Ilvah's page

Con save (+1 for singing, +1 for cloak): 1d20 - 1 ⇒ (19) - 1 = 18 Success!

Ilvah groans.

Con save (+1 for singing, +1 for cloak): 1d20 - 1 ⇒ (16) - 1 = 15 Con damage: 1d3 ⇒ 2 Failure

Her body spasms once!

Con save (+1 for singing, +1 for cloak): 1d20 - 2 ⇒ (10) - 2 = 8 Con damage: 1d3 ⇒ 2 Failure

And then finally subsides. A dull, wet rattle issues from her lungs and then she lies still.

Con save (+1 for singing): 1d20 + 0 ⇒ (7) + 0 = 7 Con damage: 1d3 ⇒ 3

"Ugh." Ilvah winces.

Ilvah coughs and goes into a fit of some sort. Her breathing grows ragged as her body twists and contorts as if against unseen bonds. The various bite marks on her weep caustic yellow venom.

If Alia remains in Brunterton (presumably with Ilvah), she would run into the Lord Mayor's messengers before they find the rest of the party in the woods.

Ilvah for her part does not reveal much--instead she changes the topic of discussion when ever things veer too close to her own past. "But what of you, and your past?"

Coming to a stop some distance away, after rounding a corner or two, Alia turns to Ilvah to console the girl:"They mean well. I know you are afraid. And it's not ok unless you say it's ok. You are with us, and I'll try and make sure they understand that. They are...worried about you. We will return to our new home soon...which is far to the southwest. That means if you come with us, there is no chance we may find whoever took care of you previously. They hope to find your family, and reunite you, but I have a feeling that is not your desire. You gave me your name before, so I know you understand us. Can you help me on this, too? Do you want to come with us, and leave all that was, and whoever raised you, behind?"

{Huge-eyed hopeful expression, on a head that slowly nods up and down.}

In another effort to return Ilvah to her parents wherever - and whatever - they were Illthir sits down with the girl at their room in the inn. Anyone whom want to come as moral support was of course welcome.

The skald started off by explaining what she would attempt to do. "So. While we've been traveling I've tinkered a little with a small spell. A divination - something that *might* work to find your parents Ilvah. Or about them at least. You shouldn't notice anything but a tingle. But if it gets uncomfortable or anything we will stop. Understood?"

As realization seems to dawn the girl's expression changes to one of fear and horror. She turns, and runs sobbing to Alia as she is in the middle of discussing rings with Zokon.

Continue?

"ghu'vam vISovbe'chugh."

{Puzzled expression}

Ilvah looks at party's clothes in confusion.

{Watching from behind the nearby tree.}

Alia shrugs it off...if someone bothered to turn invisible for spying on them, he would not leave his shoes. It seemed significantly more likely they belonged to some paramour of Zokons mother, in which case it was not her place to invade into the privacy of their generous host.

Quickly going through her sanitary bag, she finds the scented oils she looked for and returns to the tub - and smiles as the girl plays with some soap bubbles: "I'm glad you enjoy it, Ilvah!"

After her bath Ilvah sniffs herself warily and smiles. With her hair washed and dirt scrubbed from her she looks like any other girl.

Bathing Ilvah in the Tub Upstairs in Talasia's Room

There's a lot of suspicious looks, some sniffing of the soap cake, and surprise at the slipperiness of the tub itself, but eventually Ilvah settles in and seems to enjoy it even if she is apparently unfamiliar with process.

Alia meant to peruse the bath at some point during their stay. Thanks to prestidigitation she is usually clean - it is less a necessity for being presentable and more about the sensation of enjoying a hot bath. But she would do so on an evening with no other plans or events. Not on the first night and staying away from festivities - I'll assume Ilvah may want to take a bath as well then?

When asked, Ilvah looks at Alia as if to ask "What is this 'bath' thing you speak of?"

In the days that follow the girl keeps close Alia. When the elf turns around the waif always seems to be there.

Alia remains with the girl, for now. This, right now, was Zokons reunion. When he pointed her out or introduced her, she would step forward and present herself, but she was in no hurry to intrude - Zokon would know best when and how to tell his mother - and there was much to tell her, considering recent events.

"Come on, Auter, time to go.", she tells the girl, "I'll call you that. It means 'lost one' in my language. Since you never gave us a name, but you need one." She smiles, then helps pack things up.

The girl looks up with her big eyes that always seem to threaten tears and says: "Ilvah."

These books have exceeded expectations by a large margin. Thank you for giving it a shout-out, and thanks to everyone who backed it!

Thank you for the review, Megan!

Thank you, Paizo, for that glorious shout out! We light a black flame candle in your honor!

Very happy to say that the print edition should be live shortly as well!

Thanks so much for featuring us! With 6 days to go we're hoping for as many stretch goals as we can reach, including the addition of daemons and the universal monster rules and unique creature abilities from other Pathfinder bestiaries!

Use our unique system to quickly build any creature you can imagine from the ground up! Make your Pathfinder games new again by reskinning your encounters and sing a system that makes infinite bestiaries possible!

Thanks for the shout out on the Southland Bestiary and on the Richard Pett Cat and Mouse adventure!

And what a great harvest of 3rd Party titles.

So I'm curious whether anyone is planning to use the Southlands Bestiary or the Southlands Campaign Setting as a supplement to Mummy's Mask?

They were written with that sort of use in mind, so I'm a little bit hopeful that it happen.

Wow, I knew there was a big slew of Kobold deals, but... Well, that's quite a list of companies and good stuff.

Could not be prouder of this series by RPG Superstar Mike Welham! It starts off with a shout to a very traditional style giant, the thursir, who is keen on working at the forge and making armor and weapons for his larger kin.

The thursir might not be much bigger than ogres, but they are smarter, more skilled, and more interesting in every way. Check them out!

Time to celebrate the best in new, upcoming talent for a new edition of D&D!

Kobold Press has launched a 5th Edition D&D monster contest. Entries are due February 23, prizes and payment are awarded for the winner and the winning monster will be illustrated and shared with 5th Edition gamers.

Submission details here.

Bad to the bone! Anti-paladins make terrific villains, and a nice change from spell-slingers as BBEGs.

The Hero Lab files you’ve been waiting for are here at last! Deep Magic has arrived, and you can get it at Lone Wolf.

These new Hero Lab data files contain:

• 913 unique spell IDs covering arcane and divine spells, including elemental-tinged dragon magic, ley line magic, and spells for mythic heroes, as well as rakshasa magic, chaos magic, and new forms of necromancy and ioun magic
  
• 4 familiars, including three oozes and the ink devil, and 4 new monsters, including the guardian cave bear and voidling
  
• 50 feats and 3 traits
  
• 13 archetypes including Astromancer, Blood Mage, Demon Binder, Geomancer, Ring Warden, Time Keeper, and Vril Adept
  
• 2 new domains, Gambling and Labyrinth
  
• 7 mysteries including Wine, Moon, Snakes, Void, and the Old Gods
  
• 17 Bloodlines including Aboleth, Ghoulish, Goblin-Blooded, Mystic Forest, Shadow, and Vampiric
  
• 32 new wondrous items

Many thanks to Karen McDonald, Rob Smith, and Jeff Hersh for compiling these, and also to Aaron Beal of Lone Wolf for his help and testing!

The bundleofholding.com has done a lot of great RPG bundles for lots of different games. The latest and greatest is a Pathfinder-specific set of player options from Kobold Press, and it's available for 5 days only.

For $11.95 or more (up to you), you get a slew of PDFs expanding the races, classes, feats, and treasures available to your game. And a chunk goes to charity.

The average price tends to drift up over the course of the bundle offer, so for the best deal, grab it today.

The Bundle of Pathfinder Player Options includes:

• Advanced Races series,
  
• Divine Favor series,
  
• New Paths Compendium,
  
• Complete Advanced Feats, and
  
• the Wondrous Items series.

Thank you, Paizonians! And thank you, backers. This book is pretty much the dream I had at age 12, when I first decided to railroad my players by making them work for an archmage.

I'm still not sure it was *that* bad an idea for one session, but I confess that being assigned quests by an archmage every session might have gotten stale pretty fast.

Thank goodness they talked me out of it. Eventually. :)

Richard Pett has been writing the Whispering Homunculus column over at Kobold Press for a long time. Sometimes, though, he outdoes himself, as with this List of 100 Strange Pets.

Chimera pig, double-ended dog, extremely orange snake, ghoul mouse... Which one is your favorite?

And what sort of bizarre pets are there in your Pathfinder campaign?

Ok, this is slightly tangential to this board, but if you like writing fantasy fiction, Kobold Press has opened up a contest for fiction and is looking to work with the winner on future stories.

Judges for the contest include me, Ed Greenwood, Scott Gable, and Bantam Spectra acquisitions editor Janna Silverstein.

Details here.

There's a sale on this week for 40 Kobold Press products, up to 30% off. Details here.

I'm very pleased to say that Kobold Press tradition of monster design continues!

This year's contest has four distinguished judges, a great set of prizes, and a deadline before the end of the month. Full details here.

A very, very fine supplement to any fellnight, shadow fey, Queen Mab, or other twisted variety of fey adventure.

Get wicked, folks, these are the bad guys that will catch any player by surprise!

This is an expansion on an existing bit of lore, but it's absolutely dead-on awesome (and hey, free).

Ether Mages of the Celestial Sea

Part 2 coming soon.

This project turned out stunningly well, with 13 adventures by some of the best adventure designers: Richard Pett, Ben McFarland, Tim Connors, and Crystal Frasier all did great work on this one.

And the maps (also by Crystal) and art are just beautiful frosting on adventures that redefine the nature of adventure, especially at the low-and-mid-levels.

My only regret is that the Mythic rules were still in playtest when this was designed!

You may have heard of the humble bundles of indie games. The Bundle of Holding is the same sort of deal: A top-quality collection of DRM-free Pathfinder sourcebooks — pay what you want and support charity.

This Pathfinder Bundle offers an outstanding collection of Kobold Press Pathfinder sourcebooks — characters, locations, magic, and adventures.

For one price you set yourself, you can get the complete collection — over 500 pages of DRM-free watermarked PDFs including the bustling, ever-ticking Free City of Zobeck, heart of the Midgard campaign setting.

Though these ebooks include many details about Midgard’s deities, clockwork technology, and neighboring territories, you can easily transplant the Free City to your existing fantasy campaign with only slight modifications.

Every Bundle includes PDF versions of the 96-page Zobeck Gazetteer (retail price US$10) and the large Zobeck City Map (retail $4). And if you pay more than the current average price, you also receive these bonus ebooks:

* Midgard Campaign Setting (298 pages, retail $20) – the complete ENnie-nominated worldbook
* Streets of Zobeck (94 pages, retail $10) – dark and daring fantasy-noir adventures in the city’s seedy underbelly. ENnie Winner, Best Adventure 2012.
* Midgard Bestiary (109 pages, retail $10) – over 100 monsters and creatures suitable for any fantasy setting

If you paid full price for all these PDFs, you’d spend nearly US$74. But we let you set your own price for the entire collection. You can designate a portion of your payment for two of my favorite charities: Heifer International and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Act fast — this Pathfinder-specific Bundle of Holding is a time-limited offer.

First of the new Advanced Races series includes great design by Amanda Hamon and by the *creator* of the tieflings, David "Zeb" Cook!

If you like playing characters on the dark side, Advanced Races: Tieflings might be just your speed.

A new adventure by Mike Franke, this one a great crawl with a few twists. It's been fairly heavily playtested in some convention games, and backers of the Midgard Tales project got copies of this adventure as well.

Which leads me to ask: Who will review it first? Or who can tell the tale of playing it or running it?

I'm happy to say that Kobold Press has published version 1.0 of its Community Use Policy. Full details and the first package are now available.

Yep, this is the coolest combat caster since Wayfinder #5. Oh, wait, this is an expanded, corrected, and updated version of the Battle Scion from WF #5.

Looking forward to people's comments on this one!

Lost Magic is a contest brought to you by Kobold Press, and it promises to enrich campaigns with more magic—magic designed by some of those who choose to enter.

If you wish to show the world your mighty arcane or divine spellcrafting abilities by using the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game or 13th Age system, write and submit a spell of no more than 500 words by noon Pacific, March 29. A panel of industry professionals will pick five finalists from these submissions, and the voting public will choose the winner from among those
five.

This contest is an open call contest! We will take pitches for both 13th Age and Pathfinder RPG. You can flavor your spell to suit the Midgard Campaign Setting if you wish, but it’s not required.

Now, you have the basics, right? What do you need to do next? More details at Kobold Press.

Wow, an absolutely MASSIVE sale for GM's Day and not a word in the comments?

Maybe everyone is too busy picking up the deals, but let me just say "THANK YOU PAIZO!" This is a great sale from all the big and little names in our field. And every GM appreciates being remembered at least once a year....

I have my eye on a few things--but what great deal have YOU found?

My original goal for Courts of the Shadow Fey was the not-terribly-modest ideal of finally doing the adventure on the Plane of Shadow that I have wanted to run since I first heard about that plane, back in the days of AD&D and the Manual of the Planes.

This particular adventure has gone down a couple wrong turns but has been completely rewritten and updated to bring it up to snuff for Pathfinder--and gained about 30% in length in the process. It is meaty enough to run for several levels, but with notes on how to speed play if that's desirable. Most of all, it achieves the original design goal of "still waters run deep" and a sense of strange mystery to unsettle players who visit this dark realm and its (literal) demons.

My sincere thanks to all its playertesters, the deft development of Gold ENnie-winner Ben McFarland, and the folks who made the Shadow Fey look good. It's about time Pathfinder fans got to visit this twisted version of the First World, or rather, its dark Shadows.

Ok, while reading through the Round 2 submissions, I could not help putting together a class breakdown of all the Top 32 + 4 Alternates archetypes. With Paizo's kind permission, I'm posting it here.

The archetypes are these:

Alchemist = 4
Cavalier = 2
Druid = 2
Inquisitor = 3
Fighter = 2
Gunslinger = 1
Magus = 1
Monk = 3
Oracle = 1
Paladin = 2
Ranger = 7
Rogue = 5
Witch = 3

There are no submissions for the bard, cleric, sorcerer, summoner, or wizard. A full 10 of the archetypes are water-or-river themed (for obvious reasons, but still).

This is a massive update to the original Elven Archer base class by designer John Ling, Jr. It includes new spells, expanded archetypes, and clarified class tables and tracking sheets.

If you play any kind of archer or sling-oriented character, the feats alone are worth it. If you play a druid or ranger, there's some archer-style spells to add to your arsenal. Give it a look!

The full Table of Contents was listed here, and I'll copy-paste:

• What is Setting Design? – Wolfgang Baur
  
• Different Kinds of Worldbuilding – Monte Cook
  
• Worldbuilding Inside Out and Outside In – Chris Pramas
  
• How Real is Your World? On History and Setting – Wolfgang Baur
  
• Bringing History to Life – Keith Baker
  
• Apocalypso: Gaming After the Fall – Jeff Grubb
  
• Here Be Dragons: On Mapmaking – Jonathan Roberts
  
• How to Design a City State, Tribe, or Nation – Wolfgang Baur
  
• They Do What, Now? On Creating Societies and Cultures – Michael A. Stackpole
  
• How to Make a High-Magic World- Keith Baker
  
• Worlds and Technology – Wolfgang Baur
  
• Why No Monotheism? – Steve Winter
  
• Designing a Pantheon – Wolfgang Baur
  
• It’s a Mystery! Designing Mystery Cults – David “Zeb” Cook
  
• How to Design a Guild – Wolfgang Baur
  
• How to Write a World Bible – Scott Hungerford
  
• Playing in Someone Else’s Backyard – Janna Silverstein
  
• The Limits of Design: Kitchen Sink Design – Wolfgang Baur

Do you love the RPG Superstar contest to start? Yes? Then take a look at Valhalla Calling, the adventure design contest over at Kobold Press. The winner has their adventure published!

I am rather proud of this strange little adventure. I decided to design a low-level scenario as if the PCs were not just some noobs, but as if they were characters of destiny who could meet a lich-queen or hear the songs of the sirens, and live.

Probably one of the wilder low-level adventures you'll see for Pathfinder, and that's saying something!

I have to say, this is one of those issues that is both really dark and really entertaining. I know I'm biased, but ... Well, lots of great Pathfinder material here.

As Monte Cook said yesterday:

If you're a D&D gamer of any edition (including Pathfinder) and not getting Kobold Quarterly, you are sooooo missing out.

Welcome to Midgard, folks. The shadow road starts right over... here.

That's an awesome list of good stuff, and I like the fact that Paizo is highlighting some newcomers like Abandoned Arts.

There's now a cool expansion for the Dark Roads & Golden Hells book, called Shadow Planes & Pocket Worlds. Also, one extra plane that didn't make it into the print book!

Ok, I know everyone is excited about 5E and the playtest. But hey, players for 4E deserve some 4E content in this forum too!

So, just a heads-up that the Midgard Bestiary is being made available for 4th Edition D&D, with 150 monsters. The book is designed, playtested, edited, and the presses are ready to roll--it just needs help funding a print run.

Please support 4E gaming with the Midgard Bestiary Kickstarter today!

The kobolds are doing the monster dance, and everyone is invited!

This contest is a straight-up monster design gig, which has been won by such gaming luminaries as Adam Daigle and others. You've got 800 words to write a cool new monster!

The winner will be published in a future issue of Kobold Quarterly.

The judges this time out include Ben McFarland (Streets of Zobeck), Adam Roy (Journeys to the West), and Sigfried Trent (Complete Advanced Feats). They'll choose 5 nominees, and the gaming public picks the winner!

Deadline? Friday, May 18, noon Pacific.

Details? King of the Monsters

Richard Pett is a mad genius. There, I said it.

First review is up and it is five stars, and I have to think the elven archer is a big part of that. The derro had an Ecology about them in Kobold Quarterly #1, and they're back in this issue with Ooze Magic, which is disgusting, yet vile.

So, what do people like in this issue?

Many thanks to all the Paizonians who contributed to this issue, and for the nod to the Cthulhu adventure Red Eye of Azathoth as well.

What's your favorite article from KQ#19? Mine is probably the Tian Xia preview, but I'm also quite happy with the Arch Devil Lau Kiritsu.

The biggest badass of the Divine Favor series arrives with a bang. The Inquisitor offers something for everyone who likes kicking down doors and taking names.

Also, a pretty good short-short story about the Inquisitor over on the KQ site. Reminds me a lot of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

It's in print, and I still can't believe some of the designers who shared their experience and tips in this book. And there's a review out on another site that mentions its value for design of other tabletop sorts of games, not just board games.

The first of the Divine Favor series is here! And yes, we're covering most or all of the divine classes. This one offers slew of archetypes and some great paladin-specific spells.

I look forward to what the Dark Mistress or others have to say about the Shiny Good Guys. :)

Well, sure I'll kick things off. This issue includes the new Savant base class for Pathfinder for advanced players, plus cavalier orders, dragon lairs, a dragon encounter, and Pathfinder advice from Skip Williams.

My personal favorite is either the Tim Connors Pathfinder RPG adventure "The Exorcists" (with one of the GREAT twist openings ever, it should be in the Pathfinder movie) or the Synergistic Magic, which sets up a method for spellslingers to combine spells into new and better combos. The examples are amazing.

Anyway, lots to love here.