Pnakotus Detsujin's page

Honestly, to me this plot never made sense.
Even from a mechanical point of view ... If we suppose that Anastasia is wearing her queen's regalia, then she's forced to wear a crown that give all non winter witches around her 3d6 cold damage at round.

Either Baba Yaga deactivated that function, or she strongly changed Anastrasia to allow her to bear such crown.

Again, i would honestly blame the crone. To me, Baba is allowing this just to mess with the world, hoping to have another of her escaped daughters to come out from hiding to reclaim their legacy from an unfortunately inexperienced foreign princess. Moreover, to me she's also aware that the world could have ended in 4718, so putting Anastasia for a few years on the throne was to her a minimal investment. Now that we've survived the doomsday dawn, the old, hateful crone may well change idea.

Indeed. Barzy does not want those Milanians to enjoy there tee.
Regardless, i would suggest this:

Rexus has no problem talking about his sex change. I just don't think it would weight at any level for a person that the pc meet when he was almost mugged and that's gonna discover to have lost his family.

However, i would justify in game is frail constitution by having in his backstory to have shifted his gender in a non secure way, maybe by trying to produce by himself/herself the potion.

Being a sorcerer and of noble birth, he should have had all the education and resources needed to either buy it or, if that was somehow against his family wishes, produce it by himself.

By having consumed a defective potion, he could still be in need to assume some kind of medicament to adjust some lesser ailment, but that seems a very background element, unless Rexy gets in from of the stage by actually being a noble heir of one of the houses of Kingarto.

Thanks for the advice! I chose bearded devil because that's the contract type she had, but I suppose she could be promoted to a more powerful type, such as an Ice Devil or Erinyes.

Made her a Bearded devil, but have her riding on top of the dragon, using a long polearm, so she can Aoo people striking at Rivozair.

Hello. Here's my suggestions:
1 - Have Rivozair being transformer to an adult planar hell dragon
2 - Have Nox be at least level 14. The bearded devil gives here too little option to matter in this fight. She cannot even fly.
3 - Have Barzillai be able to further evolve during combat into a more brutish, melee oriented being (i would suggest a malebranche from old 3.5) to express how much fighting with the Pc's has broken him body and soul.

Maybe the pit fiend appears and ask Barzillai if he wishes his help, Barzillai replays a desperate yes, shredding his pride ... and the Pit fiend promotes him by fusing him with another being.

Thank you. I'll follow your posts with pleasures.

Regarding what I did differently, first and foremost I expanded Mokmurian powerbase by having him create a league of his own operating in Kaer Maga. Namely, for a While the "Runelords" were a bunch of mages that had taken the titles of those ancient lords with the intent of spreading Thassilonian magic and culture. I put inside there a few of the named wizards from the modules, like that creepy guy from the golemworks in Magnimar, and that conjurer Balam.

I did so to allow Kaer Maga to become a center for the cult of Lissala, which was directed by the lamias of Xin Shalast, while also using the module Seven Swords of Sin to insert in the plot the awakening and gathering of those weapons as a sign of the runelord's awakening. I'll tell you more about this when you talk about your version of Kaer Maga.

I also used the city of Riddleport as a setting for another branch of Lissala's faith, which was however from the side of Krune, which took the role that you gave to the Aspis consortium in your story.

Dear Sir, You have started a great opus here.

Four Years ago, I did the same.
A great history of the Runelords, with 2 different teams of players, mixing the very same modules.
Thought, obviously, we difference in some aspects.

I would really like to assist you in this endeavor if you so wish.

So, in your campaign 2 Pcs actually survived, with the paladin getting a final moment of awesome, doing on this regard better than both Arnisant and Iomadae never did! Awesome.

I want to say something funny, possibly even provocative.

I believe that, if we have to see a god dogma inside the society in which it develops, then Erastil ... tecnically "invented" this philosophy of the patriarchal society.

I mean, both Thassilon and Azlant were - for what i get - beyond this ideas. I mean, humanity greatest historical figure was at that point the mythic warrior Savith, a lady that was able to unite the barbarian azlants and behead a god.

To me, in the age of Darkness, with all the destruction and the skies covered in dust ... Erastil "coded as a dogma" this viewpoint to ensure the humanoid races would survive, by having their cultures - which, in those centuries, were falling into barbarism - to preserve the females by having them not expose themselves to battle. To balance this, it forced the males to take more risks and view themselves as more "expendable", and therefore "heroic", to ensure the survival of society.

Problem is, after that era of darkness passed, and the world become less dangerous, the culture - images, expectations, shared believes outside the faithful - it had created lasted and further developed/degenerated into what is now.

What do you think about this?

"Mongrelfolk" are probably just a kind of fleshwarp now, right?

I dunno. I believe there is a distinction between the "classic" Mongrelfolk that live in Nar-Voth, and have a culture - i don't know if it was ever explored - and the "freak" mongrelfolk that sometimes pop un under cities because ... reasons?

I would really like to see this explored in other media. I look forward to Wrath of the Righteous also for that.

Sorry, but i think this post is getting a bit off topic.

To me, "edginess" its not related towards how gods of the setting preach something, but how this reflect the society. The fact that a mysoginistic belief system such as diabolist has got a sorcerous queen at its top proves to me that divine dogma is generally less impactful on everyday lives than people's actions and ambition in Golarion.

I mean, in Pf2 we got a Dwarf High King (regent, overlady?) that's thinking how to MAKE PEACE WITH THE ORCS, following the dictated of one of their first mythical ruler, which - from what i get - is against a part of the "divine mandate" for their species/culture.
Yet, she's thinking about it, and no archon's popping down to say "Lady, just kill the greyskins. They're Rovagug's progeny"

Moreover, is /or should/ a god be envisioned inside a specific culture?
Should their "belief system" be viewed as separated and distinct, in their pure forms, from how those are adapted into a particular society?

Problem is, having so many deities in PF, it's normal to have different interpretations of their dogmas, since - and this should be remembered - gods do not think as humans or elves, and their dogmas represent always an "endgame" that looks beyond the lives of every single worshipper.

We all know Desna is a CB lovecraftian elder goddess, but we like to think of her as a naked fairy because that's a dreamlike, not threatening image of Azathoth's little butterfly. We know her white elf visage was gifted to the Kellids, and carried by the varisians into the shared imagination of the empire of Taldor. As such, even her stories and her doctrines were inherited and interpreted from that culture, and are not "hers" until they diverge too much from the image she crafted.

Moving on the topic of culture, i would like to take the Mongrelfolk as example, for I can see way they are not considered a "people": they have no culture, cause they are generally a (recent?) offshoot of humanity that somehow "pops up" in certain urban settings.

Yet, they are sometimes presented as an underground offshoot of azlant, and as such they should have an incredible culture, since they can mate with "EVERYTHING" down there.

Maybe the lack of content about mongrelfolk is, trurly, one of the edgiest things in golarion: they should be the most unique culture of them all, without racism or diffidence, and yet ... we ignore them.

What a battle! Congratulations!

I mean, if i may say something, your TB could have done way more area damage with spells like horrid wilting or hungry darkness, but i believe he wanted to see your pc's bloodied ...

So, from your last posts, Arazni ... proved how much petty she's, by condemning Ulthun to get eradicated just because his ancestors disrespected her? And what about GIldais? He was still "alive". Did he got teleported away, or remained?

Can you tell us what happened next? How was your session epilogue? Where your players happy from the result?

I would like to say i'm very glad we see a few wizards from then Magaambyan tradition helping out with the process of restoring Sarkoris.

To me, it shows maturity and an humanitarian sprint when - in a society of easy teleport - people for half the world away can come to assist in the recovery of a land the shall now easily exploit themselves.

I mean, i would have seen cheliax or Razmirian run there and try to grab as much land as possible, but we don't seem to get it. Correct me if i'm wrong.

We finished Trial of the Beast at our last session, and there are some issues with Schloss Caromarc.

Yes, that is a problematic part of the adventure. Many have posted different revisions of how to rewrite the whole dungeon to grant greater meaning to the exploration of the castle (i mean, a flying character at level 6 it's a thing, and they can basically skip the whole thing with no ill effect).

Another problem is that, if the pc free the beast of his charges, it may well tell them how to reach Caromarc, confessing only to them that "the doctor who created me possess the means to make me do things against my will. If you find him, you'll find the truth of why i did that robbery". In this case, the 1 scary trap of the bridge is rendered mute if the beast advises the Pcs against it.

So, to summarize:
- 1) the trolls have no reason to be there, unless the DM makes them part of the plot.
- 2) the intelligent constructs inside the place should try to communicate with the pcs to tell them that their creator is in jeopardy. What's stopping Waxwood to go fetch the other golems? His word should count as caromarc
- 3) there should be some kind of WW activity in the castle, cause otherwise they are leaving a low of resources there to be looted by someone else, or possibly some proof of their involvement
- 4) Auren Vrood needs to have wasted 2 limited wish scrolls to cast the trap on the second bridge, or have worked on if for more than 1 week. Either remove it, or make it to activate only when the first pc passes over, and be a different monster (i suggest a fire elemental that burns down the bridge in 1 round!)
- 5) the beast should be already at the castle, possibly almost on the rift next to the thrall tower, defeated by the other construct. If the pcs reach him before they go into the tower, he can say that there is a monster, but that the lighting of the tower can restore him if the activate it.

Good luck with this fight.

Sure, you are right.

Let us return to the main topic. This is a post about Golarion "edginess", and i'm glad that the potential bad ending of this PF2 campaign is not a big explosion, but a complex process that allows people to fight back to a certain degree.

Regarding the curse itself, The book express how this destruction arrives in waves, and it strikes to me as a gradual deterioration (weeks, months i suppose). This is also more realistic, thought to me falls in the same logic fallacy of this whole adventure: that somehow 5 thousand years of people living and building on Korthos did not "enrich" (on both a physical and magical way) the land more that the magical presence of those orbs.

Let us take another "edgy" topic of this AP, the ruin (slow genocide?) that Aroden's actions produced upon the Xulgath. This is treated with the proper respect and consideration to me. That's it way, way different from the approach of the Serpent Skull Ap, were the objective was to stop the resurrection of a evil god that would have united a fractured society into a (certain?) menace for the surface dwellers: in that scenario, there was no chance to "talk to the snakes", i believe.

Err, you are making latter sound not that bad when its less that and more "oh crap. We are going to die and we will see it coming"

As in, its not something you can fight, its very biblical apocalypse targeting the island where best case scenario is evacuating as many people as possible which probably won't happen in time considering pcs are likely dead at that point :p

I would be worried, but the point of many AP is to actually fight the apocalypse and win. A society like Absalom can, with a certain degree of difficulty, pull together the resources to either contrast or overcome this curse. Aroden never had the means to truly destroy what he created, and that's because humanity outgrow azlant, in both good and evil.

This is the flaw of the AP as a whole: the idea that the life of hundreds of generations of people living and cultivating the island of Korthos are not what makes the island itself work and live, but are accessories to some batteries stolen to the lizard people.

Regarding the World-ending scenarios, I'm glad we don't have that, cause many stories do not need such dangers. To me, they detract from the Pc's drama. Moreover, such events impact on the "modular" reality that are Golarion nations.

I'm also glad that the Worldwound was closed, cause its existence was a bit too much, and i never felt it's true impact on avistan's society and culture. Both Ustalav and the Mammoth lords realm where too little affected by such presence.

Regarding the differences between PF1 and PF2, lets us take Absalom as an example.

I want just to point out that, in the setting, the Worldwound was closed and the Apocalypse Dawn prophetized for 5000k years was stopped. Moreover, 3/4 apocalypse level events have been avoided.

Golarion remains a very dangerous place, with complex villains, but the "destroy the world" endings have been - and probably shall be - toned down, or the destruction limited to certain part of the settings.

I see this as a toned down edginess.
Moreover, greater representation leads also to stronger story possibility. The problem is, it crashes pre-constructed ideas

Like, what about a conflict to bonify/repopulate Sarkoris? That would be an interesting adventure, but a conflictual ones. What about only monster race can thrive there until the region has been properly restored?

However, i must admit that certain enemy npcs of the setting are treated with heavy plot armor and - most importantly - without greater involvement with the plot. No one says that Strahd von Zarovich, from Ravenloft, got plot armor because he'll be around, in your players face, and will be not only the prime mover of that adventure, but also forced to both play smart and manipulate the players to achieve his ends.
Without this involvement, the (structural) plot armor that the stories give to certain npcs become unbearable.

Hello. It seems all but one of your characters have options that allows them to hit the enemies of the prison, which would be otherwise difficult do face due to be ethereal.

If you have problems, just use the environment: allows the ghosts to use magical darkness, mists or move more easily up and down, forcing your players to use prepared actions to overcome them, or modify themselves the environment.

Otherwise, leave some other undead left by the WW to kill the Pcs. If they seem very strong to you, have the Slatterman send them swarms of ants without actually engaging them, from the lower levels. Those swarms exist for 7 rounds. If they reach your players in 3-4 rounds, they can engage them for 3 rounds before disappearing.

So, we have an issue where one of my players’ work forcibly changed his hours, so we’re having to figure out a temporary time to play while he changes his schedule back.

The party learned about the Scion of Nightmares, and I regaled the party with the story of Tar-Baphon and the dragons Karramorros, Naraga, and Istravek, so now the party knows that Istravek is currently occupying Tumbaja Mountain.

I applaude your decision to allow players to upgrade their items.

Our party recruited 2 ncps from Ascanor, since it was no longer a safe place, and offered them to work with us as travel assistance (Quiener Steimor and Yvonne Tinzbell). After that, we also took the bleached girl and the baby from book 4 with us, and also Horace Croon and Jaleen Halrush, the apothecary (mostly because they didn't know what was going on with the skum, and to save them from retaliation from Illsmarsh people afer our party destroyed their cult, their leaders, and everything)

The question is... Now what?
I mean, the AP is full of interesting npcs with some sort of unfortunate past who may need a "second chance" to make thing right. Until now, we managed to solve somehow those peoples problems (we paid Kendra's living fees so she can continue her studies to work in Lepistad's university, and also managed to give "Franky" a family inside the circus gang as a invisible worker)

I believe in Lepidstatd there is an entire hidden mongrelfolk society that exist somewhere in the dungeons of the city, and that those 2 alchemists had under control by wearing the skin of one of their leaders. You could help those people too ...

First session of the book tonight. I'm glad I was prepared for the problems because man...there were problems. My players had a bit of an off night due to varieties of exhaustion IRL, so the session felt a bit flat. Special note: per request of the players, we agreed to upscale the AP to character level 20 by the end. This resulted in them being level 17 for this session.

Upon arriving outside the wood, the PCs decided to...

Hello, Serisan. I invite you to se my rewriting of book six, since it tries to solve a few of the problems you are pointing out. You may find in in the general chat for TG.

Thank you for this long campaign log, KingTreylll's.

Hello, i'll had my mix regarding B's incompetence.

It all depends of how your players have acted against him.
If they openly antagonize him in their heroes persona, then B's gotta have a deeper grudge, which will lead to deeper plans and actions. After all, in his mind he's already "won", by having reached all its objectives.

Regarding book 3, it's possible that in the book Barzillai is not at the gala because it's misogyny and social awkwardness is so rampant that he cannot feel himself ok if surrounded by masked women in gala dresses. In my version of the story, B was present at the gala (the bone devil was instead hidden in the orchestra), and was attacked by not other that an evil version of the party, who pretended to have him mortally wounded and thrown downstairs from the pits on the platform, to later announce how they would have murdered all the presents to be "complacent" towards the "late thrune" will.

In book 4 I had him kidnap a Pc's ally, and then systematically strike each of their lesser refuges by his blue dragon ally, while he attacked another one in person with at least 2 npc from the temple. This forced all the pcs forces inside the lucky bones, there they were attacked by a mix of dottari (a few of the loyal ones) and two hellknights troops, backed up by devils - which, unfortunately, do not work well as you would believe when in a chokehold ... Then, after losing castle kingarto, B regrouped inside the temple and started his plans to summon hell itself!

I've had written a long post over representation, but this is not the right place to approach this topic.

I'll be funny, and protest over the fact that, of the 50 characters, we've got only 1 tiefling, and she's basically a catgirl, and without a tail. Therefore, I shall cry out, towards the sky:

"Brothers and sisters, rise your horns, whip your tails and beat your hooves! All tiefling shall be properly represented as the tailed, horned and hooved wonders we can be!"

I fear it is so.
Problem is, the pcs are supposed to work within the boundaries of society, and therefore cannot make most of the loot from book 2. Between phantasms, skeletons and constructs or slaves of their enemies, there is hardly a moment when the pcs can fight many enemies at once that do carry interesting loots.

Moreover, many of the treasure they find in later parts are very strange objects that would probably better be destroyed, and than may require extra thought before they are sold.

To mitigate that, i would suggest to create a "safety net" for your party in the form of one of those secret association of Ustalav, which not only assist them into gathering infos, but also partially finances them, or makes the work behind the scenes to less the pc's loot while they are adventuring.

As a player, i'm at book 5 and i really hope our DM will give a few npcs way much equipment, cause right know we have at level 12 the money of a level 10 party (my estimates). While this may not seem a great gap, it's actually like 35% behind the money we are supposed to have (around 65k against the 108k from the gamemastery guide).

How are you all handling the "no merchants" aspect of the first book? Does the problem persist after book one? (I'm kind of broke right now, just moved, so couldn't splurge on all the books).

Do I tell the PCs that the residents of Roslars Coffer are too unwell to handle buying/selling? Even if they were able to do it, it wouldn't work because the items wouldn't be of the material plane anymore, right?

Does it get addressed in the AP book, and I just missed it?

My problem is ... the pc find themselves in an abandoned cities, twice. While the first book is without a merchant option, this is in the spirit of the "survival horror genre" i suppose. What I fear it's a problem is that, both in Roslars Coffer and Vigil, once the cities are destroyed, all the LOOT inside the shops should become free loot. Radiant fire do not strip magical proprieties. In a city of 450 people around, if you know where to look you can find thousands upon thousands of gold pieces and non perishable goods. Heck, in Vigil, you could make a point that the pcs may think to look around for survivors AND weapons to fight the WW. All those weapons or spells that they may have wanted to buy before the city got nuked are still in the shops, while their owners are unfortunately dead.

Now, the adventure gives you narratively something "else" to do, namely protect people or escape from undead horrors. But I think, if your characters decide they want to quest around in ruined Vigil, after they helped people escape, possibly to loot or to recover relics of Lastwall, you should not punish them, but create a sidequest around it.

Goblins really have the sublime good fortune of not carrying the kind of baggage humans have around with them. Like, just imagine how hard it must be to come from the ancestry responsible for triggering Earthfall, or to know that half of the major catastrophes in the world can be traced back to Aroden, the human who became the god of humanity, and all of his traipsing around ignoring divine conventions, creating immortal liches, and provoking the Worldwound.

You are perfectly right.

For the record, we got: 16/17 humanborn villains, 1 elf, 1 genie, 1 snakeman, 1 lizardman (but was Aroden the motive), 1 fey, 1 evil A.I., 1 giant, 1 evil god, 1 hobgoblin and 1 aboleth.

I really hope the next A.P. it's about an evil dwarf ...

I propose you to use the map from the castle of Book 2 of Wrath of the Righteous.

I feel there is some kind of fault in the way the story is presented. Unless the orbs take away propriety from the land they are in, removing them from Absalom should have ill effects no more. That land has been cultivated for more than 4 thousand years, and made fertile by the efforts of its people, and by the bodies of millions and millions of beings who died on that island and become dirt and soil that mixed with the original sea soil. Even the salt in the earth should have been reduced after thousands of years of rain.

Unless the orbs take away something else, i cannot see that island become a desert.

I've done something like this.
To me, the problem of such a massive crossover it's the lack of a middle term objective for the Pc to achieve, and the fact that the goals of each runelords may seem too much different and unfocused.
I would suggest to create a group of middle tier antagonist to weave the plot around their actions.
In my situation, I've had Mokmurian + the cult of Lissala working together, with the cult's inner agenda to free Krune.
Moreover, Mokmuriam (who in my story was possessed by a soul shard of Karzoug) had a dual identity, which saw him active as a human in Kaer Maga to create a so called "council of the runelords" under him, a group of misfit spellcasters which worked to "usurp" the other runelord's influences by reclaiming thassilon's heirlooms, such as the seven swords of sin or the shards. With this, you can have a few npcs from both adventures and scenarios be armed and directed by Mokmurian and his allies.

Greetings.
If you want to have your characters go down inside Gallowspire, i would suggest a kind "far finale" scenario, which have your players a 8 years timeskip, and then have them play the s10.98 pathfinder scenario Siege of Gallowspire, which sees them as veterans being contacted by pathfinder society to lead the exploration.

In this way, you can have your level 15 players actually enjoy having reached such threshold and become something important in Ustalav, or having other adventures, when then the time comes to return again to a very different gallowspire.

Obviously, at the end of the dungeon they should find the WW. Either himself, or a non mythic version of himself created by a certain obelisk, which is eager to punish the players for having stopped "his" freedom 8 years before.

I Love how the first part of this post is basically tyrant grasps ... but a bit better!

I must make a correction.
In Dungeons of Golarion, it's written that Baphon had "consorts", and many beings of strange nature. They are describes as all undead, or at least undead like.
So, Baphon's "girlfriend" could be everything.

I like my interpretation, but we can literally go crazy here. I invite you all to propose your own OG as the WT consort.

She was brought back as something by Baphon when he returned. She could not be active or relevant before that event, cause if so Aroden would have probably intervened again.

Now, i think she could be a mummy lord of sort. She's an ancient queen buried.
That could be classic.

But an interesting possibility would be to have her, in life, be a kalistrade prophet, and have actually achieved her own heaven. Until baphon's called her back, forcing her soul into a golden green body, and making her a failed prophet.

In this new, unique form, she has become a bitter, miserable being, which tries to regain what she's lost, but cannot. She converted into an urgathoan follower, hoping to regain the ability to "feel", but as a construct she cannot "proper" indulge into the excess she would like, and so she feasts of the bodies of other kalistrade followers, to absorb in herself their afterlives, in the hope, one day, to regain hers.

Now, as a statblock, i would use a martial class. I see her as an unique failed prophet monk 16/rogue 4 with the ability to consume not only gold and wealth, but also the "souls of the wealthy" to gain more power and abilities. Possibly a "soul scent" ability too. I don't think she should be another caster, but there is always the bard solution (starting by Queen Ileosa's stats).

I like the idea of Baphon having a melee powerhouse around, also able to shoot blast of fused gold and that he has to "applease" by gifting her jewels she eats.

Ok. let us be serious here. Baphon died around 59 years old, and he had descendent, so he was probably married. He was a wizard king, after all. He had to be a queen or similar at his side. We have to understand if this "consort" is the same one he was married when he was alive, or was she met/romanced when he was the Whispering tyrant?

I believe that, as a Lich, Baphon would have not felt the need to "marry" anyone.
He's described as a volatile, violent and self centered being. So, he's either married to some kind of trophy consort, or with someone that he "wants to have" of his old life.
Since we know not history of someone "forced" to become the tyrant's wife (cause if there was, Arazni would have probably plotted with them) I would therefore propose the following solution:

Baphon's consort is his first wife, the one he met and wed 4 millennia ago: The Golden Queen of Grafar (no other names are needed).
She was possibly one resident of Kestrillon (Grafar's previous name), or someone that plotted their ruin. She helped young Tar achieve it, and they bonded over that carnage. I imagine her as a ruthless queen, but with a twist: she could have been a true kalistocrat, and have different ideas from his husband about life and the afterlife.
She was the one that kept together the kingdom while Baphon was away, taming dragons and sacking cities, and was the one that kept for a while Grafar going after her husband was murdered by Aroden. She was, however, too killed, either by Aroden or by her's many, many enemies, and buried in Grafar's to be forgotten.

I would advise to not adventure along this way. The radiant fire it's an ill conceived power, and everywhere its used it has different effects for no clear reasons.

The whole issues of bodies it's one of those: the radiant fire should not leave bodies, yet we get zombie animals and similar stuff.
I would suggest to keep it vague ... or to explain in game that, everything a radiant fire shard is detonated, the effects are determined by what happens in the dice rolls:
you roll 100d10 negative energy and 100d10 positive energy.
If negative energy wins, it's dead zone and zombie apocalypse. If positive energy wins, it's immediate, revolting flesh cancer, followed by rapid grown of forests and the spontaneous formations of life forms from oozing pits of the rapidly living and dying creatures.
I would remember that this weapon can "create tapirs from nothing" ...

Hey all!

Here's my suggestions.

- Book2, 3 and 4 have got a "berserk vibe" to me. You should watch that anime.

- The masked lady we could easily be roleplayed as Daenerys Targaryen, both as the character and the story impact

- TB should be more present in the whole story, and hammed as much as possible. There are many liches in the current media, so i would suggest to pick the one from Adventure time as a model.

- Book 5 is greatly different from the whole story. This is done to allow players to breath, but also "cuts them away" from the main events of the history. I would suggest to greatly reduce it's contents and allow the Pc to stay in the country of Vigil more time.

- I've proposed in the forums a complete rewrite of book 6, to proper bound the story together and allow more character interaction at the end. I'd advise you to read through it, because there are a few other problems i've found in the campaign which are summarized there.

I notice, after 7 months, that the last post was never published.
I shall remedy.

The last thing i would like to propose, in this effort to rewrite book 6, it's a last scene of greater significance. For what i don't like from the battle is that, after TB reached a certain threshold, it just starts a cutscene, and all the freedom the players are given is to overcome a Save and possibly shield 1 npc. What I propose, is that the Pc's can actually Choose how they are going out.

Now, as we have stated, since TB is maintaining control of his armies, he cannot disengage even if the Pc's can repel him, nor is in his character to retreat. He's gonna be damage, and he's gonna fire. As i've propose, he's gonna try to detonate the Pc's shards from inside themselves, causing a more localized (few hundred meters) explosion around him. He should, therefore, have some kind of contingency to allow him to auto escape from a radiant fire blast, which is not in his stats. Wise DM should give him such.

As we know, the point of book 5 is to give the Pc's a chance to avoid this, and redirect the WW's spell on his shard's and himself. This not only overcome any contingency he might have, but creates the following situation:

When TB activates the radiant fire (a mythic spell that is a standard action to use, and that can overcome AMF), each Pc (both the living one's and any of the dead ones, whose souls are still present in the battlefield, even if they were made undead by Baphon) can react, by opposing Baphon's will.
While this happens, both parties get on the ground, from the pain and the energies of their respective shards.

This forces a clash of wills between Baphons +22 will save and the party, which can be done using the rules of an aid another action to the biggest roll made by one of the Pcs. While it's possible that the group beats Baphon outright, between Mythic points, the use of mythic wish and bad rolls, it should be clear that the Lich can actually overcome this. However, each pc has a choice that the Lich lord does not have: allow their fragments to reunite with the Tyrant's. This action destroys their bodies, but allows their soul to follow for a few moments the shard inside baphon's hand, and through this, to spread into baphon's body. This action - which could have any ramification outside of this scene - instantly gives the WW a penalty equal to that Pc Level. This means that, in the worst chase scenario, the sacrifice of 2 Pcs weakens BT so much that he goes from a +22 will to a -14 (assuming the Pcs are level 18).

This not only give each pc the chance to actually die and be utterly destroyed by striking down baphon with their own souls, but also allows a few others to actually survive this ordeal ... but not for long.
Cause as soon as Baphon explodes, that's radiant death for everybody in a 20 miles radius ... unless any surviving Pc has something to say about it.
To me, each remaining Pc should be able, at this point, to make that famous DC 30 roll to try to shield someone. However, this action should me made not to save 1 soul, but as many as possible by either containing the total kill radius of the explosion.

Let's say that the Radiant fire auto kills anyone with 20 hd or less in 1-4 miles of the explosion, then 16 hd in the 5-8 radius, then 12 in the 9 to 12, and so on until it just burns and shatter things, without the auto kill. The remaining pcs could either absorb or try to contain this explosion in a way that lesser the radius of the auto kill, and the HD of those targeted by 4 miles and 4 hd.

To do so, each remaining Pc has to "use" their shard to absorb some of the energies. This shatters the shard and probably, but not necessarely, kills them outright, and can have interesting epilogue consequences by DM's choice.

If 2 pcs are able to do such, this action actually saves a few section of the armies fighting in the cairnlands, who still get burned and blown away by the force, but not utterly disintegrated. This also saves the 2 npcs given by the book, if they are still alive.

In my opinion, this allows to have at least 1 pc that will survive these events, and to carry the memories and teaching of his companions in a brighter future. This pc will no doubt have to face the consequences of a fractured soul, destined to fade in time, but that is, to me, a story for a bittersweet epilogue.

If you feel very evil, you could switch the spore mound with a Yangethe. They seems very close to the mi-go, and also with shub-niggurath

Thank you. Giving the brain jars personality is a key thing to do to me.
Those are people, too.
Also, i believe there is the city mayor's brain in one of those, by the book.
Yet, that person can be met in the surface.
Have you thought of an explanation?

Since Mi-Go don't seem to have a clear way of transportation outside the complex, i would suggest to give them such way, like some kind of "phase door" tech, so you can have them easily arrive in the surface, and also allow your pcs to leave the caverns without swimming out.

I believe, originally, there should be a tunnel that connected the Ulat-kini settlement with the caves under udiomede house, but it was "blocked" by the Mi-go. Maybe you can have this tunnel be "re-openable", or give the Mi-go some kind of dimension door tech to explain how they were able to take people from the surface.

Since, i believe, you have to be alive to have your brain harvested, I'm assuming they didn't use their slaves cause any living person would have drown in taken down by the waters. I also don't kind mi-go could have enough preparation to give their specimens ways (anti pressure items, breath water instruments, ecc ...) to survive such travel.

My interest was to understand if, in your rewrite, there can be/has ben a ulat-kini human interaction outside the yoke put on the two populations by Udiomede and, later, the Voltairo. I would like to understand how many, in Illmarsh, are aware of what the neighbors are, and if neighbors care for illmarsh or not.

If you wish to humanize the ulat-kini, i believe you should allow your players to discover there are/can ben some connection outside the pact between the two communities, or at least a vague understanding that the ulat-kini are friendly to the city of illmarsh, and that a few of them share blood with the illmarshians.

I applaude your intent. I'll try to give you a few suggestions.

First and foremost, I think you should ask yourself:
1) how many Skum there are there? Dozens or hundreds?
2) how many of them are descended from humans of Illmarsh, and how many of them are actually thousand of years old. Is there something that keeps their number low, or do they kill each other sometimes due to infighting and violence?
3) How much recently humanborn skums are aware of their past? Do we have a situation in which "old uncles" came from the lake once a month to speak with the sons of their nephews, or those two worlds are divided?

Now, if you want to have the skum with a more sympathetic role, i would suggest to define them not through exposition, but through opposition. You cannot have them just be down there, trapped and with the color draining them.

You could have them "attack" the city of Illmarsh before them are forced to repair inside the tunnels under udiomede house. This could happen during the first night of the pc staying in town. This is not an attack against the inhabitants, however, but it becomes something similar due to what happens.

Here's my proposal: when the cleric skum of shub niggurath calls the Mi-gos, we got a skims between the skum guided by the old warrior that escape from the tunnels and those who stay, which are quickly lobotomized. Your "nice" skums quickly divide to seek help around, from the other, possibly smaller, skulls settlements around the place. While this happens, the iper-intelligent Mi-go quickly develop a strategy to make a counter attack, and also to spread around the gifts of shub niggurath. To do so, a group of them immediately reach Illmarsh, identify a few key figures, and quickly assassinate them, by then taking their places, either by themselves - in the book of lovecraft, sometimes mi-go can literally wear people's bodies - or using "friendly intellect devourers-like beings" that follows them.
I would suggest to have taken: the mayor, one of the lesser priest of the order and possibly another npc. So. When the Skum come, at night, to illmarsh to inform the Voltairo's and get help, the Mi-go spy inside the temple asks fast, and those skum are either attacked by other enemies and forces to retreat, or enough destruction is caused to force their escape.

So the mystery becomes "Why the neighbours, that are usually friendly, have just attacked the church of Gozreh?". Then you have the Voltairo's, who are not completely aware of the situation, believe that Dagon is enraged, and ready to offer another sacrifice/exchange to actually understand what's going on and why they are enraged, while the "rage" of dagon its just a trick planned by the Mi-go. Always the Mi-go then may try to have the pcs directed towards the Voltairo's, to kill them or at least expose the church of dagon, so that the demon's influence gets weaker and they can do more damage in the city. While the pc's kill the voltairo's ad udiomede house, they start spreading the slugs and kidnapping more people. This could become clear if the pc realize, through magic or observation, that one of those npcs is actually a dress from a fungi of yuggoth.

There was a dungeon in a dungeon magazine book that detailed a fire giant cult of Mephistopheles inside an active vulcano. You may take a few maps from there.

Greetings, mighty dire tyrannosaurus
Again, i ask for your wisdom.

Regarding Lepidstadt's Map, first published in Carrion Crown book 2, later in Rule of Fear, I was wondering if the city is supposed to have around some kind of wall.
Cause there are big sections of something that seems to be a city wall, but these structures do not cover the whole perimeter.
Can you explain what those structures are?
Is Lepidstadt build over what seems to be build over an higher ground, and therefore doesn't need walls in certain zones?

Also: adding the outsiders helped, but I really need something else to replace the genetic giants and lieutenants with.

A possibility could be involve a bit of Oni.

They are, however, by Giant lore, evil spirits that steal the giant's bodies. Since you put the steel blessed template, i could see that either the fire giant god got a few oni that are of his faith, or we could have the Oni as a third party that is trying to invade the domain of the fire giant king, which could potentially work as an interesting allied force for the Pcs, but that could - at book 6 - try to double cross them, by possessing the bodies of the giants killed by the Pcs.

The one thing that really bothers me is the inclusion of:

** spoiler omitted **

You choice will moderately change the AP. I see the following problems.

Also, generally, the resources he has at his disposal (and especially the tactics) are unlikely to make for a challenging capstone fight. He's got basically a ton of melee damage potential, mobility (if mounted) and a handful of Dex save AoE damage spells and abilities, all of which are rendered moot by protection from energy and resist energy.

If you wanna be brutal, just have him be under some kind of antimagic effect. Being an artifact, the Orb's power are not suppressed by it. At that point, it's to your pcs to get creative, collect equally powerful artifact-like weapons or similar thing.

Maybe you can make, to make book 6 this completely unfair and broken, that any creature that is in the flying castle and that has not giant blood can be targeted, in certain areas, by a greater dispel magic or a antimagic effect.
That would make the book very troublesome, but at least would keep the challenges as they are, not forcing you to greatly rewrite many encounters to accomodate a magic heavy party.

I believe that sun a marriage would not be from someone "under his station", considering the half fiend fire giant princess is immortal.

Regarding his weakness to some certain spells, my philosophy is that our tyrant is probably not going to fight alone, if given that chance. Having possibly an allied caster could solve that problem.

Thought: make Volstus a 13th level dragonic or stormsoul bloodline sorcerer.

I would advise to keep him as a melee powerhouse. He could be fighting on a gargantuan red dragon, who should more than enough buck up arcane might.

Regarding your answer to my topic, I'm still convinced the Fire King's resources make him the bigger player among those two.

In this scenario, the Pc's objective could simply be infiltrate his kingdom and explore the place until they discover how to do it. This could be done by, fox example, assassinate the only people who can operate it, namely the Royal bloodline.

I suggest this because I really like the idea of a "political marriage" proposed by the king to the storm tyrant, since they are basically equal in resources, and i would suggest to have a npc related to the Storm King past present inside Ashpeak (either as a prisoner or a guest, thought i would suggest the first), and move the Fire Princess inside the Flying castle, having her actively proselytize her god's will.

In this way, not only you got someone thematically relevant from book 5 that acts in book 6, but you can keep the treat of Ashpeak somewhat active, by having this lady able to re-activate the Anvil unless the Pcs don't get her too.