, and just met Iesha. I added a little minigame element - because she's spent months trapped in what is essentially a memory of her former life due to the mirror, she had a few minutes where she could retain enough control to talk to the PCs about what had happened to her, basically making will saves with an escalating DC for every minute of conversation and every time the PCs mentioned Aldern.

I've also tried to hint more at the 'haunted' elements of Foxglove Manor by having Vorel occasionally manifest as a voice in the PCs heads when they do something he finds amusing or angering, such as collapsing part of the floor. This is leading into the final battle with Aldern, where Vorel's will is going to manifest through the mould patch and control Iesha into attacking the PCs alongside the Skinsaw Man - if the PCs manage to destroy the mould patch then Iesha will be free from control and attack Aldern, which should be a pretty easy fight, but if not then they're in for a tough battle against the Skinsaw Man and his Revenant wife. That's going to be tonight.