I bought it on Amazon the day it came out. Its pretty good, better than what you would expect for a sequel to a 20 year old film series. The movie is funny, but not in a 'comedy' sort of way; it's an examination on aging and failure, but not in a 'drama' sort of way; it's uplifting, but not in a 'feel-good' sort of way.
Its a pretty mellow blending of the typical dramedy formula you might find in a Judd Apatow film, but made by a team that has less penchant for juvenile jokes and profanity than Apatow. Tonally similar with comparable pacing between 'funny parts' and 'sad drama' parts, but with very different substance in its makeup.
Alex Winter is the standout, though. His Bill hasn't reached the point of *sigh* like Reeves' Ted has, and he gives it his absolute best in the scenes with future Bills and Teds. Death kind of phones it in, and as much as I love Samara Weaving, she was one of the weaker performances as well.
But with the *TWIST* from the trailer referenced above, the final sequence in the movie gives a satisfying tie-in to previously established canon, building on 20 years of failure, and letting the new B-story leads (Little Bill and Little Ted) complete their arc as well.
Let's go with recurrent for a moment. MW has it defined as "occurring often or repeatedly." Sure, he has clerics and his void oracle wife could heal him *every single day*, but that would show weakness. Yeah, when the disease actually gets him in its throes, he just has his wife pull down her heal spell from the dark elder gods she serves and he's back to ship shape for a while. It keeps coming back though.
How is this recurrent though? Hakotep had 2 known Shory slave/prisoners at hand: the ghost in the Pyramid, and Chsisek who designed the Aeromantic Infantabulum for him. Its not a stretch to see other Shory POW's being forced into servitude in his immediate vicinity. The Shory were tech geniuses, perhaps as part of their long game against Hakotep's offensive, they engineered a disease that specifically made *HIM* sick. Infect some of his house slaves, boom, he's constantly battling a disease that only makes him sick. Ironically, this just fuels his hate for Shory as he *KNOWS* its a conspiracy as it only he is getting sick.
Eventually, as the Order of the Blue Feather begins to work on removing Hakotep from power, they begin paying off the clerics, begin whispering in Neferesis' ear that the elder gods' will is for Hakotep to be sick, begin preparing for their ultimate corpse desecration. Eventually, as his greatest pyramid completes construction at the Slave Trenches, his sickness reaches crescendo, and the Blue Feather jumps into action, tearing his soul asunder as they embalm him.
Then the funeral comes, his queen and his retainers all load up on their pyramids, ascend to their staging areas, then the Blue Feather coups all the rest of the Hakotep regime, erases him from history, and lets the pyramids drift through the skies for centuries to come.
Nethys, mostly because of Haty-a An-Keret, and the opportunity to stick it to her knowledge hoarding secret society. It gives a preachy spread the magic sort of cleric some real firepower against the Governess.
First off, this is my favorite AP I have ran. Be sure to check out the respective GM Reference threads for each book. Tons of helpful info.
For party info, you *WILL* need someone who can handle a trap. There is no avoiding this. I don't necessarily advocate for a full divine or full arcane caster, but a party where 6th level casting is peak will raise book 5 and 6's difficulty significantly.
I will kind of half-disagree with Warped Savant slightly as far as moral ambiguity. Through books 1 and 2, there is no clear antagonist. You have some A-Holes here and there (mysterious cult, some N Pharasmins with a capital N, and some adventurers), but nobody outright bad ('cept maybe the shadow demon thing in Book 2). Book 3 and 4 give some nice antagonists (Tephu Government in book 3 and the Cult in book 4), but really until the Sightless Sphinx, you're not dealing with anything really *BAD*, just some apparent anarchists. Book 5 and 6 have clear goals against an antagonist, who's methods are decidedly more evil-with-an-E than Forgotten Pharaoh's drug dealing suicidal cultist. A self-serving party of greedy bastards will be able to profit just as nicely as a goody two-shoes party wanting to save Osirion.
Here are some of the more prolific topics in this AP's forum.
If you want to nudge them to the libraries across the river, perhaps have a random crazy person confront them with mad ravings about the mask, or just keep sending cultists their way, with clues leading them toward Tephu. Discovering Hakotep even existed is a book 3 revelation anyway, and the knowledge they find about the mask points them toward Chisisek's tomb and eventually the FP herself.
Nudge that direction, or even have Sebti or that goofy psychopomp get a vision from Pharasma that the secrets of the mask are found beneath the Blue Feather in Tephu.
Really, even in PF1, a series of Bards or Alchemists could pump out the majority of the curatives that a divine caster would have access to. Cure spells, lesser restorations, enhance water, remove poison, remove curse, etc. Get a witch or an evil or chaotic druid on the payroll, there's even more easy access to stereotypical divine spells (reincarnate). Then toss in a cleric of any number of evil deities or powers who favor lies or deception, and you have a good ally for magic item purchases.
PF2 just really opened it up with the different ways non-clerics can access spells from the divine list.
Maybe they don't heal people, but clerics of mean evil gods wouldn't anyways.
I always see Razmiran priest as those who *DO* heal people. Asmodeus may require a hefty sum or a later favor for a heal spell, but Razmir? His cult will use your recovery as further evidence of his divinity, and to parley this 'miracle' into their protection racket. And its even easier now that healing magic is simply on the divine spell list instead of peppered through class spell lists.
"The Glorious Razmir blessed this man, curing his infirmities! For the low price of 12% of this villages income, the Living God can continue providing healing and protection... By the way, did you hear about the farmer just over the hill who's farm was razed by goblins last week?"
Stalking the Beast (PF Novel) probably has the most actual interaction with the Razmiran "protect you from problems we're making" racket.
There are a group of outsiders known as divine servitors that function as this purpose. In PF1, they're all CR4 compared to the Herald's CR15. You can find them in Chapter 4 of Inner Sea Gods. Some examples:
Abadar: Orsheval, a celestial horse thingy
Erastil: Stag Archon, a anthropomorphic deer
Pharasma: Ahmuuth Psychopomp, a lady with floating headstone shields
Zon-Kuthon: Lampadarius Kyton, Two-Face, but shadowstuff instead of chemical burns
Society: Trolls are big ugly monsters who like swamps, caves, and under bridges!
Occult: Trolls can regrow basically anything but a head.
Arcana: Fire and Acid to keep them dead!
Religion: They are not outsiders or undead.
Nature: They're not good for you to eat.
But I would probably use a Lore (Common Monsters, Fairy Tales, Folklore) or something equally commonplace.
I don't remember them being mentioned again, but if you want to add them, you could have a group of them examining the ruins of Gallowspire in book 4, taking magical readings where the Great Seal once was.
Well ok. What I'm saying is maybe it took him years to respawn as if he just did 1d10 days after the adventure it makes the PCs actions seem kind of pointless.
The point of Book 6 is to prevent him from obliterating Absalom, cracking open the Starstone Cathedral with the Radiant Fire, becoming a divinity, and winning. The PC's not only stop him from doing all of that, they also destroy his nuclear capabilities, leave his army to fall apart and/or get wrecked by the good guys, destroy his body for the first time since the Shining Crusade (potentially opening up some detective work to figure out where his phylactery is), and remove his Plot Armor in one fell swoop.
Selling the adamantine doors harkens back to the first time I GM'd through Carrion Crown where the party sold (30K) the adamantine hatch separating the Girallion Flesh Golem from the Abberant Promethean.
Lets see a few that pop to mind from our current playthrough.
B1 - The party basically got Grimburrow kicked out of the temple because of his continued neglect to purge the ghosts of Harrowstone.
B2 - The party came back to Lepidstadt (they were in Hergstag) too late in the evening the night of the Riot. The guards at the courthouse proceeded to massacre the rioters, killing around 20.
B3 - The party killed Mathus before any of the other wolves up in the Stairs of the Moon, triggering the lady wolf to rip out and eat his heart and claim Packlord status, as the other wolves from his clan started trying to bull rush each other off the tower to claim clan alpha status.
B4 - Party befriended the Cult of Dagon, well the one Vicar left at the temple. They set the tick swarm on fire and watched it kill one of the other Vicars. The third Vicar fled the flaming ticks, leaving the Priest and Giant to fight the party. Vicar at town thanked them for the insta-promotion, and began openly inviting them to the CE Demon Worship services.
B4 - Two folks lost their sanity when seeing Shub-Nub through the rift after killing the Dark Young. One of them became amnesiac (which later became a way to retrain into a diff class), and the other (an alcohol themed Cayden worshipper) gained a sexually satisfying mania any time he drank alcohol.
I like your theory. I hope with TB moving back to the Isle of Terror that we'll get more info one day about Xin-Grafar and the Wizard-King's Pit.
I like the idea that his trap in the Well of Sorrows didn't completely fail, but maybe poisoned the divinity of Aroden to the point where had he come back, it would have been under TB's thumb. Aroden squeezed some prophesy out of Pharasma to find that out, then offed himself to prevent TB from having a God as a lackey.
If he was still alive, wouldn't his clerics still receive spells? I always thought only death of the god can stop that.
A god can refuse to grant spells to a cleric, for example, in a situation where they have had an alignment change that precipitated the need for an Atonement. If, in someone's home Golarion, Aroden's playing the Long Con, he can simply just not give his clerics the spells they're praying for.
Same goes for divination. PF1 has plenty of instances where deities (and below) can avoid or outright ignore divination or summoning magics.
When you have AA show up at the funeral, have Vrood, Eugenie, and Vinceith from book 3 there attending her. It brings a better motivation to the party when they realize that their enemy has truely been ahead of them the whole time.
Rework the boss fight of book 2. Either have the Promethean wait to attack until the shudders are opened, or have BoL hammering on the shudders cueing the party to immediately let him in. Otherwise, you'll probably have the majority of the fight as Party v. Promethean.
Don't play the Splatterman stupid like the book wants you to. The ghost inappropriately touching a caster for that 6d6 groping brings more gravitas to the fight than spamming 3d4+3 of magic missiles per round.
The livery in Thrushmoor (bk 4) is a great place to bring in replacement PC's. Have someone bound in the shop of the owner, a future meal for the ghouls.
Start heaping HP bonuses onto monsters starting in book 4. Poorly optimized groups can 1-round pretty much any enemy given at that point.
Replace monster stats like crazy. Too many enemies get improved initiative, not enough get Vital Strike.
Im curious how many double ohs there are? Its mentioned in Golden Eye that Bean's character is 006. That leaves a lot of room for new characters while leaving the Bond legacy intact. Maybe we can get some double oh flicks that have Money Penny as the lead and Bond is a simple cameo.
I do like the recurring supporting characters that really took hold in the Brosnan era. CIA agents and Russia former KGB and such.
The weird continuity glitch with Daniel Craig's Bond movies is that they did NOT recast M from the previous Bond movies, which clearly implies that either the same actress was playing two different M's or Daniel Craig's Bond and Pierce Brosnan's Bond were separate people who both identified themselves as James Bond.
But I guess we will have to wait until the movie comes out to see how the whole James Bond vs. 007 thing works out.
To be fair, Desmond Llewelyn was Q for all the Bond actors except Craig. The continuity being there is no continuity between any of the Bond eras save for Lazenby's Bond getting married to Teresa, which was then carried over into the Moore era. All the rest of it is pretty well in media res in a 007 story, irrespective of actors.
I like the title, especially the font face. Now hoping it gets a better title sequence than Evard's Black Tentacles over the wail of a bard who is currently failing their Perform check.
My longtime idea has mostly been thematically consumed by Hell's Rebels and War for the Crown.
-Setting: Urban campaign in Capital of Kelesh Empire and nearby satrapies.
-Background: PCs are scions of noble houses. Emperor has been sliding into authoritarianism, decadence, and blasphemy. Distant satrapies are ignoring orders. Rebellion is afoot!
-Meat: As the party first discovers then gets involved with the rebellion, they eventually uncover that Asuras have replaced the Emperor and much of the court with their own. Kelesh wars with its neighbors, violently puts down dissent in its own lands, bans open Sarenrae worship, and falls into a civilizational decline. Party must stop the Asura, reveal the Emperor as an outsider, and salvage what they can of the floundering government.
Expaning upon Phaedre, the "Adventure Path" subscription gives you a monthly adventure book, where each group of 6 books is a level 1-20 campaign. When Age of Ashes (the hellknight one) is over, the next 6 books will be a different 1-20 campaign.
Lost Omens is the new name for the "Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting" / "The Inner Sea", aka the part of the planet Golarion where the adventure paths take place. It covers the Lore and the meta of the world at large, and does not have any adventures in it.
Sorry Folkish. My players saw swarms coming and immediately cast get away.
Similar tactic to my players, except they've been known to additionally burn buildings down with swarms inside (see the grain bin in the 2nd dungeon in Half-Dead City).
I can imagine an Asmodean notary public available in many good-sized cities.
And is actually probably a very good fit. These guys would be the *GO TO* for both drafting contracts and reviewing them. Party A would pay an Asmodean to get every inch of legal advantage in an agreement. Party B would pay an Asmodean to review a contract, looking for loopholes that my bite them in the ass. Thinking like a devil gives them an advantage over an Abadaran lawyer who's primary concern is economic.
Abadaran: "It's irrelevant that Bob gets a 4/5ths interest in your farm. You can turn this capital around into more cows, which you can then rent pasture space from another farm, cutting out your overhead, benefiting both you and Bob!"
Asmodean: "Bob's line item here gives him controlling interest in the day-to-day operations of the farm, but you retain the bulk of the liability and overhead expenses of said farm. I suggest countering the offer by increasing his ownership to 7/8ths, but slipping in a rider that puts all of the tax liability onto his share, and invest your money elsewhere, then tank the farm, saddling him with an unproductive property."
I'm really enjoying this series. Its forward thinking about what corporate owned superheroes would look and act like feels very on-par with what any reasonable cynic would imagine.
Going on some paths based on the other data we've had in the AP and in the past.
Basic Assumptions:
The Obol ties the soul to the body.
Living PC's die, their body reforms at their soul, as a lich does at its phylactery, bc the Obol went with their soul. They're living again but with new bodies.
TB has the only other non-PC compatible Obol, the other shards are just explosives.
When TB got wrecked by Arnisant's heart, his newfound Obol tied his soul and body together, just like the PCs.
Canon has been retconned / fine tuned from the Shattered Shield destroying him, to forcing him to flee into Gallowspire.
TB experimented with killing his body via positive energy to discover the resonance with the rest of the Shattered Shield, leading to Radiant Fire.
My Conclusions:
The Shattered Shield in his hand keeping him from regenerating at his phylactery is establishing canon that his previously unknown phylactery (formerly assumed to be in or *completely* Gallowspire) is not there (now assumed on Isle of Dread, likely Wizard-King's Pit).
Since TB is undead, his body and soul were already tethered together. Adding the additional pincushion between them results in the Obol regenerating him on-site. Some other easy handwavium can be attributed to the Great Seal binding everything (corporeal, incorporeal, souls, planar travel, mundane mining) located beyond it from getting out.
He did try to kill himself ages ago to regenerate properly, but the Obol was blocking that. This leads him down the path of experimentation that led to the resonance and Radiant Fire.
Now that the Obol he had obliterated him (and the party), and the Great Seal isn't preventing any soul movement, his soul can travel back to its box on the Isle of Dread and regenerate back into his mythic lich self.
Oh yeah, when frustration hits 4, i think, he finds the party and drops a reach empowered mythic disintegrate at one of them from (basically) a quarter of a mile away.
Also, his entrance into the final battle is similarly epic. Ripping apart the terrain to basically kill an army's worth of mooks before gating in a genocide daemon.
A phyrric victory against the setting's BBEG to keep him from getting Starstone power is a perfectly fine theme to use. It's Randy Quaid taking the fighter jet to the laser beam in ID4. It's Gandalf on the bridge in Moria. It's Berric Dondarrin's last stand or Hodor holding-the-door. It's Anna throwing herself in front of Hans' sword to protect Elsa. It's Ripley jumping into the molten metal to prevent Alien: Resurrection. It's the finale of Ender's Game.
Sometimes winning means winning, not going home and smelling the roses.
As an aside, really? Really? The overwhelming majority of AP runs don't get past Book 4, and the the overwhelming majority of those that finish Book 6 *END THERE*. How does player buy-in change with "GM: And after you kill Hakotep, you assassinate Deku an-Keret, over throw the Ruby Prince, and become rulers of Osirion, The End" versus "The Whispering Tyrant explodes, his body truly destroyed for the first time in millennia. Where he regenerates, however, no-one knows. The End."
Deka became my party's nemesis after they confronted her once they put it together that she was likely a member of the Order of the Blue Feather, and was actively making their investigation difficult; and they totally had her killed after saving Osirion.
That said, the Mark of Justice is just a bestow curse but worse. You could have Sebti do it as a one-time thing (she owes the party for saving Wati), and if they get caught again, tough luck, likely with assistance from the Tephu militia. Break Enchantment is *only* a sixth level spell, and should be something the party should be logically able to buy in either Wati (stat block for 7th level spellcasting, which we all know is Sebti) or Tephu (9th level in its stat block).
Speaking of that 9th level casting, the High Priestess of Thoth has beef that her clergy isn't allowed in the Great Library. Perhaps she would be willing to remove the mark if the party were able to copy some tomes or some other esoteric research that is beyond the capability of her 3-acolyte at a time limit that Deku has imposed. See p.65 in the entry for the Houses of Order and Wisdom for inspiration. She's LN, and may give a bit of flak against removing it, but it provides an intriguing way to gain an ally and a sufficient Break Enchantment.
Yeah, my headcanon is that the map of Lastwall is intended to be the loose narrative of what TBs doing when not in the PCs sights. It provides a rough path of what's going on without devoting text or sidebars to it.
I think that is where the TB's forces are mounting.
Book 1&2: Gallowspire
Book 3: Vigil as it is getting pre-nuked
Book 4: TB's forces take the two nearest major settlements near the Isle of Terror
Book 5: TB's troops move past Vigil and down the river toward Caliphas, moving on Hammer Rock
I would guess Book 6 will have a skull atop Everstand and Hallentown to finish out the major Lastwallan points of relevance. Assuming he doesn't use one of his remaining nukes to take out Everstand to turn it into Everstood...
Through book 4 it could work. Book 1 you are literally not where you're supposed to be. Weird it up a bit, and the sanity issues shouldn't be hard to fiat in.
Book 2 is a natural fit for sanity checks.
Book 3 has some issues that will need worked out. You'll have to figure out ways to pull either weird or trauma into the first part of the book, as before the pop, its some generic intrigue and a cultist dungeon delve. After the pop, though, its Book 2 similar but with survivors. Radiation sickness, plants and/or extra limbs growing from folks, spontaneous monstrous pregnancies (in men even!), the positive energy radiation can body horror it up pretty good.
Book 4 with the undead, though, its a pretty standard romp through Virlych. There aren't a lot of extra-planar stuff to frighten or living to see tortured, so you might just have to work with the sheer terror of FKA Gallowspire and its undead citizens.
To me it reads more like shenanigans on the part of the state that they're chocking up to accounting errors. It's hard to suddenly go from 30M in incentives, to a share of 12M without a bit of shadiness.
It was an ending. It may not have had the best season backing it up, but it ended in a way that was satisfactory.
Thoughts...
Spoiler:
Bran will be a crappy king, because he sucks, but hail Lord Bronn of the Blackwater, Lord of Highgarden, Lord Paramount and Warden of the Reach, Master of Coin. He truly won the game of thrones.
Sweet Robin importing that Tormond's Reserve milk from the True North.
Edmure looks good for being a useless douche chilling at Riverrun or the Twins or wherever he was hiding out during these last two wars. Nobly volunteering to be King before getting talked down by Her Excellency, Queen o' da Norf Sansa.
Good for Samwise... Samwell for continuing his Maester training. Probably the first Grand Maester with like a whole 2 links (one made of scabs for curing Jorah the Explorah, one made of whatever for thieving some books).
The rando Lords with no names just to fill seats at the choosing. Hi new Martell Prince, how's crappy Dorne been crappily doing?
Jon and Tormond riding off into the forest was a fitting farewell. All those other three dozen free folk having to walk, though...
@Set
Spoiler:
In the wider esoterica, Naath has no military, and uses poisonous native butterflies to keep invaders away. Grey Worm's Sundae (FKA Missandei) was playing on the beach when she was nabbed by slavers, iirc, away from where the killer butterflies lived. I figure GW will pledge his troops to the Island's leaders in honor of his Sundae.
So, you're saying that I shouldn't say it doesn't fit?
Well you can, but it seems unnecessary.
From what I've heard, Fumarole is spot on about her. It's just getting rushed because they are being told to wrap this s&$# up.
Hot Take: Season 7 was greenlit 6 months before the ATT buyout was announced. The shortened seasons 7&8 and fast tracked story are from on-high from ATT, as production costs they didn't want to inherit this past year. ATT has already shown since the finalization of the merger that they're wanting to move away from the high cost prestige sphere into more casual viewing originals for HBO, and ending the Game as soon as they took over was step one of ATT, third of its name, Breaker of DirecTV, Khaleesi of the 5GE, Queen of the Cingulars and of the Centennials and of the Qualcomms, Mother of Arbitration Clauses.
Jon would make a horrible king, which he knows, and which is why he keeps saying he won't do it. I am just wondering whether he'll sacrifice himself, or survive and go to the True North.
This was one of my favorite episodes, and the entire scene of the group at the fire was one of the series' top moments for me. It will be a shame that we'll probably lose most of that group this coming week.
Also, go Arya! A girl does not pine over a boy, especially not when Death is coming to visit. Yeah I know the scene was 100% fan service to the shippers, but it felt earned, and along with Brienne's knighting, reminds us that sometimes this show lets good things happen.
I like how the retcon played out, and it fits a bit more with how liches have typically been portrayed (similar to how they were in life, not a fast jump to depravity). That being said, while the whole Harlot Queen backstory was interesting, it felt a bit dated. Morphing that into mostly propaganda is a move I like.
As far as the Lastwallans are concerned, just imagine, one of your nation's patron demigods and hero figures of the Shining Crusade suddenly gets (forcibly) turned into a lich by the ruler of a country that you're sort-of feuding with. Now, the backbone of your country's history is fighting the undead, and now Aranzi, a champion of your primary deity, is now a creature that your compatriots have dedicated their lives to fighting. Imagine the moral turmoil that these first generations of Lastwallans dealt with. Then someone makes it easy... Harlot Queen, has taken those treacherous crusaders who stole her away as concubines, is ruling a nation that embraces the undead. SHE IS TRYING TO BE THE NEW WHISPERING TYRANT!
The truth, even to a LG country, sometimes falls way to the convenient half-truths and obfuscations.
I'm honestly surprised. It's a good move especially with all the face saving they've had to do after being eaten by trolls. The movie will be better for it and gives The Mouse a way to cordially depart with one of the core architects of the late MCU tone. If Gunn or D wants this to be a last hoorah, it works all around.
