Tasfarel's page

So, i´m a little bit late to the party and missed the backing phase of this ap.

We started playing in March this year (since i was expecting the AP out much earlier like a lot of you guys)

My party just defeated the stag lord (i freestyled the first part using the old AP) and they are now eager to build their kingdom.

Since i´m not owning a physical copy yet (preordered it and hopefully will get my hands on it soon) i´m struggeling with the kindom events.

I´m not sure if i could just use the onces in the old AP or if that would cause ballancing problems.

Is there a source where i could sneak peak at the new events?

Having an online source for the maps and handout for all the people you bought the physical book would be great. I´m running an offline table but i´m using digital maps on my gaming table.

I´m not keen on spending $50 just for maps

Same question here. We could not figure out the point of this mechanic. Since the bonus would not stack and you got got 4 leaders to invest you always would choose positions in which every Ability is covered.

Did we miss something here or is there another reason to invest the Treasurer AND Viceroy (since both have culture as key ability and the bonus would only be applied once)?

Here´s a little fun Storry of the final fight in the oasis.

One of my players got freaked out about a advanced horror version of our ork paladin. This player usually is one of the more creative ones in solving issues. So here is what he tried

He snatched the Dream Necronomicon out of the mad poets hand, rushed over to the ork and smacked him in Hope that the Book would consume this nightmare creature.

He was shocked as this did not work and he was standing without weapons in front of this killer machine.

At this moment the Al Hazred blasted the ork with finger of dead, returning to his hut afterwards.

The players heard him muttering "I cannot believe he just did that" to himself while laughing so hard he was gasping for air

So I have a question for those who have run the final fight. Ariadnah's stat block lists that on her second turn she uses Greater Possession. I'm wondering how it was for anyone that ran the game that way SPECIFICALLY for the player who was possessed. In my mind, she'll target our sorcerer (as it says she targets the one wearing the least amount of armor) He's got a +14 against a DC 27, but we all know how dice like to act.

The big thing that I'm worried about, is that she possesses him, and suddenly he just sits out the rest of the fight. I don't find that fun in the slightest for him. Yes I can twirl my evil DM mustache that I now have to make the party kill one of their own, but I'd rather my party have at least some fun, ok not fun, but actually feel like they're doing something, in the final battle. Any recommendations for maybe a spell to replace that with? Or a reassurance that it'll probably be ok?

Honestly same with the maze spell as well. Our poor Paladin will get the brunt of it as the only divine caster, and he's got a sad -1 int which would also just take him out of the fight.

I agree with you that it is no fun for a player who is stuck and can do nothing for an entire fight. But there is something in the spell that might Ariadna consider to drop it early

"If your body is slain, when the spell expires or the host’s body is killed, you are slain"

So, if one of the other players are going to coup de grace her body, she will certainly end the spell to prevent this.

If your players are not getting the idea by themself you can hint it at them that Ariadnas Body is lying motionless where she dropped after casting the spell. So you can have 2-3 rounds of body horror before your players comes to it senses again.

I just want to say, Hoshbagh was a big hit with my players.

I agree. Hosbagh was hilarious. My Players struck a deal with them. They transported him to a major city in exchange for some of his items.

"So my friend, you will not get any money out of us - but imagine to resettle in a nice cosy sewer. And maybe you can start your buisness better there. What is a buisiness with no customers?"

On this ocation i slipped them "Madmen" the voodoo doll because there was no reason that they bought such a thing from him

Planning ahead for my next few game sessions and I am curious what "Demands" other DM's had the Saffron Prince make on their players? Drawing a blank other than kill so and so or such and such? Which is fine but reasoning would he have real or imagined to order the PC's to take out some other denizen of the city?

In my game they skipped this guy alltogether. They where told about the safron prince and there first response was like:

"We have enough problems - don´t bother with more crazy folk. We leave him be."

Keep in mind that magic easily can avoid encounters. I prepared for a long and daunting journey throught the parchlands when the Clerik casts "Wind walk" and the group just raced straight thrugh the desert.

Another time, magic destroyed my planes acured when i introduced the juggernauts. With a anti gravity spell, this deadly encounter went to a nice ballon party

If your players get overwhelmed by madnesses you should remember that the got 2 scrolls of psycic surgery earlier in that AP. Because items used in the dreamlands are still present in the real world, your players can use this spell four times at best.

I'm way back in book three but had this thought when skimming so I thought I'd ask. I'm using milestone leveling instead of XP. When should the party reach 17th level? The wording makes it seem like after the final fight, but that's no fun for the party. Just quickly glancing at the CRs of encounters, I was thinking maybe at the end of part 4? That way they go through all of the final fights at their strongest.

That´s my go for this, too. I guess it would be sad for my players not be able to hurl a Level 9 spell at the BBEG.

What I'm having trouble with is figuring out exactly what Avaric is doing with Erich Zann. He's keeping him in a weakened state... why? What's his plan??

That´s exactly what i was wondering. Nearly much everythingin this AP is described in detail with fantastic background notes - exept of the Avaric Manor. I was a little bit dissapointed that there was no section with a little background on this guy and his plans instead of "He´s Dr. Evil and took Zan prisoner because.... reasons"

Also it´s off topic there is another small complaining to do from my side. Some weeks ago friends of mine gifted me the Strange Aons pawn collection, which is an amazing little tool for this AP. But I noticed that there are some creatures not accounted for which i could understand because of production costs etc. But the one thing nagging me is that there is only 1 Pawn for a leng spider when the actuall encounter features 2 of them.

I´m not a big fan of random encounters in an already well packed AP. In my opinion there are a lot of fights are taking away time which could better be used for rolleplaying time.

I have a 1 year old daughter and a couple at my table also have a very young offspring. So our playtime is fairly limited and depends how the two girls are "behaving".

dndiplomancer wrote:

Sorry if I seemed a bit helpless facing that improvisation bit, it's my first time DM'ing and I expected an AP to be more like "this is how things are supposed to be".

My hat is off to you! This is one of the more challenging Adventure Paths to run. Sounds like you're off to a great start!

Like Quibblemuch already said. Reading you´re checkpoints it seems you have done a really good job about this.

Keep up this good job and don´t hesitate to ask the swarm :-)

The book doesn't really say how to get out of The Soul. How did others narrate/explain this part? Did you require them to use Fly to get back out, or add some other mechanic?

In my game there was a teleportation circle they could use after the guardian was defeated.

I have a question about the Oasis. Is the doubles fight going to be too easy if I don't do the tree fight? The tree really just seems unnecessary for the story, and it really doesn't make sense for it to occur and then the Mad Poet walks out and is all like "oh hello, didn't know you were here." So is the party going to be too strong for the final fight without it? Any unique experiences in general that anyone had with this section would also be appreciated.

In my opionion this adds to the strangeness of the encounter. I had an guest player acting as the mad poet. He did not mention the destroyed tree with one word - my player where freaked out by this even more. The guy playing the poet just discarded the "priceless" presents like; " Oh thats nice - just drop it there, will you?" He also threw one item over the shoulder, ensuring the pc´s that this is a nice gift. The look on their faces was priceless.

We recently finished this story arc and had some great results.

** spoiler omitted **...

Holy hell - i love your twist with the elder things. With your permission i´ll keep that in mind.

I'm a bit confused about how the seedborne corruption should work on npcs. My group is travelling with a cohort and Kaklatath, and they are about to camp in the city. So if these two fail the will and fort save, are they waking up seeded and trying to attack the group? I dont see any rules about how quick the progression is.

Just take a look at the stat block seeded creatures on page 91. Seedborn consumption has a onset of one month.

But remember that the PC´s are carrier of this disease as well - they are just imune to it. So the cohort and kaklathat might be infectet the moment, they first get in contact with the pc`s

The stat block of Xamen dor states that there is a 1% chance per year to be targeted by his nightmare dream ability if you know the name of the god and are understanding his nature.

If you are affected by this ability you must do a safe or you are affected with seedborn consumption with no onset. This is stated on page 86/87

On the idol of Bokrug, I'm hoping my players just focus on stealing the idol and GTFOing. Knowing them they won't, but would this just be a disarm check? Reading the rules it seems that you have to use a weapon to disarm, and the item disarmed is just dropped. But if a party member were to just try and take the idol out of the priest's hands, I'd rule they don't get the -4 from not using a weapon, and the idol wouldn't drop. Does that make sense?

This encounter is quite a "problem" when you are using the sanity system in the "Horror Adventures". Even if your players won´t die during the quest, the near sight of Bokrug will drive all your PC´s insane, even if they pass their Will save.

The whole party insane will bring your game to a drastic hold. I solved this by giving each of the players a jorney into their subconscience. After creaping them out in several ways the snapped back into reality "just" manifesting a madness.

Characters: Dexter (Human Inquisitor 6)
Uzak (Ork Paladin 6

Adventure: Dreams of the yellow king, Mystical Forest

After fumbling his attack, Dexter lost his balance and nearly could catch a branch which prevented him from falling down. The lurker in light whis constantly jabbed him with its sneak attack finaly got him below zero HP. Dexter crashed onto the floor and lost his life.

Uzak bravely hold his ground, not willing to accept that he was over his head. After springing the leaf trap, he barely passed his safe, sending poor Nestor Bindlay to a nasty death, before beeing obliterated by 4 sneak attacking lurkers

I really want to tell them no, but why?

What's the in game reason for that?
What if they hide the stuff and latter use plane shift to retrieve it?
I might just end up making up a random reason why they can't get the items, but I would like a logical reason from the game.

For the bag of holding. The one your character got in the dreamlands is not the same bag of holding they posess in the reality. For that they cannot draw items out of it they put there while in the dreamlands.

The second one could be quite a problem. There is absolutly no reason they cannot go to the dreamlands in their physical form to retreave the items.

But going there as a real person is a risky call since you are mortal once more and you don´t simply wake up when you perish. If you die there it is final!

If they really hide the treasure there, it still could get looted by scavengers lurking arround, since passing of time in the dreamlands and the material plane is differend.

If your players are invested in this option, you might just give them 1 or 2 of the cool stuff as a reward while the "mighty" stuff is already taken.

This could be a fun side-adventure.

Hey,

so my group is trying to bring back items from the dreamlands.
They asked me "What if we put the items in the bag of holding, which is another plane? Could we bring them back from the bag of holding in the material plane?"

We ended the session and I said I'll think about it. What do you guys think?
It makes sense, but I'm pretty sure the gold per level for them will be completely unbalanced after that.

I´m with Davor Firetusk on that. The items they will get in the dreamquests are much to powerfull and surely will break your game.

You should also foreshadow his fear abilitys of the tattermann to alow the casters to prepare some countermesures. in my game the godess of the she-elf cleric liftet her panic so that she could safe her companions.

using horror adventures improved our gaming experience so much. i strongly advice you use the sanity system as well.

Have you considered the Devilbound-Template? In my opinion the forces of hell could have some motivation to track down Lowlth to stop him from what he´s doing.

In my game the exausted Players stumbled into Melissen and instantly fled to hide in town. The vigilante of the group stayed hidden at iris hill and overheard a order by Melissen to gather the kurus at the third stelae.

Melissen knows that she is under attack and is not sure how many forces are at ralley against her. So she decided to sacrifice the kurus to fully charge the staleas. (My players poisened the horsemeat forcing diarrea on all of the kurus, disabling them as guards)

They players went back to Mrs. Wentz and told her about that.

They decided to launch an attack on Iris hill with all the remaining forces, Cecilia Wentz can gather to occupie the guardians of the estate

Meanwhile the pc shall try to stop Melissen.

I decided to give this last opportunity to the players. If they fail, Trushmoore will be sucked into the void of carosa.

My next session is today. I´ll tell you about it´s outcome later

I thought the Hooded Harbinger was too cool to not use, so when the party was asking around to find the dockmaster and get more information on Miacknian, I had some things happen.

When they entered the bar, I put on a playlist of guitar-y folk music and said it was being played by a half-elf on a little stage in the bottom, drinking section. Third in the music queue, I placed "The Pallid Mask" by The Petals and had it play on repeat afterwords. In the middle of talking to the bleachling gnome, a player stopped mid sentence and said "Did the singer just say 'Carcosa'?"

Okay, i guess i need tho check out this song now. Thanks for sharing

Consider it another way -- if the PCs remain in the ritual form for 8 hours of material world time, should we consider them as having restfully slept and do things like HP and spells recover for them? I'd argue no, which also signals that a cognizant travel to the Dreamlands/Dimension of Dreams via the ritual (or similar means) is not the same as actual sleep.

I guess you can argue this way and i tend to agree. But i guess since there is not much other stuff going on during the journey, this should not create a big issue. At least in my game we gave it not much thougt and assumed the characters had a "regular" rest after ending the dream quests.

1) That a ritual-traveling PC can be shunted off to a nightmare dreamscape due to a Nightmare spell and even trapped there longer via the Night Terrors ability from which they...

This sparked a fantastic idea in how to deal with a missing player in a session to give him a solo adventure afterwards.

I agree with your concerns about this beeing quite to powerfull to use this on regular basis. Maybe you can allow the characters to create some kind of spell resistence. This could be equal to the score the ritual spellcraft check exeds the DC.

Because the dreamlands are a weird space you could argue that you are asleep after the ritual but cause you are not actually resting you do not gain the effects of a rest.

Quite interested about other thoughts though.

Lucifer might be a little disappointed at

** spoiler omitted **

What about

There could be another epic campain following this one. If you would like to have your PC´s equipment instead feel free to change things arround. It´s your game after all :-)

My players entered the soul and had an epic fight with the warden.

After defeating him they had a glance of the forbidden tomes and had a chuckle about some of them.

Beside "The revelations of Asmodeus" they found a "Players Handbook" and a booked called "The room"

First: In my game the Material plane bodys of the pc where helpless while their minds where located in the dreamlands. Winter kept watch over them while they where "away"

Second: Sure. The dreamland exkursion ritual is not the only way how someone can enter the dreamland. You are able to travel in person to this realm. The tricky question is: How does a Nightmare spell affects a dream-version of a character.

Third: No oppinion on that

Fourth: It depends. The Dreamlands are only a part of the realm of dreams. Interesting thought nevertheless.

Fifth: I guess she would be able to mark a character, allowing her to track this char in the waking world.

Note that my answers may not reflekt the rules written. It´s just my understanding of things and how i would role with it

Awesome work. Thanks for sharing

You sir are awsome. Pls take my upvote!

In my opinion it would be totally legit to mess arround with the class levels of the twins.

After all the characters might either be tricked in the past or they where exactly knowing what lowls was trying to do. In other words: The characters might have been bad guys, too.

With this in mind you can argue that a person with a differend mindset or moral code could easily follow another path of "education"

Name: Brüllwiesel
Race/Class/Level: Battlerager 8/ Cleric 3
Location: Mysterium Third level
Catalyst: Smashed by a tentacle

The Details

Always beeing full of himself and to this event always able to kill an enemy before the enemy was able to kill him. Brüllwiesel underestimated the damage and the HP of the proto-Shoggoth-Synclitium. After taking damage from all tentacles for two rounds, he went down like a sack. Luckily the other half elf cleric throw a "breath of life" at him.

He still got a near death experience out of this, including a firm vision of the palid mast, ripping out his soul before he was jenked back in his body as the spell took effekt. He got the shadowbound coruption as a parting gift.

In my game i clearly stated it as a spellbook. But because the spells in it where to high for the players to cast, they stored it away for later.

The problem is that the unique hook of the PCs' amnesia means you really want the original crop of PCs to survive at least until the fourth book.

Thats the point cause i mentioned this one. @Midnight Anarch: You are absolutely right that these encounters and encounters in later books are designed to be tough and frightening. But it will slow you game down, killing characters where there is actually no way you can bring them back. You will have to introduce new characters and these players will miss out the big revelations in book 3 about their characters past.

I did not want to imply that these encounters are too difficult and you should leave them out. I just wanted to point out that a GM should be prepared to intervene if players are too bold or to careless in their approach.

But after all it comes down to the playstyle your group´s preferring. I and my group are fixated on the plot. Other may prefere a simulation where a character dies when the dice aren´t in the favour of the player.

Both are legit playstiles. Just wantet to point that out for the OP.

Got a litte fun on our last session for myself by mixing up my two groups.

The vigilante of my second group found himself in a kind of dream or vision, joining my first group.

Cause of the wizards delusion, he was the only one who could see and interact with the vigilante.

The dreaming character was allowed to experience parts of the mysterium (his group is still in Thrushmoore, preparing for a raid on iris hill.
He was not allowed to take notes on this. If he can remember some details later he can. My intention was that his memories will feel like a real dream.

Because the second group is playing 1 time a month at it´s best, it will take at least 18 Month till the second group will catch up to book 4. He will remember the place but most likely not much details about it.

My players had a lot of fun with this and i most likly will play this thing the other way arround.

Yeah, i got my issus about spoilers and people skipping parts of the adventure entirely, but i guess i can manage that, too.

They fought for the Soulstone, though they definitely had some fun moments trying to figure out if she was their mother. It is definitely possible for the Briarstone Witch to have manipulated events to lead to their birth. I think the trick is how to get some of that reveal in, or at least hint at it before the final encounter. Maybe I can drop some hints in the Necronomicon the party Wizard has been studying that thing like crazy...

What about nightmares) The night hag could haunt their dreams. The delusion madness could work in your favour as well.

I'm also tweaking the Okeno section but i a different direction. I saw someone had used a colour out of space and decided to give it a go.

There are 88 creatures in Blossoming Thorn, and a total of 778 Charisma available. The Colour's Aura of Lassitude prevents prey from leaving and only Biting Lash has a decent Will save. Assuming some occasional great rolls cause a sentient creature to wise up and flee, there's plenty of food for the colour to grow 5-7 HD. 6 HD makes it a CR 14 encounter, on par with the Keeper.

Interesting. I guess i might steal this idea for my own game :-)

@Tasfarel:

Probably too late of a response to be useful, but I've got this fight coming up too. I'm planning on the nightmare clones to not just be their old memories, but their entire previous personalities trying to "take back" their bodies. The personalities are all the sort of people that the current PC's would hate, and all have a reason to chase Lowls. (for example, the rigidly LG monk is an arrogant thug who wants revenge, the self-centered oracle is a Hasturite fanatic who wants to take Lowls' place, etc.)

Anyone who dies in the fight winds up with multiple personality disorder as the two minds battle it out in the psyche. Once they've dealt with the madness, the memories will be fully integrated. I'm going give my players freedom as to how the two sets of memories wind up merging, though I assume they'll lean towards keeping the personality of the character they've been playing for the last few months.

This is quite matching with the idea i came up with. I also decided that the reflektions are not quite good at teamplay either.

Sadly the dice decided to roll a lot of crits in favour of my players which made the fight a little to easy in the end. The fact that i forgot about their damage reduction made it even more easy. Shame on me about this.

It was still an enjoyable fight and my players had a blast while the battlerager rolled 3 crits in a row, melting down his counterpart.

Hi,

I have a quick question about the star stelae and the yellow sign.
What kind of yellow sign is required to use the star stelae? "

In my game the unholy symbol of the yellow sign would work on this.

When my players used Detect Magic on the stelae and passed a Knowledge Arcana roll, i told them that it is a device which can be operated by using some kind of key. This key would also have some information how to operate this magic devices. Because they found a picture of this stelaes among Zandalus posessions, they figured out that this key must be somehow related to strange people in yellow robes. When they got hold of a cultist, they figured out that his holy symbol and the stalaes had similar auras.

In my second group, my paladin player missed a session and i decided to get him a solo round. He ran in a cultist ambush which went sour for the cultist. One of those guys escaped through a wall, leaving behind this strange marking the players encountered in the city before. At this point he knew what the stelaes could do and that the cultists where able to use their power.

As mentioned in another threat, i had some issues as the amount of madnesses slowed down my game to a point where some characters started to misstrust each other and decided to pause their exploration until they got a chance to heal their afflictions

So my advice: Be a little creative in ways to lift these madnesses from time to time. Healing them magically take some serious time in which storry progression nearly comes to a dead end (especially when it comes to greater madnesses)

Feel free to come up with a solution to replenish your players sanity points more often.

One of my houserules switch a greater madness to the dormant condition when the character is at least on half on his sanity points.

Risi is a pain in the ass, as it is the revenant. Both encounters can easily kill of one character. The lack of resurrection spells in that town make this even worth.

Risi is chaotic evil. In my second group she was a lover of one of my players. So she decided not to kill the party and instead was trying to get a personal benefit by helping them. Cause she was not ready to openly work against Melissen.

For the revenant. I hintet my group that this creature could not stand his own reflection. So they came up with the idea to use a shield as an mirrow. Remember that some good old "protection from evil" will prevent the revenant to touch his victim. My group managed to do some kind of aggro ping pong.

The style of your players or how they like to play their characters is not bound to their backstorys at all.

The memory loss can also be handled as a kind of "reset to default".

For an example. In book two "The Trushmoore terror" there is an event with an revenant which was killed by one of the party members. The characters where not (all) nice guys in their past and probably did some nasty things. There is also the possibility that they even had another "class" back then. Because there are some rly nasty enemys it´s not even garanteed that everyone is still on his "starting charakter" at that point the memorys will return to them

The important prep, in my opinion, is that your player are okay with their lack of backstorry in the first place and that they trust you to handle this correctly.

Remember that at point X, your players can either come up with a backstorry for themself, or you can provide it to them.

While your players are exploring the mysteries in this AP they get some good hints, what they could have done in their past. This can help them to build a fantastic backstorry or change their existing one when the time has come

Send your gm to the forums. I instantly got some really nice ideas how the Eidolon might be affected.

Else i agree with "Reverse"

Just roll with it, i guess your gm will find a way to keep the mysterie alive :-)

Interesting Thought.

My first but was that the briarstone witch is no hag, but she could defenitly be in cohort with her. Maybe the ambassador hag from their dreamquest has a connection to their mother. How did they got the Soulstone? If the stone was stolen, the ambassador might be out for revenge. And another maybe could be that your changelings caught the attention of their mother during that event.

She could have struck a deal with mother Ariadna to get hold of her offspring again.

This might be a very great and wonderfull roleplay experience. The ultimate showdown with your creator.

My first group got in with a Command spell from the cleric on the soulsliver which fumbled hard at her will safe.

The second group convinced the druid to warp the wood of the front gate.

Both groups then dispatched the guards very quickly and brutal

Totally agree with the black bard.

I was asking myself the same question. What if this encounter is too difficult and my players will loose this fight.

Maybe here´s another idea for you. During the fight you could describe the sensation that the memories they regained are fading again when the nightmarish reflections are causing damage to the dream bodys of theirs.

You could "punish" a player by taking parts of their memories away. I just got the idea of a solo game for this character inside his mind to unlock the missing parts of these memories again.

I agree with you guys. Madnesses are fun to play but can stall your game in a way that it could become dull and no more fun.

So i decided to to moderate this more by reducing their sanity damage from time to time as a kind of roleplaying reward or just to ensure that they can go on with the adventure after exploring the aspekts of their madness. As some of you sad: The lesser madnesses are no big deal. But when a greater madness strikes and you got players who like to play this out proper, my game came to a stop.

For example i decided that the incense of open thoughts will link their minds in a way that the characters are able to "see" their mental damage so that the cleric of the group could heal this stain more effecively.

The first time her goddess took controll, whiping out all the stains.

Later on winter or some other NPC´s might help with magical healing if it´s not available for your group by themself.

Corruptions are a lot of fun, too. Our Rogue was infected with vampirism when she met lady Splinterbone, agreeing to join her for a dance and a "kiss".

Planing to get another character infected with another corruption, soon.

The only player that had a problem with the final results was one of the middle-of-the-road-backstory guys. His character had the personality of a certain Disney character, so we would make jokes that part of his personal background was the plot of that Disney movie. I never realized he actually wanted that as part of his backstory, so when I wrote them out, I did not include a plot summary of a Disney movie in the letter I gave him. He whined about it, so I declared that it was part of his backstory, it just wasn't written on the paper, but completely fit with everything else I put in there (both in terms of room for the events to happen and fitting thematically with the other events I had written). He still gave me crap over it for months.

Wow, seems like a player to have fun with - i hate those kinds of poeple and probably would have dropped him for that. After all you are the GM and said it right at the beginning you might change it so it fits with the plot.

For my first group:

They got their memory back and here is a generall overview of their backstory´s where i used a mix of my stuff with their individual thoughts.

Danda is elderly gnomish bard which was part of an artistic group. Her children where killed during a coup on Lowls life some years ago during a privat show for some high ranked politicians. The poeple behind this coup where never been caught. Lowls promised her revenge, if she agreed to spy for him. She agreed

Wes is a young mage who worked for a secret society before he met Lowls. One day he was tasked to kill an elven politician and her family. Since he killed the she-elf and her husband. Killing the child in his sleep was to much for him. He ran away. Later he got caught by his former associates and was brought to the moon-prision in the dreamlands as pushinement. There he was bought from Wairalay and later on sold to Lowlth.

Cinty, an half elf cleric, failed her village as she was a young child. She met a young drow boy who ran away from home. Providing him with a map of her village, she doomed her clan. The boy was caught by his parents, they got the map and killed everyone at the village. Cinty was exiled for her crimes. Her uncle was a high ranking officer of an elvish secret service. He offered her retribution if she could spy on Lowlth and bring back some vital information about his plans and strange behavior in the last years. To get close to the count, she became his mistress.

Brüllwiesel got cast out by his clan when his bloodrager powers manifested themself. Later on he was caught by slavers and was destined to get killed by wolfs in an arena for amusemet. But he refuses his fate, killing the beasts with his bare hands. Afterwards he was given to Lowlth as a gift by his old buisness partner biting lash.

Agnes, a young human female got caught breaking into Iris hill. Her father got very sick and needed medicine. Cause her family was not very rich, she tried to steal the money needed. So she made a deal with the devil. From this day on, she "fetched" stuff for the count whenever he needed something he could not buy with money and Lowlth payed for the medicine, her father needed.

All lived in Iris hill for some time and all got introduced to risi back in the day.

For my second group i´ll post by the time they get their memories back

Okay, here is another one for you guys:

My second group just managed to clear fort hailcourse with some wits and a little bit of winters healing magic.

They went to check on their prisoner (they took the femal druid captive and chained her in the abandoned bookstore) when i hit them with two cliffhanger.

First they found the druid dead in her own blood. Her throut was cut and jokersmile was carved in her face. Her killer carved a heard on her bare chest, within the letters "R+L". The players immidiatly figured out that R was for Risi and L was for Loyd (a player Char)

Like i told before, Risi is not going to kill the PC´s cause she is seeking revenge on Melissen.

Second they found a former group member running from the revenant. I needed to get rid of this char, because the player moved town and told me he will be unable to join my table in the future. As the players reached her former companion (she was held captive because her loyality to the group was in question) the undead had chocked her to death, vanishing in oblivion. To my players shock the dead body was not of her former companion. It was the dead body of a doppelganger.

I agree with the other guys here. Why bother playing a horror based campain, if you pick yourself the feats that will render these mechanics useless?

Horror is nothing a dice can bring you. In heroic systems like pathfinder and D&D mortality is not that big issue with magic, resurrection and intervention of gods on a regular basis.

You need to be willing to let the horror sink in. If you are all like "Oh look, that tentacle thing there - let´s go kill it" then you rather want to play a straight forward heroic campain with lots of glorious battles instead of a horror game.