Nemiril Tharbaden's page

1st of Gozran, 4710 AR

It has been a week since the Swordlords of Restov issued charters of exploration for various areas within the Stolen Lands. While other groups were chartered for the Nomen Heights to the east or the Hooktongue Slough to the west, each of you have made your way to a trading post on the border between Brevoy and the region commonly known as the Greenbelt.

An old fort abandoned many years ago, shortly after the Vanishing of House Rogarvia, these days it is known as Oleg's Trading Post. Consisting of four watchtowers connected by wooden palisades, the old fort is easily visible from miles away on the open plains of southern Rostland. The tall grasses, scrub, and occasional stands of trees dotting the area have been cleared away from the area immediately surrounding the fort, and the South Rostland Road runs almost right on up to the thirty-foot wide gate, which has been left open.

There are four buildings inside the fort: a stable, a storage shed, a guest house that likely once served as a barracks for soldiers stationed here, and a squat wooden building that looks to be home to the proprietor of the trading post. Two sturdy wooden tables with benches can be found in between the old barracks and the house. A man can be seen on the roof of the stable, hammering away as he replaces old shingles with new ones. Upon noticing that he has company, he waves down and calls out in a gruff voice, "Make yourselves comfortable, I'll be down shortly!"

Feel free to mingle for a short while until the man finishes his repairs and climbs down to greet you properly. Also, you're all free to make Perception checks to notice additional details beyond what has already been described. Knowledge (geography) will give you some basic knowledge of the general layout of the Stolen Lands (but not much, as it is considered uncharted wilderness these days, left more or less blank on most maps), Knowledge (local) will give more background on the trading post and recent events, and Knowledge (nobility) will fill you in on details of the other groups chartered to explore the Stolen Lands... but that's not likely to be very relevant for the immediate future.

Overhead view of Oleg's Trading Post

Discussion thread for GM Inneliese's Taming the Stolen Lands campaign (Kingmaker Adventure Path)

Please report in here so I know you're in for the game and I don't need to replace you with someone else before the game has even started. I will start up the Gameplay thread this evening after I get home, because I want to have time to also get a few basic maps, images, etc posted.

Quick survey: is everyone okay with me setting up an Obsidian Portal wiki for the campaign to keep track of places, people, 'quests', etc?

I am looking for 4-6 players for the Kingmaker Adventure Path. I have several years of experience playing on Roll20 and IRC, as well as free-form RP on various other PbP forums, and the slower pace of PbP is far more in keeping with my schedule these days. Usually I can post several times per day, but I rarely have the several consecutive hours needed for a proper session, either around a table or via a virtual tabletop.

This campaign will have a few modifications to it, but those will mostly be in the later portions of the adventure path, and I want to focus on just making it to the end of the first book without losing anybody. Without further ado:

On the night of the winter solstice just over ten years ago, the entire royal family of Brevoy mysteriously vanished. With not a single member of House Rogarvia to be found anywhere, House Surtova has seized the Dragonscale Throne and placed its scion, Noleski Surtova, on the throne as Regent of Brevoy. Not all of Brevoy look kindly on the Surtovas, as House Rogarvia forged Brevoy from the warring nations of Issia and Rostland some two hundred years ago, and many Rostlanders resent rule by the Issian Surtovas.

You have received one of the charters being distributed by the Swordlords to intrepid adventurers, and have journeyed to the old border fort described in the charter. Abandoned many decades ago, the fort is presently the home of an entrepreneurial couple who have converted it into a trading post, trading supplies from Restov for furs and other goods the local hunters acquire from the wilderness to the south.

Character Creation

Permitted Sourcebooks: Paizo hardbacks and the Kingmaker Player's Guide only. Right now, that's everything in the PRD plus Inner Sea Gods and the Advanced Class Guide.

Ability Scores: 20 point buy, no stat lower than 8 before racial adjustments.

Race: All core races are permitted. You may use alternate racial traits described in the Advanced Race Guide, but no Featured/Uncommon races.

Class: All non-Eastern classes allowed, maximum of one archetype.

Hit Points: Max for first level, half your hit die plus one for each level after first. (For a Fighter with 10 Constitution, this would be 10 hp at level 1, and 6 additional hp each level.)

Equipment: All characters start the game with 150gp to purchase starting equipment.

Alignment: No evil characters.

Traits: Please select two traits, one of which must be a campaign trait from the Kingmaker Player's Guide. No drawbacks for a third trait.

Description: Keep this in third person perspective and try to avoid using relative terms. Remember, to a kobold, the standards of beauty are vastly different, and your character, however comely in the estimation of most humans, may appear quite ugly and undesirable.

Background: Key points this should cover include, but are not limited to the following.

• How did the character become trained in their current class/profession?
• Why did the character choose to become an adventurer?
• What brought the character to Restov?
• Why did the character accept the Swordlords' charter?

Desired Kingdom Role: Somewhat of a long-term thing, since it could take a couple months or more to get through the first book, but what is your first and second choice for your character's position in the kingdom the party will eventually create?

Roleplay Example: Please include a brief example of roleplaying, based upon your character receiving his/her charter from Lord-Mayor Ioseph Sellemius or one of the Swordlords of Restov, such as Lady Jamandi Aldori.

Edit: I'll keep recruitment open until Friday at noon PDT and make my decision on who to include at that point.

I've been giving a fair amount of thought as to how to do a better job of tying together all the disparate plot points in this campaign, and perhaps even weave in some of the related content that has since been added in supplementary books when something occurred to me. There are/were three wyrms in the region of Brevoy/The Stolen Lands.

1. Ilthuliak is only a wyrm, and likely the youngest of the three, which explains why she partners with Nyrissa.

2. Choral the Conqueror is an advanced great wyrm, and possibly both the eldest and most powerful of the three.

3. Silverstep is likely a great wyrm as well, going by how old he seems to be, but I suspect he's not as old and powerful as Choral.

Black, red, and silver, each lairing on the borders of Brevoy. Ilthuliak in the swamps to the southwest, Choral in the mountains to the east, and Silverstep to the south. Rostland, and more specifically Restov, would likely have been directly in the middle of a triangle drawn between their three lairs.

Given all of this, here's my thinking:

All three wyrms have laired in the region for countless centuries, and likely fought regularly. Ilthuliak, as a black, would have been just as vicious towards Choral as towards Silverstep, so there would have been no alliance between her and Choral against Silverstep. Choral, despite being a powerful red dragon and the eldest of the three, was unable to overcome both Silverstep and Silverstep's unknown fey mother, and Ilthuliak likely would have avoided direct confrontations. Therefore, Choral hatched a plot to assert dominance by conquering the entire nation of Rostland.

With a powerful red dragon threatening to conquer a nearby nation, Silverstep would have been forced to act, and may even have given aid to the Swordlords, only to suffer such a defeat that he retreated not to his lair but rather to the home of his lover in the First World. That Silverstep has remained among the fey ever since Choral conquered Rostland speaks to how soundly he was defeated, and Ilthuliak would therefore have been cowed into submission, no longer challenging Choral's supremacy... directly.

Thus enters Nyrissa. Ilthuliak would have seen Choral as all but unassailable when Nyrissa approached her, and the power Nyrissa offered would have been near irresistible. However, rather than just the promise of Nyrissa bestowing the powers of the primal linnorms on Ilthuliak after ascending as a proper Eldest, I rather like the idea that Ilthuliak plotted the downfall of Choral and his line of dragonblooded descendants by persuading Nyrissa to test her plan for bottling the Stolen Lands on the royal line of Brevoy first.

Nyrissa, being unaware that Brevoy's first king was a great wyrm who now slumbered in the royal treasury while the descendants of the children he bore to an Issian princess ruled the kingdom as his heirs, was far more drained by the effort of capturing him and his family than she expected. She has therefore taken her time recuperating, and it's not until eleven years later that she begins feeling ready to bottle the Stolen Lands, slaying a unicorn in the Narlmarches and sending Ilthuliak to defeat one of Silverstep's young progeny in the Tors of Levenies. (The unicorn horn and a silver dragon's claw being two of the focus items she collected.)

This brings us to the modern day.

My idea is to go ahead with the idea of making Choral as the BBEG after Nyrissa, and for the players to attack Nyrissa with the dual intentions of saving the Stolen Lands and rescuing the Rogarvias. This of course means the players would have to discover that Nyrissa engineered the Vanishing, which could easily result in them believing her to be an ally of the Surtovas, rather than an ally of an enemy of the Rogarvias. Since the Surtovas would probably view the PCs defeating Pitax as an implicit threat, they would likely begin raising armies between books 5 and 6, presenting a threat to the PCs' kingdom. Rescuing the Rogarvias could seem like a peaceful way to defuse tensions, since the Rogarvias would be indebted to the PCs and be able to broker peace, but in reality it frees Choral, who would simply grant them a short reprieve from death as their 'reward', then would depart to reclaim the Dragonscale Throne from the Surtovas and then declare war on both the rebellious Swordlords of Restov and the PC's nation. This would, I feel, tie the whole campaign together much better, by ending things with the very civil war in Brevoy which had been the start of things at the beginning, and providing a truly epic foe for the PCs to defeat. (An APL +5 encounter is quite a challenge, after all, and Choral is statted as CR 25.)

Any thoughts?