gladiusdei's page

I've currently playing this campaign for the 2nd time, but I still need to know how this finishes!

Please!

In trade, the tl:dr version of what happened to Laori in my game.

In my first playthrough group, Laori and my Paladin hit it off largely due to my Pally having a bit of an anger management issue as well as being pragmatic enough to know that we needed her - where the rest of the party wanted to straight up murder her.

Looong story. My pragmatic Pally and Laori, both kind of addled scarred loners, become somewhat romantically linked though Paladin of Iomadae and Cleric of Zon-Kuthon are not like peanut butter and chocolate, it seems. There is drama and long philosophical and religious discussions.

Enter Scarwall. Laori gets dropped and can't be raised until the chains are stopped. We've chased off Sial and the battered and half dead party NEEDS to get into the tower. But we have no Kuthite to open the seal. Seperated from the rest of the party, my Pally (carrying Laori's spiked chain) wounds herself grievously at one of the Kuthite altars near the entrance and offers herself up to ZK in service.

Bargain accepted. (Goooddd byyeee Pally lvls.)

We get in recover the sword and free the souls and we can raise our own fallen. I dry to dodge custody of the sword, claiming that I didn't feel worthy. Nobody else in the party actually believed we needed a Kuthite to get in so nobody questions how we got in. Laori did the math, though and was crushed. She began weeping and hugged my Pally bust still no one did the math. The ST showed some mercy on me and let me continue on as a (pre APG) AntiPalidin.

So, some fights and several nights of rest later, they figure it out and successfully restrain themselves from killing us both. The game continues onwards with much drama, angst and such with Laori becoming shaken more and more by my sacrifice and my Pally more and more seeing the beauty in the unknowable void of Zon-Kuthon's disdain and patronage.

Eventually we hit the Deck phase and as things are wont to do when a Deck is involved, things went weird, quickly with lots of trading and re-draws and negations and time shifts and in the end Laori, who was doomed by one of the cards she got, spent a... I think it was a Wish... from another of her cards to free me from my deal with ZK and restore my alignment. Long story short, my Pally was eventually restored and Laori was saved from her doom by the actions of the party and had performed a selfless act that opened her up to the possibility of serving Iomade.

We fought the Queen, won, and in a weird series of my events, my Pally (who had the most noble bloodline of the party) ended up Queen with Laori as her consort. (Eventually head of the Temple of Iomadae in Korsova.)

My favourite experience in an Adventure Path came from the whole Path being Evil-oriented. We ran through AGE OF WORMS with an Evil party and it was actually better organized and more cohesive then any other party I've played in during my 20 odd years of gaming.

Three of the PCs were LE Hextor worshipers, though our Warlock had side dealings with Devils (natch) and my PC secretly paid homage to Vecna. We had a few other PCs of all sorts of combinations of Alignments and because no one was Chaotic Stupid (even the malicious CE Lloth worshiper toed the line most of the time out of fear of the LE cabal that drove the party and knowledge that she was furthering Lloth's agenda by stopping Kyuss) we did fine.

We started out united for common gain - stuck in a backwater mining town and seeking ways to replenish our fortunes - and stayed together for the simple reason that the Age of Worms would destroy everything we individually held dear or coveted. As we progressed we rebuilt the town (to increase profits) and eliminating our political rivals and transforming it into a thriving community. A community that welcomed the Tyranny of Hextor once the malcontents had vanished and the renewed mining gold started flooding in.

As we grew in levels, many NPCs realized they were in a "the cure is almost as bad as the disease" situation, but by then we'd gotten to the point where we (as the PCs are in that path) were Greyhawk's last best hope against the rising of Kyuss. And we were all *seriously* evil. But never comedy evil or stupid evil. The LE PCs led the way, the NE PCs plotted and schemed and the CE PCs strained against the rules of the LEs, but the oncoming threat as well as the power we were gathering kept even the most Chaotic in line.

Well, okay, there was a CE Drow Assassin that we were a bit purposefully slow in rescuing from a massive beastie, but really, Drow? That's just low class.

I see a lot of assumptions about what being Evil means, with little acknowledgement that the sheer need for self-preservation can be enough to hold a party together. I don't think every AR supports that style of play, but it certainly seems like many of them would.