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Name: Naxx
Race: Nosoi Psychopomp
Classes/levels: Familiar to a 15th level arcanist
Adventure: Sound of a Thousand Screams
Location: Former location of the Weeping Grove
Catalyst: Random Encounter and some bad rolls
The Gory Details: The PCs had resolved to search the forest for the castle that keeps teleporting. It was their first time exploring and camping in a while. When the evening watches come, one person rolls an encounter. He hits a high number, and gets six of these guys at CR 14 each. Unknown to them, each one of these guys can produce four clones, but my math failed and I made only 3 each. So, out of the deeper darkness emerges 24 creatures that had the party surrounded.
Seeing that they are surrounded and learning that fort was their worst save, the arcanist uses a limited wish to summon a tornado. All the enemies and one melee ally go flying around. Two of the real monsters get off Prismatic Spray. I rolled for everyone, but then the arcanist poijnts out that Naxx the familiar also needs some rays. He gets three hits and fails all three saves.
Naxx is turned into stone, sent to the Plane of Earth, and then lightning bolts blow him into pieces.
The players have a way to bring him back, but first they must go to the Plane of Earth and find several specific pebbles.

Looking for an opinion: would the spell Disable Construct make everything in this mod weak and worthless? I have a player looking for this spell, and I envision them using it to one-round kill everything. Flying clockwork dragon? 20d6 crashing damage as it falls helplessly out of the air. An army of wizards crush the clockwork armies. Irovetti is trapped in his armor as the players put a rapier through his eye slits.

Name: Baldric Medvyed
Race: Elf
Classes/levels: Bladebound Magus 11
Adventure: Blood for Blood
Location: Armag's Tomb
Catalyst: Bad positioning, overconfident party
The Gory Details: The party had been kicking butt with book 4. So far the boggard boss and Baron Drelev had fallen easily, and now the barbarian armies had been crushed. The party made their way into Armag's tomb. The first room was a chore but the sisters and their summoned help went down with the party barely breaking a sweat. Next combat room was the long hallway of mists. The scouts go ahead until the two Derghodaemon are visible. In the first round Baldric runs ahead with his hand on one wall to navigate the fog until the Derghodaemon are seen. One of the party members chucks a fireball down the hall to try to roast them, burning Baldric in the process. The Derghodaemons turn comes, and the hallway is filled with ten summoned swarms that surround the party. Baldric uses a Storm Step to try and damage both of them and get behind them. His movement ends at the end of the hall, right next to a Derghodaemon. Over the round the party dimension doors out of the hall and the swarms are killed with a firewall that also hurts Baldric. On the Derghodaemon turn it lands many solid blows, knocking Baldric past the dead mark and leaving his body to burn in the firewall. The remaining party have a tough fight but eventually knock the daemons out of the fight.

Before the battle, Queen Alisa Medvyed had had a bad vision that Armag would destroy someone she treasured. She assumed it would be her husband the king, but never considered that her brother would fall in battle before they reached Armag.

I also ended up having fun with the random dragon encounter. Early in the day the party rolls an encounter for 3 tazlworms. The three of them were running parallel to the party's horses and turning with them. The two mages fireball them for instant death. I hand them their xp and 1200gp worth of melted silver art (gotta love random loot generators).

For that night's encounter, they awaken to find a silvery haired dog that growls at them. The players are alarmed that the hair is too silvery...
From the player's log: IN Draconic "You took my prizes" we all sense Transmutation from it.... It turns itself into a Huge sized Silver Dragon!!!!!

It turns on its fear aura and explains that he is VERY ANGRY that the party blasted his three hounds with his treasure (the tazlworms from earlier that day). The king does his best to apologize to the dragon while being ready to fight it. The party figures out the dragon is using Detect Evil on them. None of them were evil, so the LG dragon decides to let them live. "Mind your ways." He says as he flies off, leaving them briefly frozen in his paralysis breath. The mages are currently working on a way to make amends to the dragon.

A year and some levels later, the party kills a huge 3-headed monster and want to keep it as a trophy. They call up their army to haul it back to the capitol while they continue adventuring. I rolled for random encounters for the army and got a 99... The army shows up in town with only the three heads. They explain that they met a man on the road back who demanded the corpse. When they refused, it turned into a silver dragon that tore apart the beast corpse before flying off. I think the king still wants to try to fight the dragon, but that's a tale for another time...

Name, race, class, role of the fallen:
King Zien Surtova, Human Sorcerer 7 (Sylvan Bloodline)
General Tyr Surtova, Human Warpriest of Gorum 7
Warden Rel, Aasamir Zen Archer 7
Councilor Eve Rosland, Aasamir Cleric of Desna 7
High Diplomat Netvor Orlovsky, recently redeemed Human Marshall 1/Arcanist (black blade) 6
Adventure: River Runs Red (mods)
Location: Forgotten Keep, then capitol city
Catalyst: Running into things head on (apply directly to forehead).
Part 1: The party was getting good at regicide, killing off the leaders of the lizardfolk, the boggards, and of the trolls. These monstrous races allied under a new leader who plotted the doom of the party. While the party explored the forgotten elf ruins, Rel was killed by a souped up assassin vine. The rest of them cleared the four towers and made it to the top, where the Dancing Lady resided. She was given the vampire template, giving her tons of charisma and Dominate Person at will. She convinced Zien to shove Tyr and Netvor out a window and to go down to kill them. While Zien was making mincemeat of them, the dancing lady sucked most of the life out of the cleric. She escaped with a dimension door, but was left with zero strength on the castle floor. With his teammates dead and still under control, Zien returned to the top floor to his doom.

At this point, I offered the players a choice. Either play as new people in their kingdom in chaos, or take up their old characters for one more shot. Enough of them choose the latter that I went for it.

Part two starts with the party as vampire spawn. They wait for night and return to their capitol, where they are chased off. People impersonating the party now sit on the throne, and the main party is pissed about that. They find them all together in the throne room and launch an attack. I had three friends play five people, near copies of the originals. I was prepared to have them make passionate arguments to convince the nobles that they were the right people, but instead we went for 15 rounds of combat.
Netvor: Went into Create Pit to retrieve black blade, and had the pit capped by Stone Shape. Crushed to death when the pit ejected him into a one inch space being blocked off by 12 inches of stone.
Rel: Killed by Tyr’s lookalike, a paladin. He lost 20HP when converted into undead.
Tyr: Died with his combat boots on, sword in hand.
Eve: Wavered about her duty to Desna. Took a crit and died.
Zien was left at round 10 with the fake Zien, Netvor, and Eve still around. Paladins were there but unable to hit the undead sorcerer. There was a wrestling match on the wall, and everybody was low on spells. Finally the spymaster created a cover and got Zien alone. He hands Zien a potion that immobilizes him, and then proceeds to kill Zien. The spymaster had been replaced by a Faceless Stalker some months ago and chooses then to make a decapitation strike.

Epilogue: The fake rulers worked in seamlessly to the young kingdom, stopping an incursion from King Surtova from Brevoy and signing a peace agreement with the monster kingdom. The queen bears the child of the original king, and now waits for her to age up and take the throne. A year has passed, and the ruling council now is in need of heroes for a new mission. Rewards include seats on the council, possible rulership, book 3 of the adventure, and continuing Kingmaker.

Name: Syra
Race: Human, Female
Class/level: Witch 7
Adventure: River Runs Red
Location: Owlbear den
Catalyst: One mean momma owlbear
The party of level 7 PCs made their way out of the capitol in search of the giant owlbear that had just killed 1000 people and killed over 20bp worth of buildings. An easy trail leading to a cave was found. The quick scouting trip by an invisible fey familiar revealed a pile of troll corpses being chewed upon by the giant owlbear. The party buffed and made ready their assault. The sneaky charge was interrupted by shrieker mushrooms that were quickly chopped and sautéed. The enraged owlbear made his appearance and was engaged by the warpriest and eldritch knight. Things were fine on that front until the mate of the owlbear appeared at the cave entrance. Matters were further complicated by the appearance of a shambling mound (rolled randomly). The owlbear mate was held off by a giant roc animal companion, who unfortunately was turned into pulled chicken. Syra put up a fog cloud, which did prevent the owlbear from charging the casters. The main owlbear went down, and as the warpriest helped the castors deal with the grabby shambling mound, Netvor the Eldrich knight made his way to the owlbear. This turned out to be disastrous, as he was quickly grappled and reduced to single digit HP. Syra charged in with a touch spell and was caught in an AoO. Netvor, just back from Hell and not eager to return, plays dead. The owlbear tosses him aside and then tears apart the witch. Netvor barely escapes thanks to the cleric’s use of dimension door, and the owlbear goes down once the warpriest’s blade finds her. In total, this battle claimed an animal companion, a witch, and the witch’s familiar. Syra’s last stand makes Netvor the last original PC left.

Name: Syra
Race: Human, Female
Class/level: Witch 6
Adventure: River Runs Red
Location: Mud bowl, hex P
Catalyst: A shortcut to mushrooms
The adventurers had been given the quest of bringing back black rattlecap mushrooms. Finally they locate some in a stinky mud bowl that leaves Netvor, the Eldrich Kinght-in-training gagging. The sorcerer king walks around the perimeter picking ‘shrooms, while Syra uses the fly hex to swoop in and keep her feet clean. The Tendriculous, patiently waiting, grabs both of them in a surprise round and eats the witch in round 1. The king is soon to follow, and both are stuck inside, paralyzed and being eaten by acid. Netvor can hardly hit it, so the warpriest of Gorum goes charging in. He eventually gets eaten, but was not paralyzed. Despite a massive penalty for being grappled and using a greatsword one-handed, he splits open the plant and kills it off, rescuing his brother but was too late for the witch. She was eventually reincarnated as an elf.

Name: Lucky Meyvind and mount Seth
Race: Halfling, Female and wolf, male
Class/level: Cavalier 7
Name: Netvor Orlovsky
Race: Tiefling (curse from Asmodeus), male
Class/level: Cavalier (Marshall) 1, Arcanist (black blade) 5
Adventure: Rivers runs red
Location: Boggard swamp
Catalyst: Massive attack
The party had just come back from seeing some fey being killed by trolls, including a friendly grig. Netvor had been studying up on boggard society and even learned their language, possibly to try establishing peace or at least spy on them. When they arrived in boggard land, their scout tells them the boggards and the troll leaders are all together in one place. They hatch a plan, grow their flying mount to huge so all can fit, and go off launching fireballs. Both trolls and boggards fling missiles at them to little effect. The party is running out of spells, so some of them land. Lucky is boxed in by the boggard king (fighter 5), the two-headed troll, and Hargulka. Both Lucky and Seth fall to the four attacks of the two-headed troll. Netvor challenges Hargulka, but loses the damage race and falls. Hargulka is taken down by warpriest sword and fireballs, and the detonation of his necklace of fireballs eventually kills off the wounded.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a level 1 TPK. At this point of time, the Stag Lord is spending most of his time sleeping off his booze, leaving a few lieutenants who hate each other in charge. He won't interfere and deliver a beat down unless something serious is going on, and even then there can be some delay before he enters initiative. Smart players can sneak in as bandits if they fake some credentials and some loot. Get in, chat, scope out the place, and leave. Check my thread for my level 1 party that attacked the fort at night and actually survived.

In the middle of the night, an unfriendly druid summons an animal to fight the party. While they're concentrating on the Axe Beak, she flies above the elf magus and drops a summoned poisonous frog on him. Nat 20 to bite his ear and deliver poison. He pulls it from his ear, then his turn comes up.
Magus: I crush the frog and cast a spell.
GM: That's two standard actions.
Magus: Spell combat. It's like two-weapon fighting.
GM: You do realize you just dual-wielded with a frog.

Three of my friends wanted to try Kingmaker, so I started a game with them. Everyone is a bit overpowered to make up for only 3 people. They took out Happs easily, who told them the bandits were to the south, along the river.
This party runs straight south until they find a river, and follow it downstream. They run across Nettle's crossing and learn of the one called "Stag Lord." They follow river south to the fork and all the way down to the lake, barely escaping a will o wisp along the way. They find the fort and immediately try to figure out a way in.
Sneaking in from the rear didn't work, thanks to the zombies. They then decided to go around front, snipe the guards, and hope they come out to fight. 5 bandits plus Auchs sally forth with torches to take them. Auchs + 3 bandit falls, rest fall back as Akiros, Dovan, and 2 more bandits come down. The party did an impressive amount of damage on Akiros, bringing him to half.
On round 7, arrows start coming down. Anyone whose hit takes real damage. The party does well to stay out of the lighted areas, moving carefully and putting out torches. When glowing arrows start appearing, they book it on round 15 of the fight.
The party had 2 people go below zero. The Stag Lord lost 3 bandits and almost lost more. This all happened on day 5 of the campaign with three PCs, slightly overpowered, level 1. The party also seems to believe Akiros is the one in charge (2 medallions seen).
On the 19th of Sanerith (the same month), the flayed body of a trapper the party just met is found just outside Oleg's trading post, with a declaration of war. There are kobolds, mites, the Thorn River Camp, more fey, and even trolls wandering around. It may be difficult not to completely bulldoze the party and Oleg's home.

A quick summary of what went down.
Auchs and Akiros were healed by daddy druid. The rest of the injured mooks were left to bleed out. The only named mook left was a dwarf I inserted to replace Falgrim Sneeg.
A trade blockade was setup. Aside from the PC's reward for Sneeg's capture (4 mtw weapons), no convoys make it to Oleg's. This of course cuts down what he can buy and sell, making him steadily more miserable. Bokken was also kidnapped and saw his hut burn to the ground.
Both the Stag Lord and his lieutenants spent much time recruiting help. Tartuk agreed to help them, and when the PCs came to the Sootscales, he sent them to the mites and sent word to the Stag Lord. A crazy gnome alchemist blasted shut the exit tunnel to the mite home and tried to suffocate them inside. The PCs kept Mikmek alive and het him take charge of tunneling their way out. Upon their return, Tartuk betrays the PCs again and gets his guts ripped out.
Another source of trouble was a Fey-touched Hunter I engineered to keep a watch on the PCs. She recruited more hunters to go after the PCs, leading to some midnight ambushes. She's still out there, somewhere.
Finally, after the PCs tried to ambush the Stag Lord crew, I had them encounter Auchs alone with a declaration of war. While he read pictures on one side to announce war, the backside of it (facing the PCs) had a message from Akiros, asking to meet sometime with a secret sign. The party scout eventually got the secret sign to Akiros and got him to meet the party. They agreed to go in as a party of new recruits that captured two of the PCs. They go in, get interrogated by an evil cleric, and the Second Battle for the Stag Lord's Fort began.
Akiros kept Auchs busy while the PCs swept aside the mooks. Staggy tried to take down the same people, but they were better prepared this time. 8 rounds of combat and he fell.
Daddy druid was dragged up to the surface. Some backstory took place, and he was ended. As soon as the PCs deal with zombies and last few hexes, we can get started with book 2. Looking to add political intrigue and Hargulkla's Monster Kingdom to the game.

I'm running Kingmaker on a weekly basis with a college club. They have done something a bit rash: attacking the Stag Lord, and then running away. The story with spoilers follows...

The party:
Netvor - Tiefling (limited powers) Cavalier of Tome 1/Transmuter 1 (working towards Eldrich Knight). Main speaker for the party.
Syra - Human Witch. Main source of healing.
Chronos Sertova - Half-elf Rogue.
Urien - Elf Conjurer w/teleport step.
Lucky - Halfling Cavalier of the Paw. Rides a wolf.

The party did not find Kressel's camp until 2nd level and day 19 of the adventure, which left plenty of time for Kressel to prepare defenses and a counterattack: Molotov cocktails for Oleg's. The party's assault on Kressle went down a little too easy, especially when I threw in Falgrim Sneed (the mercenary worth 4 mtw weapons), so a bit of GM illusionary magic was used. One bandit was cursed to being disguised as Sneed (a reused curse from my own playthrough of Kingmaker), while the real one took over Kressel's mission and added the Kidnapping of Svetlana to his list. The party took Kressel back with them (one of the few bandits to survive interrogation) and saw the burnt fort and Svetlana's capture. The chase was on.

The chase lasted through the night and into the day, when suddenly everybody's survival rolls turned to crap. Still, they trudged south. The Old Sycamore was spotted, and a cave entrance was found. Two mites were found and attacked. One rolled double nat 20s on Netvor, dealing a mighty three damage. Both were brutally killed. The party decided this couldn't be the place for the bandit to come, so they left the mite home for another day.

Some time later, the party finds the Stag Lord fort. They decide to attack it another day, and are followed by Falgrim Sneed and some mooks. He was easily captured and was almost killed before they stopped to heal him and check his description (1 hit point away from death). They haul him back to Oleg's, get some supplies for bribing, grab the whiskey, and head out again. They were delayed when Urien the wizard was nearly eaten by a whiptail centipede and a shambling mound, but they eventually made it.

The party of level twos got in with the password and took the loot to Akiros. They rolled 20+ on their bluff, Akiros got 0 on his sense motive, so they got to stay the day and chat. They gamed, they chatted, they hunted and ate. Dovan made contact with Netvor and paid him 2 platinum to make sure Akiros disappeared accidentally. Half the fort went to sleep, and they set into motion Operation Kill Everyone.

Round 1: Dovan takes a crit, another hit, and barely wakes up some others before going down. Auchs takes a big hit, and returns the favor to Netvor. Netvor runs for it. Akiros gets attacked by color spray, saves, and goes into rage in an effort to kill the wizard. Night watch try to shoot party, but do horribly (two nat 1s in a row).
Round 2: Dovan is confirmed killed, more bandits awaken and are cut down. Auchs lands in middle of group and sees Dovan dead. Sera rolls a nat 20 bluff to say Ayles did it.
Round 3: Auchs goes off to beat Ayles to death, Chronos continues to cut down bandits as rest converge on center room where Akiros is trying to cut down the wizard.
Round 4: Party is surrounding Akiros and dealing wounds. Akiros can barely roll higher than single digits. Auchs comes back and sees the melee.
Round 5: All converge on Akiros and Auchs. Neither one can hit anybody and are losing HP fast. Things are looking good for the party, until I call for a perception roll.
Round 6: Netvor misses the perception check and takes a sneak shot to the chest, downing him in one hit. Sera tries to hit Stag lord with hex, but it fails.
Round 7: Stag lord uses helm to sneak attack the human witch, bringing her below zero and taking a pot shot at cavalier. The party gets the Oh Sh** look on their face.
Round 8+: Nat One on stag lord, and he can't shoot worth crap anymore. Auchs goes down on Akiros, who rolls like crap to get the big man off him. Rest of party call for horses, grab up barely alive party members, and head out the door. A night of healing and hiding, and then they race back to Oleg's.

So, in total the party has killed six out of seven bandits, Dovan is dead, and both Auchs and Akiros are badly hurt. What does he do?

The party is close to level three. Aside from taking a week to recover and recruit replacements, I don't have a solid plan for Stag Lord aside from siege of Oleg's fort. Akiros still hasn't played his card yet. Auchs will have to follow Akiros. Svetlana is still with the Stag Lord.