Narsus Novox's page

[opening post here solely so people can check in]

Ah, a new game. Still perfect in its conception, unmarred by inevitable mistakes, poor rolls and that one bad day on the GM's part. I look forward to realize and ruin it in equal measure with you!

So! Welcome and thank you for accepting my invitation. Very glad to be here with you. To get the ball rolling, let's address some odds and ends.

PC connections: Getting the party together is the first hurdle of any adventure, but the idea here is that your PCs are already at least vaguely familiar with each other. After all, you were all arrested together. You have all been travelling with the disreputable Silas Gribb for some weeks as part of his caravan. Treat this as an opportunity to tailor your PCs' relationships to your own liking. Did you become fast friends with that one boisterous caravan guard? Have you avoided the curious rat-man, making him still a stranger to you? Was that serious Abadaran just another face among the wagons? The caravan was fairly large so if you prefer to start afresh with your PC - no preestablished relationship with the rest of the party beyond the occasional 'Good morning,' - that's an option too.

Pacing: If at all possible, I'd like us to aim for a daily post during the week and another on weekends. A steady pace is the lifeblood of pbp, so while I don't like doing it, I reserve the right to bot a PC if too much time passes between posts, especially in combat. Please see this guideline as both responsibility and reprieve! I've known far too many who feel they need to check in at all hours, making multiple posts a day and inevitably suffering burnout. If you've posted on any given day, know that you've done your part for the game. I certainly won't stop you from posting however often you want, but you shouldn't feel obligated to do so.

That said, I will absolutely fail to keep to this pace myself. There will be birthdays, weddings, freak tornados and just plain off days for all of us. That's okay. It's just a game.

Tokens & avatars: I intend to use battle maps where appropriate which means tokens for all combatants. That includes you! If you have any particular art you'd like me to use for your token, send a link my way. If not, we'll just use your avatar pic here on the Paizo forums - which, frankly, always becomes my primary mental image of a PC anyway with how ever present these are. Still, up to you.

There are no doubt a million other things to address, but that will do for now. If you haven't already, try to add some sort of quick stats line to display below your character’s name. It should look something like this:

Half-elf Kineticist 1 | HP 13/13 | AC14 T11 FF13 | CMB+2 CMD 13 | F+6 R+3 W+3 | Init +1 | Perc +7

And lastly, be proactive about addressing problems. If you’re not sure about how something works or why something happened, ask about it. If you’re not comfortable asking in front of everyone, feel free to PM me. Similarly, please PM me right away if you’re not happy with how things are going. I can’t promise I can fix it, but I’ll certainly try. I would rather the issue be addressed before it becomes terminal.

Once more, welcome and I look forward to playing with you all. Let's get to dragon slaying!

Perhaps you should have known better. Perhaps you should have done your due diligence. Perhaps you should have listened to that little voice in your head telling you that your caravan master Gribb was shadier than the blighted Darklands. Perhaps a lot of things. Fact is that your group had only made it halfway from Cassomir to Yanmass before you were stopped by town guards wielding a warrant: that ass Gribb was wanted for smuggling. Turns out the caravan was part of some contraband operation. Go figure. That one wagon did always smell funny to you...
Less funny was the interrogation that followed, the local kettle hats clumsily trying to ascertain whether you were in on the scheme or just an unwitting patsy. You managed to convince them of your innocence, not that this did you much good. For with the caravan confiscated, you are left stranded in Belhaim, smallest of small towns, sleepier than the hoariest dragon atop its hoard. Now what?

Now you become big damn heroes as little old Belhaim will soon be in need of such. Hi and welcome to this GM’s rendition of The Dragon’s Demand. I’ve been meaning to give a little back to the community that’s given me so much enjoyment over the years, and although I’m undoubtedly late in doing so (like an entire game edition too late), I hope you’ll join me on what is likely my farewell to PF.

The Basics

Number of Players: 4 to 6.

Deadline: July 15th.

System: Pathfinder 1st edition.

Setting: Golarion has gone through a lot of revisions over the years, particularly with the switch to 2nd edition. This has led to some retcons and general inconsistencies in lore that may be a bit troublesome to navigate, every player bringing their own understanding of the setting to the table. Do drow exist? Am I playing a half-orc or a dromaar? Which AP conclusions have been added to the base setting? To hopefully avoid such conflicts, know that I’ll be leaning to early sourcebooks over later additions.

The Adventure

The original module I'll be adapting, The Dragon's Demand, is set in a rural corner of Taldor by the name of Belhaim. Thanks to your crooked - and now very incarcerated - caravan master, your PCs finds themselves stranded there, the local law having seized said caravan as criminal evidence. Why you were part of the merchant caravan, you'll have to tell me. Are you an aspiring trader yourself, signing up to Gribb's convoy with no knowledge of his extralegal ways? Or were you perfectly aware of these and merely convinced the simple country coppers otherwise...? Were you hired on by Gribb as an extra hand or entire sword arm? Or did you pay him to travel along as a passenger, the caravan just a means to cross the nation? If so, are you setting out for new sights? Or fleeing old haunts? Whatever your background, the salient question is this: will you rise to the occasion when Belhaim needs you?

Character Creation

Ability scores: Point buy 20.

Starting level: 1st.

Races: Anything goes, but be ready to justify the more unusual options. I’ll also readily admit a certain bias against said options although I will try my level best to consider your kitsune trickster fairly.

Classes: Anything goes once more even if I'll once again confess a bias against more 'recent' offerings. Again, I will endeavor to be fair, but a curse upon you and your house if you make the read the word salad that is the occult classes.

HP: Max at first level, half rounded up or roll for it on every subsequent level.

Starting wealth: Average for class.

Traits: 2 with no drawbacks allowed. Which is to say that your PC may of course be as flawed as you care to make them, but you won't get any mechanical benefits for doing so.

Alignment: Good is not a requirement, but do keep in mind that the original module was written with heroes in mind. Again, be ready to justify your choice.

Third party material: No thanks.

House rules:
Background skills
Automatic bonus progression
Elephant in the Room
Fractional base bonuses

Application

Character sheet: As complete a sheet as you can manage is preferable, though don't worry too much if you struggle filling out your equipment or allocating that one leftover skill point.

Background: Go nuts. I can't and won't demand a novel from you, but I appreciate a well realized PC. Try to wrangle together a paragraph detailing origin, occupation and objective at the very least.

Appearance: Helpful for your fellow players to have some idea what they're looking at.

Roleplay sample: Really not a necessity. That said, if you're up for writing a vignette with your application, there's no better way to showcase your character and writing. If not that, a favorite post from another PC of yours will suffice.

Anything else? The above are just guidelines and should be taken as such. Really, include whatever you think serves your application best. Do you have some thoughts on where you'd like to take the character? Perhaps you even have an arc in mind? Is your PC based on some other figure, whether from pop culture or history? Have a fun build idea? Throw it all in there.

See the title. I'm gearing up for running Mummy’s Mask and overall I like what I see. Fun dungeon-tombs and all the sand drenched fantasy-Egypt flavour a GM can ask for. It’s good stuff, far better than might be anticipated for one of Paizo’s lesser played APs. Kudos to the authors.

But I’m having trouble with the Scorched Hand, the rival adventuring group in the first part. Specifically the trouble is with the finale, and more specifically how they are the finale. The AP proposes a big ol’ fight to the death as the climax and I cannot for the life of me imagine how this is supposed to go down. The problem I’m having is the discrepancy between how the SH is portrayed vs their actions vs how the AP assumes the PCs will act.

Why oh why would the SH try to kill the PCs in the finale or indeed any part of the game? As portrayed, these are not battle hardened murder-hobos for whom violence is the first solution to any problem. On the contrary, the AP does a wonderful job of humanizing the group! Several pages are dedicated to exploring the members, even specifying that some might very well turn rogue and help the PCs. On the whole the SH consist of just college kids out on their sabbatical year, traveling about to explore their one very niche, very nerdy pet topic. Never mind murder-hobos, the SH are one animal companion short of being the Scooby-Doo gang! Alright, so their Velma is a bit cold, but I still can’t see how to justify them attempting murder. Especially over exploration rights to the already ransacked temple to a god half of them don’t even follow.

And this is where their bizarre motivation intersects with the bizarre motivation the AP expects of the PCs. Why would the PCs fight them? Not only does the SH fighting the PCs not make sense to me, the opposite holds true too. All the SH wants to do is check out this one temple. Take some etchings of hieroglyphs, write down some texts, utterly harmless academic stuff. Why would the PCs oppose this? Even if we assume the PCs to be uncharitable, I can’t imagine my own players (nor most players) denying the SH this if they just got some cold hard dosh for their trouble. Heck, money is even largely what the AP assumes the PCs are here for. The entire finale of the AP is invalidated by a 45 second conversation. “Hey, Mr/Ms PC, could we maybe look through your exploration site? Heck, we’ll forego to right to our own site and hand it to you.”

Would this be against the rules for the venture as set out by the Pharasmins? Yes, but seeing as they have seemingly no way to enforce these rules, I can’t imagine player and non-player characters having a problem with it. What am I missing here? How did you justify the PCs vs SH finale in your own game? And thanks in advance for any insight.

It is a glorious morning in glorious Oppara. And for once this descriptor, ‘glorious’, feels appropriate rather than just one part of the tired verbiage of politicians and patriots. The perfectly straight streets of the capital are as festive as can be, with the Taldan green-and-blue banners hanging from the second floor of every house in sight. Much of the cheerful crowd below are similarly colour coded, whether in wearing patriotic clothing for the occasion or bearing flags. Some are even painted. And what a crowd! Boulevard and back alley alike, every avenue is near-literally overflowing with people, young and old, and more amazingly still every one of them seems to wear a smile. And with them come the peddlers. Rows upon rows of street vendors selling traditional Taldan foods - anchovy skewers, anglebobs, canal crossings, clamguards, jubilee pie, honeyflake, long wine, yonder tarts, and more – even regional delicacies from separated provinces such as Andoran mince and Chelish raven cake. Merchants hawk wooden swords and handheld Taldan flags to children, while their little more discerning parents inspect replica banners from that pride of the nation, the old Armies of Exploration. All this hubbub should reasonably be expected to come with a certain degree of disorder, but this is not the case – the well cobbled streets are remarkably clean and the city guards, looking very fashionable in their uniforms, are plentiful. More amazingly still is that the constables seem hardly necessary. A pervasive sense of nationalist camaraderie hangs over the city, promoting goodwill among all the loyal subjects of Taldor. Yes, it’s a good day to be Taldan – the greatest kingdom in the world!

It is in the midst of this patriotic fervour that we find a Riveh Germinus. It is day five of Exaltation Week, one of the most important national holidays in Taldor, and the nation’s capital has swollen from its usual size of 100.000 to double that. This makes Oppara larger than any other city in the Inner Sea region, save Absalom. Visitors from every corner of the kingdom and beyond flock to Oppara in this week to enjoy their rare free time and take part in the celebrations, all of which culminate in the Grand Day of Exaltation – where a specially chosen commoner is made part of the nobility by the Grand Prince himself. Small wonder that it is a favourite holiday of the average citizen, who otherwise has few prospects in life. It is on a day like this that the glory days of Taldor don’t appear so distant, and one almost manages to believe the rhetoric of senators and noblemen who insist that the kingdom has never been stronger.

Riveh Germinus, however, has reason to be sceptical. Even putting aside geopolitical reality, the young man is in the capital for business, not pleasure, and quite suspect business at that. In his quest to restore the family’s name and honor, Riveh’s consistent obstacle has been simply getting his foot through the door. Taldor’s upper class might be vast, but it is also heavily restricted; a young man with his reputation (not to mention dusky appearance) finds just reaching the movers and shakers of society an almost impossible challenge, and it is exactly these people he must consort with to take back what is rightfully his.
And yet - Just a few weeks ago some hope arrived in the form of a letter. The anonymous message was an invitation to lunch in Oppara, where the mysterious sender wrote that he or she hoped they could discuss a transaction: in exchange for some undefined services, they promised to grant Riveh access to high society. The date for the meeting was today and the place some tavern called Coren’s Last Meal – the very tavern the ifrit now spies on the other side of the street, through glimpses between the crowds. The dubious letter represents a slim hope, to be sure, but hope nonetheless. Even assuming the offer is legitimate, the sender no doubt seeks to use Riveh for their own purposes; even a disgraced nobleson such as he has uses to the right person. But the opportunity might be too good to ignore.

Somewhere in the city bells ring, barely audible over the din of people. The time is eleven hundred hours. The scheduled meeting is 11:30. What to do?

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