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3.5 year Necro. Just want to echo the thank you for this! My party is just about to finish Broken Moon; this saves me a TON of work to convert things. Woo hoo and huzzah - Mad Appreciations!
WRAP-UP and the Mythology I used. When I go into new campaigns, the first thing I decide is what the gods are like in that world. Golarion comes with a whole huge mythology here so that's sorted. But there are some parts of these APs that stuck in my craw a little bit - mostly with Wrath: AP Issues:
Why are the demon lords doing this? What's their endgame? They're demons, sure, but 'f+*@ s#*+ up' seems a bit weak-sauce. Why was the Gods' response to the World Wound to put up a barrier, and then when it gets taken down basically shrug and say "Not an US thing"? What about the Triad of less-than-divine ladies: Alaznist, Nocticula, and Sorshen? Specifically - if Runelords are these hugely powerful forces in the world, what's their response to the World Wound? I read something about the World Wound in the context of 'Bad Things On Golarion'. There was a phrase about the three biggest threats to existence on Golarion: Tar-Baphon, Rovagug, and the World Wound. And that's what got me thinking about the Gods and mythology and why things happened how they did. The Gods are aware of Golarion - to the extent that they give magic powers to their worshipers - because Rovagug is trapped inside. Rovagug almost destroyed all of creation once, and the combined might of several gods could only trap Him, not destroy Him. So now they watch, and they give clerics (and etc.) magic more as a side effect of their attention than anything else. The Star Stone is there to bleed off some of Rovagug's power, which has the side effect of occasionally forcing a mortal to Ascend. I was originally going to add some Tar-Baphon bits, but this was already turning out to be a massive campaign so I cut that out. I might run them through Tyrant's at some point in the future though. So what does Rovagug have to do with the Wound and the major NPCs and Demon Lords? NPCs and Etcs:
Deskari wants to Ascend. He worked with Areelu to open a portal between Golarion and the Abyss, and put it near enough to Rovagug so that the Gods couldn't just close it. Then he built a big structure around the portal - ostensibly to help demons pass through, but covertly to release enough magical energy to catapult him into Divinity.
Nocticula picks up on this, and hatches her own scheme - first with Arueshelae and Desna, to see how changing alignments might work, and then with Sorshen (again, with Desna for the dreaming). The Gods put down the barrier, and imbue them with Mythic powers, as a way to, hopefully, imbue mortals with a touch of this stuff in case things go bad with the Wound in the future. Between the Wound and the Barrier the various Sinpools become active again, and the Runelords start to wake up. Sorshen's been dreaming about redemption and turning away from evil, so begins making plans to help Golarion instead of Dominate it. Alaznist sees a Huge Problem in the World Wound, and starts to align herself with Deskari and his plans. The rest of the Runelords die - mortals kill Krune, Zutha, Bellimarius, and Karzoug (my group killed Bellimarius, and I had another mythic party of NPCs take out the others). Alaznist weakens Xanderghuul - but doesn't fully destroy him in case she needs his help with the Wound. The Sinpools drain enough power from the Barrier that several groups of mortals gain a small amount of mythic power by destroying sinpools. (I had my group, another group of NPCs, the giants in Hook Mountain, and a few other monsters gain mythic this way). Deskari sends Staunton Vhane to weaken the Barrier crystal in Kenabres, and then demons fuse Vhane's soul to the city of Drezen, both as a guardian for the Sword of Valor and as a lure to future heroes. Nocticula (secretly and covertly) lures Baphomet's demons to her islands to mine Nahyndrian Crystals, planning to eventually meet mortal heroes to help with her plans for the World Wound portal. Kenabres gets attacked, the Wardstone there is broken, and an army of demons gathers near the Barrier. All part of Deskari's plans - and the Gods, for different reasons. A group of mythic mortals (the party!) destroys the broken Wardstone, destroying the Barrier and the massed demonic armies, and adding divine power to the Threshold and the World Wound Power. Alaznist figures this out, sees Deskari's plan, and sees a flaw - when the Portal is destroyed, the backlash might free Rovagug. Since the Lexicon of Paradox was used to help create the Portal, and is necessary to destroy the Portal, she recovers two of its three pieces (the other is held by demons and she doesn't want to show her hand too soon) and locks them away beyond time - one in Jorgenfist, and the other with her. She's waited 10,000 years, so she can wait a little longer for those mythic mortals to fade away, and the resonant energy from the Barrier to decay in the World Wound threshold. The party gets it anyway and restores the Lexicon. 'My name is Anna, and I am a book'. The party goes to Threshold, kills Areelu and destroys the World Wound - and a lot of things happen all at once. Deskari resets his Demonic Realm to the wound, and so suffers his first death when it's destroyed. He's there in the rifts where it was, absorbing energy and preparing to ascend. Nocticula grabs the soul of one of the party members and offers to bring him back, in exchange for coming along to the fight with Deskari. The Lexicon of Paradox brings another party member back so that she can have a mortal escort for her explorations of Golarion, after the Wound is Dealt with. Three other gods offer to bring three other souls back. Two party members take the offer, and one does not. Nocticula sees what Deskari is doing, and makes her decision. She gives her realm and all the powers of rule to her second in command, in exchange for a knife made out of Nahyndrian. Just as the party is about to kill Deskari, freeing his soul to ascend, Nocticula stabs him with the Nahyndrian knife, shunting the power into her and stealing his Ascent. In doing so, she absorbs enough power to keep the rest from awakening Rovagug. Thanks, Nocticula. CN seems a lot more fun than CE. I think I'll send all of this to my party, too - let them know what kind of back-end stuff I was thinking about. I wonder how much of it they saw, and how much this planning helped with day-to-day campaign decisions? It was certainly fun to think about - especially during these weird stressful pandemic-and-sedition times.
Well, we made it. Level 20 and Tier 10 at the end. Crazy-sauce! Only one of my players was enjoying the high level mythic play during the last few fights - so I cut-scened a lot of the last encounters. Last Few Fights:
They finished Stethelos - none of the time wound bits took more than two rounds. Instead of several combats in Alaznist's Demesne, I had a second mythic party (that they'd met a few times along the way) go through and clear it out - so my party saw a lot of bodies and combat after-math. At the end I had a whole denouement for that group planned out, with betrayal and insanity and all - behind one of the very few doors my group left unopened in any dungeon. Ah, well.
The Alaznist fight was big, and took four hours to play out. I upped the monsters - threw 20 shining children at them and a mythic version of the devestator - and they waltzed through. A crit from the devestator almost took out the mage - except for that it wasn't much of a challenge for them. They had two parts of the Lexicon of Paradox (I split it up - one in the destroyed and time-weird Jorgenfist, and the other in the Ivory Sanctum). I had the third part as a girl (named Anna Molly, which they picked up on RIGHT away), who joined with the rest of the book and then followed them along as an invulnerable NPC. Then we did book 6 of Wrath. I took out the defense of Drezen to get to the good stuff, and we space-barred through the fights in the Brothel and the Forge. They were freaked out by their simulacrum, but that's the biggest reaction here. Everyone's a bit burned out by mythic, at this point, and looking forward to the conclusion. I took out most of the fights in the Threshold, and we cut-scened the rest; one session was just exploring the place. The penultimate session was a big fight with Alaznist, which lasted five rounds only because she cast Wish to heal herself three times. Then they closed the Wound, and I told everyone that they died. Over email I sent all my players something from one of the Golarion Powers - the Lexicon of Paradox, Nocticula, Chaldura (the halfling god), Desna, and Iomede, respectively - offering to bring them back in exchange for service. I want to keep playing in Golarion, is the thing, and when you have PCs that can one-shot demon lords - well, I wanted an excuse to rein them in. One of the players did not want to come back, but the rest did. Then they fought Deskari. It took four hours, and - it was kind of boring. Just a slog. I used Scorpion's revised stat blocks, and multiplied Deskari's HP by 10 - and then divided that in half just to get the combat over sooner. We're all glad to be back with first level! They miss checks! One got critted and almost died! I had a WHOLE big list of the last twelve fights, as I look through my notes, but I cut out all but the big ones. Paizo materials are awesome. Well designed and freaky and we're having a great time. My group is mostly okay with the rails that come with modules, and when they want to go off-script I say something like 'fine - your character goes and does that. Let me know what happens because I don't have that built or planned. The rest of us will be going on THIS adventure' and they mostly get it. We're starting War for the Crown next - mostly because it's all set up to go on Roll20. I'm doing a module in Ridonport first - to ease into Social Combat, and because the party skews towards NE instead of good, so I want to throw social adventures at them before they go to the Senate.
Holy Christmas it's been a while since I've updated this. Not long after the last post is when lockdowns started happening because of the pandemic - I teach math at a Community College, and we ended that term remotely and have been remote since (with at least the next two terms also remote). Remote teaching is about half-again as much work. Some several things had to go, and one of them was keeping up posting here. We've kept playing though! We just moved to Discord and Roll20. I think it's pretty good. I'd rather meet in person, but (especially for these high-level fights) Roll20 handles a LOT more of the book-keeping than I thought it would. My prep now is choosing the map - getting the grid to line up - putting down monster tokens, and printing off the monster stats. I post room descriptions, pictures of monsters and NPCs, treasure lists, and dreams/visions right in Discord, and keep track of HP and status conditions right on the monster tokens. We played around with a maze that had dynamic lighting - but the party was so high level and had such enormous movement speeds that they split up pretty quickly and got lost. I might use it again for a lower-level party; we'll see. Anyway. Geez - looking back, when last we left these doofuses they were fifth level and second tier, and halfway through the lady's light. Okay - I'll put a quick summary of the rest behind a spoiler: AP Progression:
This is the list of levels/tiers and what they'd do at each. We're using milestone levels, not XP, and I'll never go back to all the fiddly computation of XP and gaming the system that way.
Here's a key to my notes: 5th/1: Magnimar Sawmill, Ironbriar, Clocktower, Chymic Works (CC, Rise) (KILL XANESHA) Means that at 5th level and Tier 1, the party went into the Magnimar Sawmill, Dealt with Ironbriar, and went to the Clocktower and the Chymic Works (not necessarily in that order). The APs were Carrion Crown and Rise of the Runelords, and they gained a new tier when they killed Xanesha. 1st/0: city stuff in Sandpoint (CC, Rise)
They're 18th level and tier 7. Combat is SILLY. We can generally get two combat encounters per session, and last time we hit a new max HP done to a single enemy in a round (622 by the Cavalier). The mage does 300-point-fireballs that blasts through SR and fire resistance, and can select targets to not be affected by the blast. He can cast two a round - one quickened. DANG. Book 5 WotR BBEG:
Baphomet took 3 rounds, and only because the party cleared some 'trash mob' minotaurs first, and his Priest was there casting Miracles for healing. I'll try to make a couple more posts soon about some of the details, how I changed things up from the APs, and what-I've-learned here. I've never had a party reach level 18 before, and this is our first (and most likely only) time playing with mythic stuff. I'm having fun but I'm also looking forward to the end of the campaign - probably at the end of January.
Hyup. They got through Harrowstone fairly well. It's an experienced group so their characters are fairly well optimized; in retrospect, I should have beefed up the encounter (better summons, and focusing the Magic Missiles). Ah, well. Then they talked to Vesoriana, and were a little confused because they only met four of the Big Five (heh heh heh...) Fifth?:
There's a thread on these boards about having Father Charlatan be an ongoing concern - a meeting after book three, with 'Desna'. I made the post-Harrowstone chains of Father C give +1 to the DC of Divine spells, and +1 to Will saves, so they'd keep it around.
Bwa ha ha! I'm not sure what / where I'll do something with this but it's coming. Maybe at the end of book 3 - I might add Carrion Hill right around Illmarsh (or replace Illmarsh with Carrion Hill entirely), and this seems like a good place to bring Father C back. After that they space-barred through the rest of Ravengro, until Adivion showed up to teleport Kendra to Caliphas. He's her uncle Adi, and she's going to stay with him after selling the house until she figures out what's next for her. These forums have given me a LOT of ideas for some of those what's-nexts. We'll see how it works out. Oh - and the Chonky Tanky Minotaur Paladin/Cavalier is now a tricky Kitsune Ninja/Samurai. Sold the Lopper's Axe for a Magic Katana. Been more effective and a more fun character to play - and can pick locks and find traps (instead of opening doors minotaur-style). Then Adi tped back in and asked the party to accompany him to Clover's Crossing - I borrowed an idea from these boards, and sent the party down into the Ossuary of the Clover's Crossing temple to fight a bunch of undead. I found maps from these boards for Clover's Crossing and the temple, a random Inn map online, and a map called 'The Ashen Ossuary' from somewhere. I had a planned encounter where they might chase a pair of ghouls into an alley and find a horde of 20 ghouls there - Han Solo in the Death Star - but it didn't fit in with how they were doing in the town so I let it go. They found a whispering way token on a skeleton mage, just to make it part of the plot, and a letter addressed to them from 'the Whispering Herald' that I took directly from LokiThief on these boards (changing it slightly because it was addressed to them). It was delightfully creepy! The first encounter was a ghoul and 12 skeletons. They waltzed through it. The second was a Cadaver Lord and six zombies - a bit tougher (I didn't use the Cadaver Lord's darkness or fear, and called it a Zombie Master). Then a Skeletal Mage, Ogre Skeleton, and four other skeletons - the scorching rays hurt but it wasn't bad. I should have buffed the Ogre Skeleton. Finally in a chest they fought an Unrisen, which gave everyone the creeps and hit HARD - but no casualties. The PC cleric spent most rounds channeling to heal, the bard and ninja do the stabbing, and the mage bought a wand of magic missile for guaranteed damage each round. It works pretty well. Exploring the basement also gave them some extra treasure, because they're fourth level now. I put 'fly' in the Skeletal Mage's spellbook because I've read about other parties experiences in the Schloss... Then Adi teleported away, and they went to the Inn ('The most defensible structure in town' Adivion says), where I had 100 undead tokens on the Roll20 GM layer - I told them the sun was setting, and they were moving all around the inn asking about rooms when I moved all those tokens to the token layer. They decided to flee. Their horses (and cart) were left behind to give them some extra time. Thank you Buttercup, Peony, and Fartbum - you'll be missed. Next week is more Road adventures, with the Crippled Kin, maybe some Orcs, and then Lepidstadt. I plan to ease up the time pressure (only by a few days) so they can sell loot. It's a blast. I've joined a lot of pickup games that never come together or gel, but this one's a lot of fun so far. Woo hoo!
They got through the main floor of Harrowstone in one session, and then the top and most of the basement in the second. Oh. Spoilers! Harrowstone has a basement. Is that really a spoiler, though? There's other spoilers ahead too. Tomorrow they'll face the big-bad; the one with two parts. Don't want to give more than that away for now. I've also got a Clover's Crossing thing that I 'borrowed' from Rakshasa on a thread here called 'Clover's Crossing'. I've just finished adjusting the maps and populating the critters. I used a different, larger map for the basement of the church ('The Ashen Ossuary' in Roll20 from one of their free map packs). I'll update everyone with how things go. Three Spoilers this time: 5 Objects before curse lifted:
Below is what I posted in Discord about the five items in the hidden storeroom. We made the call not to worry about identifying items - part of the back-end of adventuring so we can keep on with the good stuff.
The Paladin used the handaxe against the Lopper and now she can't use another weapon; the cleric used the hammer against MM and attacked his friends with it. I'm still not sure what to do about FC - I didn't run the curse as written because we're remote, so I think I'm'a just hold onto this for sometime later. Bwa ha ha! The Lopper's Handaxe. This acts as a +1 Ghost-Touch Handaxe. It's probably not cursed - I wouldn't worry too much about it. The Lopper’s Handaxe This was confiscated from the Lopper when he was caught and I have stored it here for safe keeping. It appears to be a very basic handaxe of no special qualities. When the Lopper was brought to us, the axe was covered in the blood of his victims. I have had the axe cleaned and leave it here as such. Hopefully this small step will help give rest to the victims of this madman. - Lyvar Hawkran . . . but you notice that the handaxe is anything but clean. It is covered in blood along the blade and even in hand prints on the handle. The blood appears wet, fresh even . . . ///////////////////////// Father Charlatan's Holy Symbols Gives +2 Luck Bonus to AC and all saves inside Harrowstone against haunts and visions. Again, it's almost certainly not cursed. Why would you think it would be? From what I understand, “Father” Charlatan would select one of these holy symbols that would match the faith of his victims as proof of good intentions. I have untangled the fine silver chain and laid face up all of the holy symbols. Hopefully all of these dieties are offended by Charlatan’s actions and will provide us divine assistance in ensuring the good father’s years in Harrowstone in some way make up for the lives he destroyed. - Lyvar Hawkran . . . but you notice the symbols are not laying face up, as the warden described. Instead they appear to be stuck together into one jumbled mess of metal, almost as if held by a powerful magnet. Further, the chain is a jumbled mess and probably would be extremely difficult to untangle . . . ////////////////////////// Professor Hean Feramin's (The Splatter Man) Spellbook Mold has destroyed most of the book’s contents, but nine spells do remain viable: comprehend languages, dispel magic, false life, gust of wind, illusory script, levitate, mage armor, magic missile, and summon monster IV. I mean - sure. Okay. Sometimes - SOMEtimes - when you read through it your name is written in blood on one of the pages. It's not there when you turn the page and come back, though, so as far as curses go it's PROBABLY not the worst curse ever, right? Right? What item could mean more to a wizard than his spellbook, and here I place Feramin’s spellbook for hopefully eternal storage. The leather binding of this book, while surely worn and used often is so perfectly cared for. I can only assume all wizards go through such steps to protect their spells. I hazarded a glace through the book and while I certainly don’t understand what I see, there are dozens of pages of strange (I can only assume) magical script. - Lyvar Hawkran . . . but the book is anything but pristine or well cared for. The years have certainly taken their toll on the tome as the leathery binding is cracking and the pages appeared frayed upon simple examination. Further, a strange black-green mold seems to lightly cover most of the thick book. ////////////////////// Mosswater Marauder's Hammer This is a smith's hammer, not a weapon. It gives +2 (competency) bonus to the kind of craft item checks that a good hammer would help with (so armor and weapons and jewelry yes - potions, not so much). You could use it as a light hammer in battle, if you needed to. How can a tool used for delicate crafting be cursed? That idea is silly. Just because it was used for some horrible murders doesn't mean... oh, well, okay. Granted. But, it's a really nice hammer. This is the hammer I am told the monster who became known as the Mosswater Marauder used to kill his victims. It seems so hard to believe, given the amazing lightness of this hammer - almost that of a craftsman, not a killer. - Lyvar Hawkran ////////////////////// The Piper of Illmarsh's Silver Flute It's a VERY nice flute. It's masterwork, and it just seems to fit well in your hands - the stops right under your fingers, a nice balance and heft, and it's - well, it's just a delight to hold. You want to play music for your friends, when you hold this flute. This flute is so beautiful that it is hard to imagine it was used to cause such death. The silver is perfectly polished and the flute itself is clearly the work of a master craftsman. - Lyvar Hawkran . . . but you notice the flute has tarnished over the years of neglect. Item effects after curse lifted:
I'll change the spells if they use any in the fight. I'm making the Chains a pretty good item; My hope is to spring something with FC on them in the next book or two.
Hand Axe: +2 Ghost-Touch handaxe Spellbook: a spellbook! Comprehend languages, dispel magic, false life, gust of wind, illusory script, levitate, mage armor, magic missile, and summon monster IV. Flute: 1/wk casts Summon Nature’s Ally III which brings in d4+1 stirges (no other summons can be called by this flute). Hammer: +2 to any crafting checks that a hammer might be used for; +1 light silvered hammer. Chains: +1 to Will saves, +1 to DC of any Divine spells cast by the owner. Does not need to be worn, just somewhere in your gear. Visions in Harrowstone: I simplified the Haunts, taking out a lot of the rules stuff so they're more like visions, or like the Misgivings from RotRL.
They NOPED right out of the branding iron room, and I didn't use FC's haunt - other than that, it should be pretty clear which haunt goes where. If there's no penalty for failing a save listed, I made it -1 to the next combat d20 for the first miss, and then -1 to an addition 2 d20s, and so on. The bard missed a BUNCH of these saves. The kitchen gave them nausea. The letters are things I wrote on the Roll20 map in the GM layer to keep track of stuff. Vision 1: The Entrance to the Grounds of Harrowstone Prison As you pass through the broken gates of Harrowstone Prison you feel a sudden burst of claustrophobia - everything is closing in, tightening down around on you. Then you are on fire - the sensation of fire, of burning, of a flame that is burning YOU, burning your skin and tissues to the bone. A smell of singed clothes and hair and skin, of smoke. Pain and burning fills your world for an instant that lasts an eternity – an eternity of torment and flame and…. And then, as quickly as it started, the sensation passes. Make a Will save DC 10. This is a mind-affecting fear effect. Vision 2: Closer to Harrowstone As you pass by a ruined and dry fountain just before the entrance there is a sound, like the noise of a muttering crowd waiting for a performance, where all of the voices are rough, and deep, and impatient. Another step closer to the Prison and the voices gain in volume - still a crowd-mutter of indistinct words - and now the sound is... directed, at you personally, and then a SHOUT of rage, of fear, of pain! And then the sound vanishes, and all goes silent. The sky darkens. It will rain soon. Make a Will save DC 11. This is a mind-affecting fear effect.
Figures rise from the lake - some skeletal, and some ghostly, and some seeming to be forms of ectoplasm. Each rises from the lake and points directly at you; they are accusing you, personally, of disturbing their rest, and warning you of dangers unseen yet to come. The figures hover, for a moment, and then start to dissolve back into the lake; falling or fading or dissolving as appropriate, until all that is left is seven score hands pointing in judgement. Then the hands fall apart and again, all is silent, except for the light rain pattering upon the lake and the ruined roof or the prison. Four figures begin to move beneath the surface of the water. They are approaching you – it’s initiative! Vision 4: Entering Harrowstone Prison Entering the Prison proper, your head swims and you feel dizzy for a moment. There is a buzzing in your ears, increasing in volume, and your vision tunnels and goes dark, as you have a sudden vision of five prisoners:
H1: You open the door carefully and look through the doorway to the passage beyond – and you have a sudden vision of several badly-burnt shrieking people rushing past you, screaming with rage and pain. The door is ripped from your hands and shuts more tightly than before. H2: As you look around the room you notice movement out of the corner of your eye. Several of the branding irons rise out of the empty brazier, glowing red-hot, and launch themselves at you! (Reflex save DC 14 or take d6+1 damage, and branded (a random number for each)) H3: You hear a faint sobbing sound. Psychic echoes of shame and anger fill this room; there is a sound of chains rattling and clanking and you feel your arms move behind your back as heavy manacles clamp upon your wrists! Will save DC 12 or your hands are bound behind your back for this fight. A set of ghostly manacles rise from the ground: it is initiative! H4: The infirmary. You have visions of pain and suffering, of difficult choices forced upon the prisoner - the choice between suffering through sickness and injury in one's cell, or adjourning to the infirmary where treatments were little better than torture. It's horrifying, as are many places in this accursed place. Make a DC 12 Will save. This is a mind-affecting fear effect. UPPER LEVEL The Kitchen. You have a vision of the food served to the prisoners here – mealy bread, thin gruel, barely palatable stew. It’s hard to say if the prisoners got more protein from the ‘beef’ used in the stew, or from the worms that infested much of the food. You feel yourself looking at your second (and last) meal of the day – cold porridge and a slice of something that’s certainly not ham – and your stomach churns at the thought; eating this food is marginally better than starving. Make a F Save – DC 12. Father Charlatan Haunt: Keep your mic off for now. You can hear what your party is saying, and see what they’re doing to your corpse: but at a distance, as if you were floating above yourself. You have a sense of peace and comfort – at any minute, you’re sure, your God will come and bring you to your final rest. Make a DC 14 Will save. Let me know by whispering to me (in Roll20: use /w David to make the text following show up to just me) if you take any actions. An avatar of your God appears, smiling and shining. “Let me help you – let me help you find peace”, it says, beatifically. Make a DC 14 Will save.
You stand in a partially collapsed chamber, ankle-deep in black chill waters as they consider what lies before them. Torches and lights burn with half as much light, and the mood is oppressive and anguished. As you look around, you’re taken aback by a sudden cacophony of screams – as if many people were burning to death. A stench of smoke and charred flesh fills your nostrils. Make a Will save DC 12. This is a mind-affecting fear effect. Several strange glowing figures rise menacingly from the water in here, forming from the skeletal remains. Initiative! Hb2: As you investigate the room, you see bronze plaques upon the walls next to each exit. Cleaning them from the soot and grime, you are confronted with the Northern Oubliette, the Southern Oubliette, The Eastern Cells, or the Cells and Torture. They are labelled "Reaper's Hold", "Hell's Basement", “Abbadon”, and "The Nevermore", respectively, to add to the levity and whimsy one typically finds in areas such as this. Oubliette: noun, a secret dungeon with access only through a trapdoor in its ceiling. Hb3: There is a stench, first, of fear, old sweat, and blood. Next a sound of dripping water and the occasional moan of another wretched soul. But these are distractions from the crushing sense of hopelessness; your life is now the pit, and will be only the pit, forever. All you know is this circular pit, too small to stretch out in, and dark, dark, dark, except for those few moments when food and water are lowered down to you, and your old buckets raised up. You always surrender your buckets, for if you do not then the pit is allowed to fill with water. Always the dark, the cramped space, and the ALONE. Dark. Cramped. Forever. As you struggle to process this, a spectral figure rises from the central grating. Initiative! Hb4: There is a stench, of old sweat, fear, and blood. There is a charge in the air of electricity, a feeling of dead cats roaming inside a dry room. Water drips into a pool, and there is the occasional sound of another moaning wretched soul. But these are distractions from the crushing sense of hopelessness; your life is now the pit, and will be only the pit, forever. All you know is this circular pit, too small to stretch out in, and dark, dark, dark, except for those few moments when food and water are lowered down to you, and your old buckets raised up. You always surrender your buckets, for if you do not then the pit is allowed to fill with water. Always the dark, the cramped space, and the ALONE. Dark. Cramped. Forever. Hb5 You enter this chamber – and everything goes dark. Your vision cannot penetrate the horrible pervasive darkness of this room – the darkness of gloom and despair. But then you see something – a…. letter? Yes – and the first letter of your name! The letter is written in blood – the kind of blood that glows with an unholy glimmering. This letter is stealing your soul, your willpower… your sanity… and if your name is completely spelled out, you will die. Make a Will save: DC 16. This is a mind-affecting effect. If you can destroy the wall where the letter is written – or remove the letter from the wall somehow – you might be able to avoid this affect. But hurry! Another letter is being spelled out even now!
So, okay. I'm posting this stuff because it's what I'd want to see for a jumping-off point, in our new online-campaign world. I have a blog somewhere here about my other campaign, but I don't have the energy to keep up on it right now. These are to pay back the community for all the good stuff I'VE used from other posts - in my own little way. Thank you! Before the Rona I was a player in two campaigns and a DM in another. Right around the time of Quarantine I got into a Starfinder campaign online - which was awesome, because one of the players moved a couple hours south, and another is on the East Coast. Only one of them made it. Between schedules and the differences between online and in-person, we just couldn't. We're still going strong in a weird mash-up thing I'm running, but I think that's mostly because we had a long history playing together - some of us for 30 years - and also because of the strength of the Paizo materials. Not to divulge too much about myself but the first D&D game I played my character class was 'Elf'. I lost a friend in middle school because of Acererak and his horrible tomb. I say this because when I say Paizo's stuff is the BOMB, I mean it's strong enough so my friends and I want to see what happens next, enough to put up with all the bad things about online play. Okay. Changes to the AP: I put the furnace in the center, swapping it for where the Induction chamber should be. Furnaces seem like a central kind of thing, yes? At least two of my players said 'oh no a furnace' or something of the sort when I opened up the map for that corner area, where the furnace is in the AP, so I know I have to keep making changes as we move forward. Bwa ha ha! The furnace almost killed them. They've sold everything except the 5 artifacts for new healing potions, because of Ember Maw. Bwa ha ha! That's about it for changes, really. I upped the number of some monsters - skeletons and stirges and ectoplasmic humans (oh my) - because they've got a pretty buff party. But I didn't make TOO many changes. I was going to re-organize the whole dang basement, but then I thought - you know what? We're all stressed about the world right now. Maybe a comforting adventure into horror tropes is okay - maybe I should just swap a few rooms around but not make it TOO different. Like - maybe it's okay for the players to have read the modules, because there's the thrill of the unknown, but there's also being Heroes that defeat the Darkness, and having a good time with a group of friends. Yes, I kept all of this in a spoiler.
Just a couple more posts here today. It's Nov 8 2020 and so - hello people of the future! We have just had a very tense election cycle for US president and I am still feeling emotionally fragile. I am glad to have the rich Golarion fantasy world to distract me from politics. Spoilers? Yes. Spoilers ahead. Be thou warned! The most recent session was the main floor of Harrowstone. The next one will be the upper floor and part of the lower, and the one after that will be the rest of the lower floor and then the trip from Ravengro to Lepidstadt. I posted a set of dreams they had before going to Harrowstone, which I took almost verbatim from a post on these forums. If it was yours - thanks! If not - any errors are probably mine, from editing to fit my ideas about this campaign. It's dark. If you're looking at Carrion Crown, though... I mean, are you expecting Magical Kitten Adventures? Dreams:
Dream: The dream starts with her face. A beautiful strong face, the face of a good wife, of a good friend. A feeling of love tinged with longing – and something more, a feeling of being … unworthy. Something broken inside of you. Something jealous and ugly. Something that finds problems even if none might exist. That manufactures reasons to be jealous – an itch that overpowers your vision. A part of you knows this is untrue but it is hard – so hard! – to bite back on these dark broodings. You are clearly not worthy of love – not worthy of her. You cannot, of course, provide what she needs; your heart is too broken and bitter for her. She must be finding her comfort elsewhere. You can tell. Her secret glances away from you over dinner – her sighs when she thinks you are not watching her. The slight pause before she says “I love you too”.
The hammer is in your hand between the time when you called her a harlot and when she re-laced her boots. Her sobs feel like ashes in your ears. The hammer is in your hand, as she turns away from you.
A fireplace warmly illuminates an old woman's humble cabin. The wind whipping the waters of Avalon Bay can be faintly heard in the background. Two little children, a boy and a girl, are sitting around the fireplace with their grandmother. "Please, Grammy, tell us the tale of the Piper again! Please!" The old woman chuckles as she rocks back and forth in her rocking chair. "Alright, alright, my little sticklebacks." She leans forward and turns away from the fire, eerily casting her face in shadow. "You better be good, because the Piper is going around Illmarsh! If you have been naughty, you may hear her flute at night, playing a sad melody just for you. And then, one night, you fall asleep after dinner, and when you wake up..." She pauses for dramatic effect and then suddenly slams her hand on the armrest of her rocking chair and yells: "...you look down and you see her pet stirges drinking your blood!"
In the distance, the howling of the wind almost sounds like a sad song.
The wind of change is blowing through the county of Canterwall. People talk about independence from their hereditary noble family more and more openly. While the revolutionary spirit has not yet reached critical mass and probably will not for a couple of years more, the people of Tamrivena have started to realize that there may be alternatives to their current rulers. The cobbled stones of the large town's market square are hardly visible because of the crowd. A hunchbacked man, dressed in blue and white clerical vestments embroidered with Desna's butterfly symbol, swings his shepherd's staff for emphasis as he preaches to the gathered townsfolk: "And see, as it is written in the Eight Scrolls, man was created to be free, but man has to create his own freedom. And as you strive to throw off your worldly shackles, you need to break the chains of your soul. For only a free spirit can soar like a butterfly!" The sermon is well-received as it touches some of the current sentiments with skillful precision. The travelling preacher goes on for a little longer and then states: "...and thus you shall maketh your own destiny. For only 15 gold pieces the smile of Lady Luck can be bestowed upon you in the form of this divinely blessed ointment. 'tis but a small price to pay for your soul's salvation in these trying times!" The preacher has captured some of his listeners with his sing-song sermon and several of the townspeople start pushing towards the group of cowled men that have set up a folding table with their relics for sale near the preacher's portable pulpit. Suddenly a farmer yells from among the crowd: "Oh give us a break, 'Father Charlatan'. I just saw you a couple of days ago in Lepidstadt, except you were a Pharasmin then and sold that damn grease as a divine wrinkle cream to my wife! She's been smelling like cabbage ever since." Several people in the crowd chuckle at the thought. The hunchbacked preacher's face freezes and he gestures to one of his acolytes. "Oh, no, no, you must be mistaken. I am Sefick Corvin, you must have met my brother Levin. He has truly fallen from grace. I am so sorry for your loss! Please let my acolyte reimburse you for my brother's false cure." The acolyte makes his way over to the man and smiles at him, revealing a golden tooth. "Please, take me to your home and give me the salve, and I will reimburse you right away." The man grumbles, then shrugs and leaves with the acolytes. As the crowd starts to disperse, a few people buy the priest's miracle cure. Hours later, down the road, the acolyte returns, alone. As he falls into step with the now sour-looking preacher, he nods almost imperceptibly. The preacher smiles fiendishly. They walk down the road to the next town, the acolyte cleaning dried blood from his knife.
Lepidstadt, 4661 AR. A courtroom, the gallery filled with curious citizens, rumbling and mumbling, every now and then pointing with fearsome delight to the calm and haggard-looking person sitting alone beyond the bar. Even the jury cannot hide their disgusted fascination with the accused. The Lopper grins wickedly and stares blankly ahead at the empty bench. "Rise for Justiciar Axenris the Third!"
"Tere Saetressle, you are..." The bald person interrupts, their words pressed through their toothy grin in a calm voice: "Please, call me Lopper." "Silence!" the judge exclaims forcefully. "Tere Saetressle. You have been found guilty by a jury of your peers of stalking and savagely beheading at least 8 innocent people." The crowd erupts in gasps of horror and rage at the reminder of the Lopper's deeds and is only calmed down when Justiciar Axenris starts banging his gavel. "Order, order in the courtroom! Tere Saetressle, you are hereby sentenced to live the remainder of your short life in Harrowstone, which, I hasten to add, is a blessing compared to the extent of your crimes and the suffering of your victims. There you will reside in the misery of your thoughts until such time as you are drawn, hanged, and quartered. May the gods have no mercy on your blighted soul." As the judge gets up and leaves, the crowd erupts once more, this time in cheer and mockery of the Lopper. The accused, however, does not even flinch. They just sit. And they stare. You can feel The Lopper’s eye turn to you. They make eye contact with you, looking directly at you. Directly into you. The Lopper grins at you. You wake up in a sweat, haunted by the memory of that grin. Dream: The door to the cramped office in the Quartrefaux Archives, Caliphas’ famous academy for young nobles and home to the royal collection of artifacts and documents, says 'Professor Hean Feramin, Head of Anthroponomastics'. Inside, only a narrow path from the door to the desk is not covered in books, scrolls, parchment, and various types of writing equipment. Motes of dust dance in the sallow light falling in through the shuttered window. It smells of strong tea, paper, ink, and iron. The professor, an elderly and polite gentleman, sits at his desk in a high-backed chair worn down by countless hours of study. Across from him, an elven man wearing a black deerstalker hat and a gray casual suit listens intently to the professor's elaborations, a very faint smile on his face. "Forgive me, Professor Feramin, if I have to interrupt you," the elf says politely. "I know you are truly a luminary in the field of the origins and study of names. But why, in your expert opinion, would a serial killer go through the troubles of spelling their victims' names out in letters to them? Each letter written in blood or entrails, no less." He gets up from the visitor's chair and walks over to bookshelf bursting with tomes and scrolls. "And all that work, just to kill the victim afterwards in a trap as gruesome as it is ingenious." He casually scans the books as the professor replies: "Hm. Interesting question. There could be many reasons. Maybe the killer enjoys the victim's agony. Maybe he wants them to live in constant dread of finding a letter, ticking down the countdown to the inevitable one letter at a time. Maybe the blood has some occult importance. You know, one of my graduate students, has posited a fascinating theory on a new type of magic powered by emotional components. I think, I have his paper somewhere around here... Lorrimor, Lorrimor..." He starts rifling through the myriad of papers on his desk.
He pulls on one of the books and all of a sudden, the entire bookshelf moves back and slides to the side, revealing a secret room filled with elaborate contraptions, traps, surgical tools, and a list of 27 bloody names hanging on the wall in the back. The professor starts to panic as the secret door opens. His face, just moments ago a friendly mask of academic professionalism, turns into the grimace of a mad man. As he jumps up from his chair, suddenly holding a serrated knife he pulled out from under the papers, the door bursts open and a squad of guardsmen storms the office, overpowering the professor within moments. "Take him away, boys," the detective states as he adjusts his hat. "Looks like the Splatter Man just got tenure at Harrowstone."
Personally, I will only play Magical Kitten Adventures if the 'Magic' part is about R'Lyeh.
I'm posting all my materials here in Spoilers instead of Google Doc links or whatever, because I've been saddened by so many forum links being down. My stuff here is almost entirely from other people so PLEASE go ahead and use / alter / ignore as you like! If I've used your stuff without giving you a shout-out please let me know and I'll credit you - I have so many weird files from good stuff here that I don't know who to attribute anything to anymore. So this next spoiler is the research that I gave my party - maybe your group is super into the tracking down info at the library and temple and what-not, but maybe it's more fun to do this away from the roll20 meetings and just say 'okay - you do research, and you find this stuff out.' When I ran this stuff in a face-to-face group, I played music, turned off the lights and had candles, and hit them with haunts. They got second level after the third session, and were WICKED creeped out when they stood at the Prison's gates. I'm not sure how to do that in our online play now, and the action's more fun anyway. For this group, we got 2nd level after the first session and got right into the Haunted Prison, where the action is. Hey - I'm making changes to the AP and my GM style, but I am certainly not complaining. I live in Portland OR, and the players are all in other time zones. And yet, here we are, connecting and having fun over the internet! We are trailblazers for this Brave New World. The 'Community' part of Community, Identity, Stability, mostly. But with magic and monsters! Anyway. Here's the research stuff I sent the party. Research:
Research results Harrowstone Harrowstone is a ruined prison— partially destroyed by a fire in 4661, the building has stood vacant ever since. The locals suspect that it’s haunted, and don’t enjoy speaking of the place. Harrowstone was built in 4594. Ravengro was founded at the same time as a place where guards and their families could live and that would produce food and other supplies used by the prison. Originally, Harrowstone housed only local criminals, but as the prison’s fame spread, other counties and distant lands began paying to have more dangerous criminals housed within this prison’s walls. At the time of the great Harrowstone Fire, the number of particularly violent or dangerous criminals imprisoned within the dungeons below was at an all-time high. The five most notorious prisoners in Harrowstone at the time of the great fire were Father Charlatan, the Lopper, the Mosswater Marauder, the Piper of Illlmarsh, and the Splatter Man. The fire that killed all of the prisoners and most of the guards in Harrowstone Prison destroyed a large portion of the prison’s underground eastern wing, but left most of the stone structure above relatively intact. Harrowstone prison’s warden perished in the fire, along with his wife, although no one knows why she was in the prison when the fire occurred. A statue commemorating the warden and the guards who lost their lives in the Harrowstone prison fire was built in the months after the tragedy—that statue still stands on the riverbank just outside of town. Most of the hardened criminals sent to Harrowstone spent only a few months imprisoned, for it was here that most of Ustalav’s executions during that era were carried out. The fire that caused the tragedy in Harrowstone was, in fact, a blessing in disguise, for the prisoners had rioted and gained control of the prison’s dungeons immediately prior to the conflagration. It was only through the self sacrifice of Warden Hawkran and 23 of his guards that the prisoners were prevented from escaping Harrowstone — the guards gave their lives to save the town of Ravengro. At the time Harrowstone burned, five particularly notorious criminals had recently arrived at the prison. While the commonly held belief is that the tragic fire in Harrowstone prison began accidentally after the riot began, in fact the prisoners had already seized control of the dungeon and had been in command of the lower level for several hours before the fire. Warden Hawkran triggered a deadfall in Harrowstone prison to seal the rioting prisoners in the lower level, but in so doing trapped himself and nearly two dozen guards. The prisoners in Harrowstone were in the process of escaping when the panicked guards on the main level accidentally started the fires that destroyed the Warden and his wife, the rioting prisoners, and ultimately the prison itself. Whispering Way The Whispering Way is a sinister organization of necromancers that has been active in the Inner Sea region for thousands of years. Agents of the Whispering Way often seek alliances with undead creatures, or are themselves undead. The Whispering Way’s most notorious member was Tar-Baphon, the Whispering Tyrant, although the society itself has existed much longer than even that mighty necromancer. The Whispering Way itself is a series of philosophies that can only be transferred via whispers— the philosophies are never written or spoken of loudly, making the exact goals and nature of the secretive philosophy difficult for outsiders to learn much about. Exact details on the society are difficult to discern, but chief among the Whispering Way’s goals are discovering formulae for creating liches and engineering the release of the Whispering Tyrant. Agents of the Whispering Way often travel to remote sites or areas plagued by notorious haunts or undead menaces to perform field research or even to capture unique monsters. The symbol of the Whispering Way is a gagged skull, and those who learn too many of the Way’s secrets are often murdered, and their mouths mutilated to prevent their bodies from divulging secrets via speak with dead. Five Prisoners Father Charlatan (Sefick Corvin) Of the five notorious prisoners, only Father Charlatan was not technically a murderer, yet his crimes were so blasphemous that several churches demanded he be punished to the full extent of Ustalavic law. Although he claimed to be an ordained priest of any number of faiths, Father Corvin was in fact a traveling con artist who used faith as a mask and a means to bilk the faithful out of money in payment for false miracles or cures. He became known as Father Charlatan after his scheme was exposed and his Sczarni accomplices murdered a half-dozen city guards in an attempt to make good the group’s escape. The Lopper (Tere Saetressle): When the Lopper stalked prey, they would hide in the most unlikely of places, sometimes for days upon end with only a few supplies to keep them going while they waited for the exact right moment to strike. Once their target was alone, the Lopper would emerge to savagely behead their victim with a handaxe. It is unclear how many victims the Lopper claimed; the courts were able to definitively prove eight but it is likely that the tally was much higher. The Mosswater Marauder (Ispin Onyxcudgel): Only 5 years before his hometown of Mosswater was destined to be overrun and ruined by monsters from the nearby river, Ispin Onyxcudgel was a well-liked artisan and a doting husband. When he discovered his wife’s infidelity, he flew into a jealous rage and struck her dead with his hammer, shattering her skull and his sanity with one murderous blow. Wracked with shame and guilt, Ispin became convinced that if he could rebuild his wife’s skull she would come back to life—but unfortunately, he could not find the last blade-shaped fragment from the murder site. So instead, Ispin became the Mosswater Marauder. Over the course of several weeks, the cunning dwarf stalked and murdered nearly 20 people while searching for just the right skull fragment. He was captured just before murdering the daughter of a visiting nobleman from Varno, and was carted off to Harrowstone that same night. The Piper of Illmarsh (real name unknown): Before she snatched her victims, the Piper taunted her targets with a mournful dirge on her flute. She preferred to paralyze lone victims by dosing their meals with lich dust and then allowing her pet stirges to drink the victims dry of blood. The Splatter Man (Hean Feramin): Professor Feramin was a celebrated scholar of Anthroponomastics (the study of personal names and their origins) at the Quartrefaux Archives in Caliphas. Yet an accidental association with a succubus twisted and warped his study, turning it into an obsession. Feramin became obsessed with the power of a name and how he could use it to terrify and control. Soon enough, he’d developed an uncontrollable obsession with an imaginary link between a person’s name and what happens to that name when the person dies. Every few days, he would secretly arrange for his victim to find a letter from her name written in blood, perhaps smeared on a wall or spelled out with carefully arranged entrails. Once he had spelled his victim’s name, he would at last come for her, killing her in a gory mess using a complex trap or series of rigged events meant to look like an accident. We started in Golarion Oct 26, 4711. I can't keep track of Pathfinder months so I just use our Calendar for the names of the months.
Thanks for the shout-back, Sibelius! I dunno how woke it is to ask, "Well, why CAN'T the serial killer be non-binary?" But that might be a Very Strange Sentence to write, all in all. Anyway. My party is thusly: Hjorn, Dwarf Cleric. The least-weird PC in the party. You'll see. Originally a Cleric of Abadar, that wasn't working for the player (too much insistence on following the laws) so now a priest of some Azlanti god. Has done the most hp damage to monsters so far, but not by a large margin - which the player was worried about, being a cleric and all. Bonnie, Minotaur Paladin (tortured crusader). Chonky and tanky, has so far taken twice as many hp damage as the rest of the party put together. Seven feet tall so the RP in Ravengro was REAL easy to play out. "No, ma'am, I don't want any trouble here." Stigs, Goblin Wizard. Has some strange archetypes that seem overpowered but, whatever, they also seem fun. The player speaks in an accent like an elderly goblin when talking in character, and is in charge of half of the puns at the table. Cedar, Ghoran Bard. Do you know what the Ghoran race is? I'll give you a minute to google it. Yes. One of the racial features is 'Delicious'. This player is in charge of the rest of the puns. All in all I'm having a blast with this party! Okay. Here's a spoiler: Will and Inheritance: (The following is read by Councilor Vashian Hearthmount) “I, Petros Lorrimor, being of sound mind, do hereby commit to this parchment my last will and testament. “Let it be known that, with the exception of the specific details below, I leave my home and personal belongings entire to my daughter Kendra. Use them or sell them as you see fit, my child. I have spoken to Vauran Grimburrow about my library, and Gharen Muricar about the house if you should choose to sell either of those things. They will contact you soon, Kendra, if they have not yet done so. “Yet beyond the bequeathing of my personal effects, this document must serve other needs. I have arranged for the reading of this document to be delayed until all principals can be in attendance, for I have more than mere inheritance to apportion. “First, to my former student and colleague Adivion Adrissant: an exhortation to continue the investigations into and, hopefully, interference with, our old enemy. The phrase ‘Cryptos Noctis Abhorrence’ will allow you access to the library of which we spoke last Spring; use it wisely, old friend. (At this, Councilman Vashian hands Adivion a small wooden box bound in a strange dark metal. “The instructions, Dr. Adrissant, are that you open the box when you are alone.”) (Councilor Hearthmount continues to read the will.) “To my old friends Bonnie, Cedar, Hjorn, and Stig: I hate to impose upon you all, but there are few others who are capable of appreciating the true significance of what it is I have to ask. As some of you know, I have devoted many of my studies to all manner of evil, that I might know the enemy and inform those better positioned to stand against it. For knowledge of one’s enemy is the surest path to victory over its plans. “And so, over the course of my lifetime, I have seen fit to acquire a significant collection of valuable but dangerous tomes, any one of which in the wrong circumstances could have led to an awkward legal situation. While the majority of these tomes remain safe under lock and key at the Lepidstadt University, I fear that a few I have borrowed remain in a trunk here in my Ravengro home. While invaluable for my work in life, in death I would prefer not to burden my daughter with the darker side of my profession, or worse still, the danger of possessing these tomes herself. As such, I am entrusting this chest of tomes to you, posthumously. I ask that you please deliver the collection to my colleagues at the University of Lepidstadt, who will put them to good use for the betterment of the cause. (At this point Vashian lifts a small chest and places it on the desk, sliding it away from himself.) “Yet before you leave for Lepidstadt, there is the matter of another favor—please delay your journey one month and spend that period of time here in Ravengro to ensure that my daughter is safe and sound. She has no one to count on now that I am gone, and if you would aid her in setting things in order for whatever she desires over the course of this month, you would have my eternal gratitude. From my savings, I have also willed to each of you a sum of one hundred platinum coins. For safekeeping, I have left these funds with Embreth Daramid, one of my most trusted friends in Lepidstadt—she has been instructed to issue this payment upon the safe delivery of the borrowed tomes no sooner than one month after the date of the reading of this will. “I, Petros Lorrimor, hereby sign this will in Ravengro on this first day of October, in the year 4711. (with Petros Lorriomor’s signature, witnessed by Jominda Fallenbridge and Benjan Caeller). The chest The chest itself is a relatively small object of oak and iron. Within are several old tomes, and one relatively new one. The newest tome sits on the top and bears the phrase “Read me now!” scratched into the leather cover. The other tomes comprise the books of dangerous lore mentioned in his will—three of these have notes tucked into them indicating that they should be delivered to one Montagnie Crowl, a professor of antiquities at Lepidstadt University. The fourth, The Manual of the Order of the Palatine Eye, is bound in iron and locked. It has a note attached, indicating it should be delivered to Embreth Daramid, a judge at the Lepidstadt Courthouse (although the note asks for this delivery in particular to be handled discreetly, and includes the address of Embreth’s home so that the PCs can deliver it there). These books are summarized below: Manual of the Order of the Palatine Eye: The rich purple cover contains a brass scarab set with a single eye in its center. The book’s covers are rimmed in polished steel and clasped with a small but intricate lock, the keyhole of which appears to be for a key with a strange, triangular shaft.
Serving Your Hunger: This text is a copy of one of several unholy books sacred to the goddess Urgathoa. Lorrimor’s notations liberally sprinkle the margins. Urgathoa is the mother of the Undead, and Her book is unsettling to read. Perusing the pages for more than a few minutes leaves you feeling squalid and greasy – but under your skin, in a manner that cannot be washed away. It is not a pleasant book to read. The Umbral Leaves: This lexicon is a translation into Common of the unholy book of Zon-Kuthon. The major theme seems to be that mortal flesh is unclean, and the way to holiness is through extreme abrogation of the flesh via pain and distress. What is most disturbing about this book is how it resonates with you – after reading a passage you find yourself nodding along and thinking, “oh yes – I understand that.” The Professor’s Journal: The professor’s will does not mention his journal—it is not one of the dangerous tomes he wants delivered to Lepidstadt. The majority of the entries are relatively bland, accounting for day-to-day activities in a small town. The professor has circled several entries in the book with red ink, however: 12th August, 4701 (10 years ago)
27th July 4711 (Current Year)
3rd October, 4711 (Current Year)
5th October, 4711 (Current Year)
8th October, 4707 (Current Year)
The final entry was written on the day that the Professor’s body was found.
We had the first three sessions - session 0, then the funeral and Ravengro, then the prison. Spoilers, I guess? This is all spoilers all the way down. The first actual session was meh. We're all figuring each other out. I'm glad the party's got history together, and I'm getting a sense for what works and what doesn't. The first session was Ravengro RP, and there was a lot of awkward silences. It's over Discord and Roll20, and they'd played the first module before, so maybe that's part of it - but I think action's better than talky-talky. We were also down a player, so things felt off for everyone, I think. So - all that stuff, in my second post? Forget that. Too much structure and not much fun. So then the second session went much better. We skipped the rest of the in-town haunts and stuff (there wasn't any town meeting, for instance) and just went right into it. A lot more fun, and we had some spooky times and some combat times. Whee! I'm running a mashup of other APs - the Runelords trilogy, and WotR, mostly - and that party is 17th level and 7th tier. They just killed the Big Bad from Book 5 of WotR and that combat took four hours. It's fun and all seeing what all the high level spells and powers are like - but it's a better fun to have an AC 16 skeleton that is +1 TH and does d6+1 damage. You know? Anyway. I'll post in the next few posts - behind spoilers - the stuff I send out to them. We just bypassed all the in-town haunts and all, and the stuff about Trust Points and Research, to get into the action. If I had a face-to-face table I'd play out and play up the in-town haunts and make them do research, but with this online campaign I think it works better to let Roll20 and combat be our time together, and do the research and RP stuff between sessions and over Discord and all. And geez - I used to have all this baggage about identifying items, and sellling / buying stuff, you know? Like, cards to describe the items and all and what they'd get with successive Identify spells. Yikes, I say, looking back. Now after the session's over I just post the treasure list to a discord channel, tell them to look up the prices and halve that for the sell value, and then figure it out before the next session. Easier, and more fun! When I worry about realism or immersion I remind myself about 'hit points' or 'saving throws' and I allow myself to move on.
Right. There Be SPOYLERS Ahead Mateys! Be Thou warned. Most of the extra systems I've seen in APs seem to gamify things too much. I know, I know. We ARE playing a game! Gamifying's the point! Hit points and magic are already gamified... But I'd rather keep the bulk of the rules for the combats, and let the rest just happen. So Ravengro's cold and unaccepting of strangers - that'll come out in the first encounter, and random interactions with NPCs, if my players do such things. The research rules seem better - but still a lot of system stuff that could just be simplified. I want them to feel time pressure, like they have agency for what information they receive, and make it streamlined and fun. I also want them to get some extra cash, because the first couple of APs are a bit light there I think. So! After the funeral, Kendra wants to sell her house, and her father's libraries. The party has a month in town. Each day, a PC can (choose two): Sort / research Petros’ files notes and books (Harrowstone or W Way) Roll Knowledge, get 0/1 pieces info, improve value of library Research in town (City Hall, Temple) (Harrowstone, W Way, Prisoners)
Construction / prep of Lorrimor house (Craft/Profession, K Engineering, ST, CH, DX) Patrol town: investigate and talk to townsfolk
Other: Craft, Profession, Perform, ?? Each day of work done on Kendra’s house increases party’s take by 25/50 gp (in Lep) Each day of work done on the Library increases value by 10/50 gp (in Lep) Each day of Other work done gains 5/20 gp income right away If they want to research at the Temple or City Hall they need to ask someone and play it out (or roll some Diplomacy / Bluff checks, I suppose). I've broken down a few different people's research ideas and I plan to dole it out bit by bit. The haunts will start right away; letters over three weeks, and a variety of other creepy things. Some of the haunts will just happen to them, but others will be triggered by their actions (if everyone researches, they won't encounter the stuff that happens at the tavern or on the streets.) I'll post google docs with (a) the research items and (b) haunt ideas soon. I initially had a 30-day timeline planned out but I think it's better to keep it more flexible depending on what resonates with this party. Two final notes, and these need spoilers, I think: Big Bad:
Adivion Adrissant will be one of the pallbearers; Kendra calls him 'Uncle Adi'. He'll re-appear at the end of the module to go to Clover's Crossing, and then later in Lepidstadt to take Kendra back to Caliphas. For now! I am reserving my final call about who the Bad Guy(s) is/are; I'll keep Vrood as is, I think, but introduce his name sooner (with a scroll on a W.W. body in the prison). Between Adivion, Kendra, and Petros there's a lot of cool possibilities.
It also depends on how the party resonates with Kendra. I plan to use the letters from A.A. in some way, too. All Males: I didn't notice this before, but this bugged me on my most recent read-through of this AP.
Father Charlatan and the Splatter Man have a male identifier right in their names, so that might be too much to change easily. Looking around the internet, the Piper's pictures don't seem very gendered, and I liked the Marauder's pictures better than the Lopper's, so I decided to keep the Marauder with the same pronouns, give the Piper she/her/hers pronouns, and the Lopper they/them/their pronouns. I expect I'll be able to find some spooky picture to give my players for Mx. Lopper. I also changed the Lopper's name to Tere Saetressle. You'll see when I post the research and the Haunts and all. This party might not notice or care, actually, but it's these little details that I find important.
Hey everyone - I am about to begin a new Carrion Crown Adventure. I'm playing with a group of people I don't know - but they all know each other, and our Session Zero went well, so I am optimistic! I've put some of CC into a mash-up campaign that I'm running, but this one is pure Ustilavian Goodness. We're playing over Roll20 and Discord. That will make some of the horror feels difficult to convey, but we'll do what we can. For maps I'm using things posted here (and a couple of other blogs I've found) or screen captures from the modules. There's a TON of good stuff on these boards, and I have stolen massive amounts of content and good ideas from other posts. If I've used something of yours please let me know so I can give you credit - at this point I have too many files on my desktop to know where I cribbed things from. And of course - if you find any errors or typos they are certainly mine! Okay. The three main things I want to change in Haunting of Harrowstone are: the Big Bad needs to appear sooner; all the five are males; and the party and I dislike all the fiddly Pathfinder systems (like trust points and research). I don't think I've spoiled anything, for reals, yet. But every post after this will be MAD spoilers. I'll post the stuff I've got to change in posts after this. If you are a player - c'mon! I guarantee you'll have more fun if you go in without reading any posts about GMing this Path.
FOURTEENTH SESSION NOTES This was the first half of the Lady's Light. It's the first place I took out all the encounters that didn't advance the plot - the frog tribes, or the hydra at the entrance, for example. I kept the glass golem because that's a cool encounter and could have some implications for the top level; I kept the false Sorshen 'Mochtau' because that's kind of funny. Sorshen is a complicated NPC in Golarion. One of the sub-themes of these adventure paths is Redemption - and Sorshen has both the desire to find redemption, and a lot to ask forgiveness for. She's part of the Trinity of complicated redeemables (the others being Arushalae and Nocticula, of course). The Lady's Light will give the party the first Rune shard - and I'm hoping to tie that into the end goals of defeating both Alaznist and Deskari, and closing the World Wound. It also shows some of the bad stuff Sorshen was all about. What was not captured in the retelling was the party's conversation about the light itself. One player said he wanted to destroy it as an artifact of evil, and another said it saves lives as a lighthouse, and the discussion about this lasted a good half an hour. Gave me time to organize my notes about the battles inside... I'd say that between half and two-thirds of the encounter prep I do never gets met - in this session there were the spectres in the tomb as the party gets into the temple, and the hag and her minions deeper down in the underwater complex. The nice thing about running modules is how little work I have to do there - reading a stats block, instead of making my own. Thank you, Paizo! We are having a lot of fun with your awesome adventures.
FOURTEENTH SESSION We rejoin Our Heroes in Magnimar, at the Lorrimor Townhouse (previously the Foxglove Townhouse). Plans are discussed, objectives evaluated, and outcomes looked into. The Party decides to head to Sandpoint and follow up on Nualia's claim of charming the Sheriff. Claims which new interim Sheriff Shalelu verifies; the Sheriff attempted to kill the mayor, and was put down. Shalelu had not heard of Nualia and Tsuto's escape (and, in Tsuto's case, his recapture and commutation of sentence to exile in Ft. Rannick), but she wasn't too surprised. Seems Sandpoint might be making some Frontier Justice types of decisions for the foreseeable future, thinks the party, and they are likely not incorrect. Shayliss stays home. She's cut all ties with Sandpoint and has no desire to interact with her parents or be reminded of her dead sister. She does approach Torvan later and ask if he heard anything about Vin - which Torvan misunderstands at first as having something to do with wine, so he replies that no, he only drank ale in his short time there. Neither Shayliss nor Torvan were entirely happy with the conversation, but that is the life of adventurers, I suppose. Fighting, exploring, changing the destiny of a nation, looting ancient crypts - yes, with hopefully a healing potion and a warm meal at the end of that week. But small talk, in the city, with one's friends? That sometimes is not in the purview of the adventurer-on-the-street. But I digress. Passage is obtained on a Magnimarian patrol boat, which takes The Party to the Lady's Light at the tip of Varisia, surrounded by shoals (in the water) and swamps (on the land). A quite inhospitable place! The Lady is 200 feet tall, and holds a scepter another 50 feet above that; where She stands is at the top of 40' cliffs so it is Quite the impressive feat of statuary - especially considering that the empire which constructed Her died out ~10000 years ago, and started ~5000 years before that. Plus, at night, she glows! Our Heroes scout around - Vig even climbs to the top! "Torvan - I can see your house from here!" he calls down. That's confusing to Torvan, who's lived in caves, shacks, apartments, townhouses, inns, tents, an old hollow log, and a decrepit bungalow - never anything one might call a 'house', though. Antwon, meanwhile, rides up to a bridge that crosses a lagoon to a small spit of rock with a rather well-put-together cabin. The inhabitant is initially unfriendly, but the promise of whiskey and a mercifully small amount of conversation leads her to reveal some tunnels, through which she once was able to reach the inside of The Lady. Oh - my apologies. The Lady herself does not glow. I mean, She does, in part. Only from the top of the scepter though. Not Her whole Self, if you see what I mean. Perhaps today's missive should be titled 'a slew of digressions', now that we're part way through it, yes? Onward! Our Party finds a cave with a tunnel leading downward and a bad rotten smell - the smell of a 5-headed snake monster, slain sometime between a week and a month ago. The hydra was some sort of god to a local population of Boggards, apparently, and it's death certainly signifies some sort of lack of faith on the part of the Bogs. Down the tunnel and into the Lady! The party has been cautioned to paint the Rune of Lust on their persons, so the animated stone guardians at the gate do not animate and crush Our Heroes into paste. As far as they know, anyway - perhaps the statues are just statues of Sorshen, placed here to revere the Runelord who constructed this place. At this point, I will mention that The Lady, and almost all of the statuary inside Her, are of the ancient Runelord Sorshen, she whose domain was Lust. She looks identical to the woman who called herself Sorshen who recently offered Our Party work as specialists in the World Wound. The Heroes, as they progress through the tunnels inside The Lady, are beginning to wonder exactly who is was that contacted them. But onward they go! Beyond the statues is a rectangular opening in the floor, darkened and silent and (as Our Heroes soon discover) with a Feather Fall effect still in place. Fun! Beyond the pit is a long corridor, held up with risque statues of Sorshen, and a Sepulcher made of white marble, with an image of Sorshen lying in state painted on the top. The Party chooses not to mess with or open the sarcophagus. Down one end of the corridor they see a door with engravings of Sorshen binding succubi to various objects and devices. Succubi are quite pretty, but Sorshen is prettier. Beyond the door is a beautiful cavern with water in the bottom, lit up indirectly and carved so that the light reflecting off the water makes asthetically pleasing ripples of light on the walls. There are two boats, propelled with poles (the water is generally between 2 and 5 feet deep). Our Party heads to the left, upstream, and finds the source of the water, pouring out from a metal grate, high up in the cavern wall. Near there is a platform above the water, upon which stands a 12-foot tall statue of Sorshen. Looking more closely at the statue, it become apparent that it has no eyes, but instead openings into the hollow inside of the statue - and with even closer inspection The Heroes discover that the statue is full of water. Travelling the other way past where the party came in the river opens up into a sort of lake - still very shallow - with a sandy beach area to the south, a waterfall cascading down further to the east, and a seven-sided platform sitting six inches above the waterline with a glass statue of a woman (NOT of Sorshen, this one) looking as if she is about to leap into the water. Antwon moves close to the platform to tie the boat up - and the statue attacks! It is a fierce and vicious battle, but at the end, the Glass Golem lies shattered and broken on the floor - her head being the largest remaining piece. The Party moves to beach their boats and finds what looks to be two graves dug there, each topped with a large oval shield that has the Rune of Lust painted upon it. There is a door at the back of the beach - the party enters into a room covered in a lascivious mural - every vertical surface of the room is covered with images of wanton acts performed by otherworldly creatures. Closer inspection shows the subtext of the work - spiritual rot and decadence - and the name of the artist: "Amivadeus Yasrin". The murals end ten feet down the corridor - and it looks to be an unfinished work, with pencil sketches and half-painted figures at the edge of the work. In the next chamber sits a handsome, shirtless, and grey-skinned man. At first he snarls curses and asks how the b&!@+ is torturing him now - it soon comes out that he is the cast-off plaything of 'Sorshen', a creature that charmed him three years previously, but who is now engaged in trysting with some new warrior woman. The charm recently wore off and Gnaeus Gnaru wishes nothing but escape from this place. He was originally the bodyguard of Timoteo Valliax - a sorcerer who found his way inside The Lady but was slain by 'Sorshen'. The party gives him a blanket (it's November outside) and directs him to the cabin a mile up the beach, and continues on. The Heroes open some locked doors, avoid a pit trap, and soon come to a large chamber with tiered platforms of grey stone, a small alcove to the south, staircase to the east, and a door to the west (they entered from the north). Behind the west door is a corridor with ten more doors, five on each side, nine of which have a brass plate engraved (in Thassilonian) with the words "Thou wouldst enter? Then thou must touch!". The easternmost door on the north side is rimed with frost, and it's plate reads "Thou wouldst enter to enjoy the company of the Runelord of Lust herself? Then thou must touch!" The party, perhaps wisely, wants nothing to do with any of that and NOPEs right out. Down the stairs, at the end of a short hall, is a carved painting of a lascivious woman, smiling cruelly, with the words "Prostrate thyself and demonstrate proper devotion, my sweet slave, if thou wishes to enter my domain" carved into the wall (and apparently, at one time, the words were filled with gold leaf). Torvan, inspecting the painting on his hands and knees, bumps into the painting and vanishes. Antwon shows Nelson how to do the same thing - and then follows his Wolf through. Vig, Shayliss, and Kendra all hesitate - is this the teleportation to the next part of the Lady, or is it a death trap? But Our Heroes are nothing if not Bold - so each of them bumps the lady from the floor, and all end up together, on a platform overlooking yet another underground watery cavern, lit in a most pretty way with phosphorescent lichens. It might be a little eerie, though. Such aesthetic decisions are best left up to the viewer, as one might imagine. In the cavern a waterfall pours down - Vig soon confirms that this is where the water from the previous cave ends up. Two rowboats are tied to the platform where the party arrived - a corridor is seen across the lake, and the cavern continues to the east - the party rows to the corridor, pulls the boats up, and travels down, through another painted door (this time, Sorshen is shown enchanting and charming several powerful monsters). Behind the door is a throne room, of sorts, and upon the throne is a... well - a creature, of some sort, who calls out "You dare enter my throne room, little mortals? If you kneel to me know, then I, Sorshen, will call off my pets and only eat one of you!" Runelord Sorshen apparently looks thusly: Image result for mochtau Runelord Sorshen? Talk of being food does not set will with Our Heroes, and so combat is joined! And is over quite quickly - both 'Sorshen' and her lizard pets pose little threat to our hardened warriors. Six treasure chests sit in the chamber - all of which seem to be this creature's trash, for each are filled with bones, viscera, and rotting scraps of meat. Gross. On the back of the throne, written in Thassilonian, is the following inscription on a platinum plate: “A gift for my Mistress Sorshen from her humble servant Ayandamahla, dedicated this celebrated day, the 25th anniversary of her ascension to rulership in Eurythnia. Present—Runelord Sorshen, Ayandamahla and her daughters Ashamintallu and Erixadallax, Lord & Lady of the Burning Bright, the Sisters of Charming & Delectation, and the Baron of Calamities, along with all slaves, servants, and supplicants in this, the Lady’s Light. May she reign unchallenged forever.” Hmmm. Disheartened by the lack of treasure so far Our Party presses on - rowing further down the underground lake, past several corpses propped up in alcoves. Some of the corpses are naught but skeletons, and some are desiccated corpses; the most recent is perhaps a handful of years old, and it's impossible to tell the age of the oldest. Further down the watery passageway curves around and ends again in a sandy beach, with a door at the far end. The door opens to a rough-carved chamber, with a stack of wood, a cookfire that's burned down to coals and embers, and several fishing poles stacked up - on the far wall is yet another carved door, covered in panels that this time depict Sorshen dallying with a variety of attractive humanoids. Torvan opens the door and slips in - to be confronted with several women in heavy armor! He is told to disarm and sit down, which he does (palming a knife in his extra-dimensional mythic sheathe). The woman yells back to the party, inquiring who else is there. When Antwon answers, the woman says "Well slave - drop your weapons and come here." Antwon follows half of those orders. Not the part about the weapons! Once again combat is joined. Soon another three soldiers come through from another room - these nude except for shield and sword. But Our Party quickly prevails and combat is quickly ended - five of the women are dead, and another three injured horribly. Antwon commands the conscious survivors to undress (and remove the armor of their companions) and begins throwing it in the lake, while the rest of the party checks for Sihedron Tattoos. None are found, but each of the Grey Maidens (for that is the name of this company of warriors) have their bodies - and especially their faces - horrible scarred. The Grey Maidens are there, having fled Korvosa after the previous tyrant was deposed in favor of a more benevolent ruler - the Grey Maidens having been on the losing side of that conflict. Most of the Maidens pledged loyalty to the new regime, but this group did not - instead, they came to the Lady's Light in search of aid in their quest to retake Korvosa and return it to... well, to someone, who probably will have strong ties to Cheliax. In here they found Runelord Sorshen, who is even now planning with their leader for how best to assault Korvosa. The Maidens tell the party how to operate the teleporters that are beyond the bathing area, and say that Orianna (who is apparently their commander) will certainly deal harshly with them. And thus the curtains close, and we must bid farewell to Our Heroes until the next time.
THIRTEENTH SESSION NOTES This is the session where I finally, as a DM, I feel that I've shaken off most of my insistence of realism in the service of fun. Specifically with Nelson the War Wolf being hoisted down from the top of the Irespan to the rickety Clocktower - I started to ask the party exactly how they were doing this, the party explained partially, and I started to bring up problems with lowering a Wolf down from a broken bridge onto a tower, and... and it didn't matter, really. Was it fun? No. Should I just wave my hands and let it happen in the service of flow and story, because the Cavalier is nigh-useless without his mount? Absolutely. You're a good dog, Nelson. I have to remember to use more combat maneuvers as we move forward - pushing Vig off the edge added a bit of dynamic tension to the encounter. Next time they head down to the Lady's Light on the trail of Rune shards!
THIRTEENTH SESSION Our Heroes approach the Underbridge section of Magnimar, easily finding the Clocktower referenced by Ironriar (it's 180 feet tall - the tip of it is 5 feet below the Irespan). It's leaning and crumbling, and looks like only some crappy scaffolding is keeping it standing; some 'friendly' locals say they haven't seen anyone going in and out that day, since they've been drinking outside the bar. In the muddy tracks outside are several sets of humanoid footprints - as well as a set of prints that are large and difficult to classify. Gentle Reader, allow me now to lead you through a sort of thought exercise. Imagine that you are a wolf. A canny and cunning wolf, a Battle Wolf, who has a halfling friend that rides you around into battle and adventures. You have a jacket, which you appreciate on these rainy cold Magnimarian days, and sometimes you are lifted to the tops of buildings by your halfling friend and his human and half-orc companions. The first time was terrifying but now you're used to it, and even somewhat enjoy the experience. Are you with me, Gentle Reader? Imagining yourself as the kind of wolf who charges horrifying monsters as the steed for a brave cavalier? With your harness and ropes, being slung up and down buildings? Okay. We are on the same page. Now imagine yourself, as Nelson the wolf, being lowered over the side of a Bridge that's 250 feet above the ground. And not just lowered down, but swung around to the girders and beams on the underside of the bridge, and then from there down onto a rickety scaffolding that holds up the roof of a clocktower that looks close to collapse. You're a Good Dog, Nelson. 13 out of 10. Anyway. The Party enters the top floor of the clocktower - above the actual (non-functional) clock, and from a pile of cushions and pillows emerges a winged, four-armed Demon! The demon flies out of the hole in the ceiling and moves to an attack position! Shayliss fires magic missles at it, which seem to hurt it a little, but Kendra and Antwon recognize it for the illusion that it is, and call a warning out to the party. Additionally, a silence spell is cast around the hole in the ceiling, silencing the spellcasters; from the pile of soft things energes Xanesha, who fails to backstab Antwon! The battle is joined! Xanesha is difficult to hit, acts twice in each round (as befitting her mythic nature), and hits HARD when she does - but in the end she is slain.... Just as three faceless stalkers appear! Who also go down fairly easily - and then a Flesh golem lumbers up from the base of the tower! Vig is knocked off the edge (and almost perishes in the fall - his Mythic nature keeps him alive and stable, though knocked out and injured from the landing). The golem attempts to grab his mistress Xanesha and flee, but Our Heroes slay the beast just before it leaps out the hole where Our Party entered. Slaying their first Mythic enemy is a Mythic trial - everyone gains a Mythic Tier! Huzzah! Everyone is healed, and loots the chamber, finding several thousand gold in coins, jewelry, and gems, many strange and peculiar magical items - and a note to Xanesha from her sister, up in Turtleback Ferry. Hmmmm! The next day, after a nice rest and a big hot meal, The Heroes receive an invitation to dine with the Mayor that night. They eagerly accept, of course. The mayor appears to be slovenly and unconcerned with the mechanics of rule, leaving such decisions to his assistant, but upon further conversation has a keen social and political wit. He tells the party that there is a huge power vacuum in Magnimar, and to be wary of political maneuvers using their status as Heroes; He awards each of them 5000 gold, schedules a festival and award ceremony for a week's time from now, and cleans up any potential roadblocks in Kendra's assumption of the Foxglove Townhouse as her own. A day after this, a beautful woman knocks on the door mid-day; she introduces herself as Sorshen, and has a business proposal for Our Heroes. An army of Paladins is embarking from Kenabres - up north in Mendev, close to the World Wound - heading to the abandoned city of Drezen to reclaim it from demons. The Party is asked to accompany this army as scouts and troubleshooters; they accept, and Sorshen says that she will return in a few months to teleport everyone to Kenabres. A brief conversation is had with this attractive and powerful wizard - she seems to know things about the Sihedron Rune, and is bemused by Antwon's attentions. When Kendra comes downstairs and is informed of their visitor, she turns white and gets a reference book on the Ancient Thassilonians, turning to a sketch of The Lady's Light (a statue on the coast, 50 miles south of Magnimar). And yes, the woman who was here looks almost exactly like the statue! Kendra things that is improbable - Sorshen ruled as the Runelord of Lust for 5000 years, and that empire fell apart 10,000 years ago; perhaps THIS Sorshen is a clone of some sort? It is a mystery - but one that will have to wait for next time, because I am exhausted after imagining myself as Nelson the Wolf, and Our Party's Adventures needs must continue next time.
TWELFTH SESSION NOTES I just want to point out at this point that when confronted by a closet full of people's skins, the party decided to bring this matter to the legal authorities. They didn't go mess with the Mongrelmen, or search around for the baddies - they went and got the cops. Brilliant! We don't play with experience points - they get levels when the story needs them to - and it's working out well so far. I think this lack of xp-hunting contributes to role-playing moments like this. As I write this I still haven't brought either Nualia back in - the party's 10th level and just got 4th tier, and have done some messing around in the World Wound, as well as Jorgenfist and The Temple of the Peacock Spirit. It's a rather big mashup we're engaged with. Here's the first part of the notes I have for the flow, with where we've been so far: 1st/0: city stuff in Sandpoint (CC, Rise)
I'm doing Wrath out of order - I hope in a few sessions to get them back for the Grey Garrison and the Fall of Kenabres, and then stuff from book 4. We'll see! So far it's been either a level or a tier about every two sessions, which I think is a good pace. The Mythic stuff is already getting wacky but it still feels like D&D, and I don't have to mess with stats TOO much yet to make things challenging. I agree with whoever said a tier is about the same power as a level - that's the guide I've used so far. I'm also adding mythic stuff to some bosses, and buffing further from there (adding the tier to the saves and AC, multiplying the HP by the tier, mythic initiative at +20 (so two actions in a round) - and the party STILL cuts through everyone. Ah, well - we're having fun!
TWELFTH SESSION Our Heroes begin with a professional consultation with Sheila Heidmarch of the Pathfinders, to figure out what's up with the strange piece of metal they've found. She identifies it as part of The Sihedron Rune - and she has a manner of speaking where one can really hear those capital letters - and activates the Shard (deactivating the Curse of Envy) by applying an Ioun Stone to it. The Party then retires to their rented suite of rooms, thinking that the hour before dawn is the best time to begin assaulting the two locations. Since they've already been inside the sawmill they head to the Chemical works, arriving there around 9am, just as the sky is lightening. The Chemical Works - Vorkstag and Grine's Chymic Factory, to be more precise - is on a small island in the river on which Magnimar is built, isolating it and it's chemical stench from the Good People of Magnimar. It's an ugly boxy building, two or three stories tall (the only windows are at the top), with a 2-story belfry of some sort on top of that. The Party stakes out the Chemical works for a few hours, seeing a tradesman drive a cart up the building, get several barrels loaded in, and leaving. No workers are seen to come or go, and talking to a few people in the neighborhood no workers are seen coming or going as a general rule - just people driving up to pick up shipments, or drop off barrels and other supplies. Perplexing! Unable to find any workers to interrogate, Vig scales the walls and looks in - he sees a variety of strange workers, who seem to be comprised of bits and pieces put together from other species - Mongrelmen! No other people or workers or Judge Ironbriars are about. So it is up to the top of the building! Nelson the wolf is beginning to enjoy being hoisted around, if we're to be perfectly honest - he enjoys wearing his harness in the cold November rain, and once he got over the initial strangeness enjoys seeing the world from higher vantage points. At least, he seems to - maybe he's just glad to be included in the party's shenanigans. It's hard to tell, with War Wolves, sometimes. At the top of the belfry is a trap door - Our Heroes enter a bedroom that's been abandoned for several days. A brazier sits on top of a dresser, with a burned spine of a book inside - and upon more diligent searching The Party finds a scrap of paper, apparently a journal page from the room's last occupant. What does it mean? Who could it be from? It's Nualia. I mean, c'mon. I am not going to insult your intelligence, Gentle Reader, and insulting Our Heroes generally results in violence of some sort. Clearly she was here, and now she's moved on. Soon, thinks the party - soon there will be a reckoning and justice. But not today! Going down another level the party enters a store room of curios - brass birds, statues, and other strange objects. Nothing is magical, so the party continues downward through yet another trapdoor in the floor. And comes into a hallway with several doors. The smell of bleach is much stronger here; Our Heroes enter another door and find a storeroom, and then an office with a dresser.... Oh. Oh, my. Gentle Readers, perhaps those of you with nervous constitutions would do well to cast your attentions elsewhere. Okay? Are you sure? There's something horrific in the dresser and I would hate for my Gentle Readers to be overly scandalized. Well. All right then. The dresser is filled with skins - human, elf, dwarf, halflings - around thirty sets of skins, including the faces. Each are hung up delicately, with labels on the hangers seeming to identify the person who was skinned. The Heroes decide that perhaps this is the time to involve local law enforcement. They head out the way they came in, and then make their way to the offices of Judge Darrimid. Informing her of what they found, she gets up and goes immediately to the police, to mobilize a force to lock the Chemical Works down and get it searched. The Party, meanwhile, heads to the Sawmill, and enters the same room which Vig broke into several nights previously. Sweep and Clear! Nothing is found on the third floor - except in Ironbriar's office, where his journal is found. It's written in a strange code - a combination of Draconic, Elvish, and Infernal, and it will take Kendra quite a while to translate. Moving downstairs The Party finds Ironbriar's chambers, where the walls are lined with plaques, each of a skinned face. Oh. My apolgies, gentle reader, for not giving proper warning that time. It's not really easier the second time around, is it? One might hope that one never becomes inured to such scenes of horror. I fear for our party in the adventures to come, as more and more horrors are revealed. As one stares at monsters, one risks become monstrous oneself. Sweep and clear, though! The party continues downstairs. As the party descends to the river level, they find a room with machinery and waterwheels, being attended to by a few workers. Workers who are really cultists! They draw knives and attack but are quickly subdued by Our Heroes. Continuing through into tunnels carved into the bedrock of Magnimar, They stumble upon a dozen or so cultists in masks, performing the Sihedron ritual on two Magnimarians, tied naked to an altar. Combat is joined! And quickly ends, with Our Heroes emerging victorious and almost unscratched! Judge Ironbriar lays dead, the cult's back broken; Our Heroes head to the Chemical Works and acquire the assistance of several armed City Guard to secure the Sawmill as well. It's evening now, but not time to rest just yet - The Party heads into the Judge Ironbriar's chambers, and picks the lock to gain entry, searching for any further clues while Kendra attempts to wrest secrets from Ironbriar's journal. She is partially successful, and reports to the party what she's learned. Our Heroes camp out in the judges offices for the night, to be joined by Judge Embreth when she arrives to work after a long but fruitful night. The Judge has several bottles of wine in her office, which she gracefully offers to share with Our Heroes. They gratefully partake in some Day Drinking, rehashing the events they've suffered through in Magnimar with the Judge and doing some much needed depressurization. But as with all things that change, time moving forward means that situations ebb and flow; the elderly Judge and Our Heroes finish a fourth bottle of wine before noon, and realize that they are all exhausted - Our Heroes retire to their rented suite for a much needed rest, with the expectation that when evening falls they will head to the Clocktower referenced in Ironbriar's journal, for a reckoning with Xanesha. Please, Gentle Readers, allow me to invite you to join us next time, for right now The Heroes are all a-slumber, and we must rejoin their Adventures on the morrow. Until then!
ELEVENTH SESSION NOTES This. This was the piece that made me want to run a campaign based on Paizo APs. Between this and Vekker's cabin from RotRL, and Harrowstone from CC, Nocticula from WotR, and the deep water dungeon in Return, I figured I could put together a bunch of Paizo AP stuff and have some sort of coherent story emerge, because while my players might not want to follow an AP down it's rails, the individual scenes are so good they're looking forward to what's next. Been true so far! Anyway. This post had several images I cribbed from online sources - wikis and blogs - that don't appear here (Iesha and Aldern as before and then after, the house, and the note from Xanesha). I also posted on my blog a bunch of haunts (that I stole from someone else, most likely elsewhere on the Paizo blog) and a quick Foxglove family tree. I assigned the different haunts to different people, and then passed out the write-ups as they were triggered to the target, and read it out loud to everyone. I think that worked the best to impart the mood and tone of the haunts while still making things somewhat individualized. The party made almost all of their saves against the haunts, thanks to surges and a variety of other save-boosting abilities. And I think that's okay - the ACT of rolling the save is the scary part, right? I bumped up the stats for both Aldern and Iesha; either of them would have been a tough fight for the party. No worries there - they played those roles like champions. I also threw the first rune shard in here to start that stuff. Finally, I read the 'lichen' pun on a blog or in a cartoon somewhere. If that was your pun, then I salute you!
After some discussion, Our Heroes decide to head to Aldern Foxglove's manor, several hours north of Magnimar, on the coast. It is a dark and forbidding place, and as The Party nears the plants turn to nettles and thorns, and a storm threatens to come from over the sea. Spooky! There is a carriage house that's been burnt down many years ago, with only blackened timbers and stones for a foundation, and a murder of crows several hundred strong flies about, occasionally landing to stare silently at Our Heroes. Three bodies lay in the ruins of the carriage house - all in black robes, with Urgathoan amulets. The bodies look a week or so old, Kendra says - starting to rot and in just that perfect state of horrible odor and... juiciness. Ick. The house has two stories and an attic, and The Party is confronted by several Haunts along the way. It's scary and disturbing, but Our Heroes are, for the most part, able to shake off and recover from the ill-effects of the haunts fairly quickly; unlike Harrowstone prison (which wanted to actively destroy The Party) this house seems more to want its story to be told. And what a story it is! Your Humble Narrator has, in the interest of brevity (for what is YHN if not a concise and aphoristic writer), posted both the Haunts and a brief and pertinent Foxglove family lineage. In the attic The Party hears screaming, upon investigating they find Iesha Foxglove. However, instead of the Iesha Our Heroes have seen before, the party sees Iesha Foxglove, Revenant. Oh my. Iesha stares into a mirror, sobbing and clawing at her face and skin, and occasionally giving out a wail of agony. Vig throws his cloak over the mirror, and Iesha shudders, looks around, and then Wails most horrifically, screaming: “Aldern! I can smell your fear! I’ll be in your arms soon!” The Party springs to the attack - but then reconsiders, after Vig realizes that perhaps The Party are not her primary target. Moving out of her way, we follow Our Heroes as they follow Iesha downstairs, to the front entry way, where she bashes her way through the floor into the basement, and then further down a set of ancient stone stairs. The party is very deep under the Misgivings now. There is a smell of the sea, and of mold, and a sound like deep breathing. Iesha continues on, followed by Our Heroes, until she passes a group of ghouls - who let her by, but do Not seem to care for the cut of The Party's jib. No, we have not segued into Nautical Fiction. It is a common phrase - not talking about the sail of a boat at all. I am sorry that you find my idiomatic turns of phrase to be confusing - I was attempting to inject some levity and colloquialism into what is otherwise a horrifying and deeply sad story. What I meant was this: Combat is Joined! At first it is only a few ghouls, but then it is a few more, and then a giant ghoulish bat and several ghasts join in and - it is pretty tense, up in here! At one point more than half of Our Heroes are paralyzed from the ghouls' malevolent touch! But, as heroes are wont to do, Ours emerge victorious, and race to catch up with Iesha... Who they find further on in this dark and moldy set of wet tunnels, pounding upon an iron door. Through a grate in the door, Vig sees Aldern Foxglove! But again, slightly different than expected... Instead of looking as Our Heroes remember, Aldern now appears more like this: Adern Foxglove, Ghoul Lord Oh my. "Oh hey - Vig! How are you? Is Antwon with you? Hey buddy! Listen - I've just got to finish something up here and then I'll be right with you. I'm glad you came!" The thing that Aldern has to finish is the vile Sihedron ritual - he is currently carving the Sihedron rune into a family of famers, who are gagged and bound to chairs, frightened almost past reason. The Party thinks this is a bad idea, so, working around Iesha (who continues to pound at the door), Torvan handily picks the lock. Iesha screeches and enters, clawing at Aldern.... Who dons a mask and becomes, to all outward appearances, another Iesha! There are a lot of people who want to look like Iesha in this world. Aldern appears to be in possession of no fewer than three personalities; one seems to be the Aldern Foxglove the party met previously, one the ghoul that Aldern has become, and one - even scarier than the ghoul personality - the embodiment of The Skinsaw Man, a particularly horrifying aspect of the god Norgorber. It's a bit distressing hearing the monster that is now Aldern speak in three distinct voices, with three distinct (but always chilling) sets of threats towards Our Heroes. Our Revenant Iesha cowers, confronted by the monster she's become, and Aldern begins slashing at her. Vig and then Torvan tumble past, but find it hard to hit the Monster that Aldern has become. But then Antwon calls out to Aldern: "Hey buddy - let's talk this over!" Aldern pulls his mask up to look at Antwon - which is the opening that Iesha needed to launch her fury rage and despair at him, clawing deeply into his face and chest and biting his neck until he falls. Upon his death Iesha wraps herself around his corpse, falling deep into the well from which no water can be drawn. Kendra casts detect undead and pronounces the house clear, except for a patch of evil mold, plastered to one of the walls in this room - the final remains of Vorel Foxglove, turned into a hateful fungal bloom after his ritual to become a lich was interrupted. You might say that he became a Lichen. No, I will not apologize for that. The room is a bit disturbing, slightly more than the house so far; Aldern carried a locket with a tiny cameo of Antwon, and had several of Antwon's stolen possessions set up as a kind of shrine to the cavalier. It's nice to be admired but - maybe not in quite this way. A note is also found, to Aldern from someone named 'Xanesha' Kendra focuses her Mythic powers to cast Consecrate on the fungus, and with a sigh the patch of mold liquefies and dies. The Manor, though still damaged from wind and rain and time, is no longer haunted - a feeling of weight and anguish has been lifted from this place. Amongst the loot the party finds a valuable painting: "Throwdown in Swynetown" by the currently fashionable (and dead these past seventy-three years) Magnimarian artist Andosalu. Also, lying near where the fungus was but seemingly untouched by the mold, is a strange piece of green crystal, fashioned into the shape of one of the arms of the Sihedron rune. Touching it makes you feel.... envious, somehow. It's not great. Our Heroes might want to transport it in a metal box of some sort? Perhaps that will help. Additionally, searching the other bodies The Party finds that one of the ghouls has a piece of an angel's wing embedded in its skull - perhaps the carpenter, who was caught 'trysting' with Iesha? Three other ghouls were wearing tattered black robes; one of whom has a mysterious missive, signed by someone with the initials "A.V.". It's probably NOT Alessandro Volta. And this, my friends, is where we bid adieu, farewell, Our Party needs to rest and recover for their further adventures!
TENTH SESSION NOTES Nod the Monk's player has too much on his plate, and lives almost an hour from where we play, so he's officially dropped out of the campaign. We'll get Kand the Wizard back in a few sessions, but when grad school gets rough he'll have spotty appearances. Torvan's player wasn't around this session, either. I generally call it if we have less than three PCs, but they convinced me to run the next bit instead of playing Catan or something. This was the point where I realized that if the party went to go 'scout ahead', they should ALL go, because scouting missions generally become just 'the mission' and then half of the party is out for most of the combats. It took the party a few more sessions but I think we're all on the same page about this now. The players also reminded me that I'd left a bunch of stuff out - Vig's player wanted me to make sure I captured his conversation with the priest, and the Commune spell. The three different stars were from three different groups - the 5-pointed stars were from a plot hook the party didn't follow up on, that would have involved Hellknight Brey from a few adventures ago. There's been several hooks they've ignored, or at least not followed up on, and almost all of them are ones that I've added additionally to the source books (instead of the stuff from the APs). Maybe I'm pushing the AP plots? Maybe my plot stuff isn't as solid as Paizo's? Maybe my players - some of whom I've played with for 30 years - can read me pretty well? This adventure felt a little sloggy - but that was mostly me, I think, because I didn't want to get into any of the Big Fights with just two PCs. This is also right around when I started worrying seriously about the fun involved, and how I'm railroading the party - but we went into it expecting rails, since I'm using APs. I started worrying more about fun during play, and so I eased up on some of the judgement calls here - "I dunno if you can do that - how about evens or odds?" came out of my worries about being a stickler for strict interpretations of the rules instead of fun. Now I just have to manage the Mythic stuff - make sure there's some appropriate challenge left, and it's not TOO rocket-taggy. We'll revisit this in a few sessions, when the CG Ninja takes a level of Paladin, in advance of the Mythic ability to not care about alignments any more.
Hello. First off, my apologies. Several elements of Our Heroes' recent adventures in Magnimar were left out of the previous chronicle. I would hate for you to think that Your Humble Narrator was, in truth, Your Unreliable Humble Narrator! So for full disclosure - someone on my staff spilled their mead on my scrying notes, and then they were dissolved in a pool of demonic ichor. These things happen, you know? It is unfortunate, but we carry on as best we can. So. There are a few more notes from Our Dynamic Duo's adventures, thusly: Vig hired a priest of Desna to cast Commune for him. Vig got half of the questions, and the priest the others. He discovered that Desna either did not know or was unwilling to tell him his true name, and confirmed that Auren Vrood killed Petros Lorrimor. He was also informed that Nualia would be in the boneyard in a month - but was then cautioned by the Desnan priest that after Aroden's death, any prophecy was suspect, at best. Finally, he found that Ironbriar was the leader of the Seven, underwriters of the deed to Foxglove Manor and owner of (among other things) the Seven's Sawmill. The priest asked some questions, too. Our Heroes met with Detective Tamar, who told them that Nualia and Tsuto had broken free from prison. Yikes! I'm sure that they have left for Riddleport or the Sodden Lands or somewhere, on a sort of honeymoon. They certainly will not be recurring villains in Our Heroes' lives. The party, then, has some concerns about lines of communications - specifically, between Magnimar and Sandpoint. Did Sheriff Hemlock know, and 'forget' to inform Our Heroes? Does Magnimar think so little of Sandpoint they didn't care to warn them that an evil priest, with the stated goal of destroying Sandpoint, was on the loose? Hard questions, for sure. Det. Tamar also asked The Party to investigate a couple of recent murders - attributed to the "Star Killer" (although that name was, as of yet, out of the press and only used internally by the Magnimar Police). One of the bodies, in a wealthier district (up on top of the cliffs), had a five-pointed star carved in his chest. Another body had a sihedron rune - that looked sliced, as if from a knife, and with no aroma de ghoul about the murder scene. Oh, dear. Perhaps we have three different killers? That bodes most darkly. The Party has another conversation with Judge Daramid - at her home, this time - and brings Frogmouth along. Embreth seems to have some experience with Frogmouth's people, and says that the deed to Foxglove Manor seems more like a financial agreement than an ownership deed - she's not sure how such a thing would play out in the courts, or how an interested party might identify themselves as an organization such as the Brotherhood of the Seven. Perhaps there is some incorporation legalese going on here? She tells The Party she'll look into this - she has a team that's designed to do just such things. Frogmouth the Faceless Stalker is sent down to explore the sunken ship and confirms that, yup - no treasure, lotsa rotting and half-eaten bodies. Later, when asked, she said that her people's bodies were returned to the waters by her tribe's shaman; Vig burned them, instead, as a middle-finger up to Lamashtu. Because when you're investigating serial killers, cults of Norgorber, corrupt Judges, and the killer of one of your mentors who wants to either become a lich, or turn the whole world undead - hey! We should make sure to piss off the Goddess of Monsters along the way. Antwon fills in his score card at this and nods slowly. If they can get 'Regicide' or 'Hunted For A Crime They Did Not Commit' he'll have a Bingo on his Adventurers' score card! Finally, Vig stirred up some trouble in several of the less reputable parts of Magnimar, overtly looking for necromantic components, and covertly attempting to contact organized crime in Magnimar - as well as perhaps gain some beans regarding Auren Vrood and the Whispering Way. Antwon shrugs at this, since his Bingo card does not happen to include 'Shaking Up Organized Crime Operations'. Whew! Hopefully we are all caught up now. I apologize if you had any sort of remorse or other bad feels at my oversight, and all that YHN can say is that Mistakes Were Made, and Lessons Were Learned. Perhaps it is time for All of Us to Move Forward, and put this regrettable instance behind us.
Torvan and Nod have both apparently gotten into the grapes. Mmmmm - grapes are delicious! But when you eat to many of them you get the tummy rumbles and have to stay away from adventuring. First, Our Duo heads to the docks to speak with Becktilda (the police officer in charge of patrolling the docks). She tells Our Heroes that the team finally got its act together and dove into the sunken party ship - to find both gamblers and crew locked in, and the money and any papers taken. The name of the boat appears to be The Lamia's Choice, and it was owned by Affiliated Gambling Incorporated, an outfit that appears to have only owned that one vessel, and whose address of record is an abandoned building in the Underbridge. The next morning - Xanesha comes to visit! She and Frogmouth have a conversation where Frogmouth rolls over right quick on The Party - but still gives Vig and Antwon time to get set up for an ambush! Xanesha - still looking like Iesha - runs away and turns invisible. That night Our Duo head over to The Seven's Sawmill, which is still running, late at night, unlike the other sawmills nearby. Vig scales the building and looks through several windows, finding a burly half-elf working at a desk in an office, a large open space, and a storeroom - that is the room Our Ninja enters. Creeping in he sneaks past the foreman, but then is spotted by some woodworkers. It's probably not a death cult or anything. Just some craftsmen and their overseer, burning the midnight oil. Nothing strange here - why would you even assume they were cultists in service to the Skinsaw Man aspect of Norgorber? That's just silly, and - if you continue to talk this way - can be considered libel. Perhaps you should seek the advice of an attorney? I cannot see this ending well for you. Anyway - Vig vanishes down some stairs, but is pursued, so heads back upstairs and skedaddles through the office. The foreman casts a spell and attempts to force Vig to halt, but Vig throws off it's influence. He rifles quickly through the desk, finding only financial documents, until the foreman bursts in - Vig scampers out the window using his rope, just in time to be frozen by the foreman's spell. Vig plummets to the ground near Antwon, and the foreman calls out to Antwon, inquiring as to his business. Antwon refuses to give a firm answer, buying time for Vig to shake off the spell and grab his magical rope; Vig takes off with Antwon in hot pursuit, acting as if he were chasing Vig down. I'm sure that many different people in positions of authority in commercial enterprises are spellcasters, you know. Just because you've been trained in the arcane or the divine arts doesn't lock you into a certain career! You should really be more careful in your assumptions - especially when they involve accusations of memberships in illegal and devious cults. Vig and Antwon return to the Foxglove Townhouse and collect their friends - the next day Antwon secures a suite of rooms in a seedy but not-too-terrible part of Magnimar. What will they get into next time?
NINTH SESSION NOTES I'm still not sure about Adivion's status - and I think I'll keep him like a Schroedinger's Villain for a while. There's several Big Bads already, and in the most recent session (inside Ft. Drezen) the party met a few of them again. Plus, I have Nualia and Xanesha (and her sister!) and Lyrie to come back around at some point. Lyrie might be another Schroedinger's Villain, come to think of it. Some sessions I can run the APs just as written, and all the questions the party has are answered there. This was not one of those sessions. I'd been dropping what I thought were some fairly large hints about Foxglove Manor for the last couple of weeks - and the party had no interest in it, it seemed. And then they found a note inside the safe, near the end of the session, and someone said, "Wait - Foxglove Manor is different than this place? We should go check that place out. Maybe it's worth some money!" Players, amiright? This is the point in the adventure when I realized that my write-ups didn't capture the time we spend playing stuff - the fight took a little more than an hour, but I summarized it in a couple of sentences. It might be more entertaining with better summaries of the give-and-take of battles - I certainly enjoy reading those! - but the primary reason I'm writing these is to (a) remind myself what the party's done and discovered so far, and (b) to pass information on to the party that gets lost during play. My players are enjoying them, and I'm not sure I have MUCH time to write up all the combat stuff (or the ability to remember exactly what happens, to tell the truth). But maybe let me know what you think? I'm also interested if anyone's reading this. I'm putting my blog posts up here to eventually show my players the narrative in a first-adventure-top-post format, instead of the top post being the most recent like blogger does, and I kind of suspect that most people who aren't playing in the campaign won't make it to this point in the narrative...
An alternate title for this adventure is "Too Many Beans". Our Heroes search the bodies of the ghouls, as Heroes are wont to do, and find two keys - one rusty and iron, one brass with some sort of crest on it (a strange flower surrounded by thorns). Further searching finds a trap door in the floor of the barn, with a locked iron chest that opens to the rusty iron key, full of silver. 3500 silver! It is both exciting and disappointing. Then on to Magnimar! The Party first checks in with Adivion Adrissant - their horses are stabled and a nice meal is procured, and then an awkward conversation is had: "Well, yes, I am a member of the Whispering Way. And Petros disagreed with my decision - 'Adivion', he said, 'When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you - those who fight monsters are in danger of becoming monstrous themselves.' But how else to keep track of them?" Meanwhile, Torvan has snuck upstairs to check things out; he quickly checks through Our Heroes' host's bedchambers and finds nothing out of the ordinary or incriminating. The Party seems willing to give Adivion the benefit of the doubt, and Kendra remains rather quiet throughout, so there we are. Adivion tells the party of his contact with a group called the Pathfinders: ostensibly relic hunters, they act as an unofficial spy network, keeping tabs on many of the monstrous things in the world. He meets with Sheila Heidmarch, under the guise of a love affair, to report his findings; that is his primary (and covert) reason for coming to Magnimar. It is getting late, and the party sleeps in Adivion's house that night. Where safer to rest than at the house of a powerful necromancer? Very few places, I might argue, as long as one is on the good side of said necromancer, with the major fear that of becoming undead thralls to one's host. The next day the party reviews their notes, and heads to the Magnimar University, to track down professor Montagnie Crowl for delivery of three books. The University is under some construction, Dr. Crowl reveals that a few days prior the offices were broken into and a statue called the Sea Effigy was stolen; the work crew are performing repairs. Aha! thinks Our Heroes - this must be connected to the plague of ghouls encountered on the road! But then, imagining a swamp adventure and all the perils, discomfort, and general ickiness of the swamps, The Party decides that perhaps this is not a lead for them after all. Maybe for later, thinks Antwon, after all this Magnimar stuff is cleared up. The next stop is with Judge Embreth Daramid, who gets the fourth (locked) book, and in turn gives the party 500 platinum. A considerable sum of money! Justice Daramid chats with the party for a moment, and then looks thoughtful, and asks Kendra what she thinks about her 'guardians'. "They're a bunch of ruffians and thieves, and I trust them with my life," Kendra replies. Judge Daramid nods and grins, and agrees with her analysis. "There is another Judge who, I am led to believe, is involved with the cult of Norgorber..." She asks the party to investigate a Chemical Works owned by Judge Ironbriar, and report back to her if they find anything. They are, of course, not to do anything illegal; she suggests combing through city hall tax and building records to find evidence of malfeasance. Because Our Heroes, a team of ruffians and thieves, they'll probably be more successful than an established Judge and her team of researchers, in this way; of COURSE she is not suggesting anything illegal like breaking and entering. She is a Judge, you know. At the mention of researchers, The Party asks the Judge to research Harrowstone Prison, and Habe's Sanitorium. The Judge seems to half-remember Harrowstone, and agrees to look into these places. The next stop is shopping, and then back to Adivion's house for supper and sleep. The party is still not converted into undead servants of House Adrissant! I take this as a good sign - as should you. Perhaps he is a GOOD necromancer? Alignment is a tricky thing. The next day's first stop is Sheila Heidmarch, co-founder (with her husband) of the Magnimar Pathfinders. She confirms that Adivion feeds her information about the Whispering Way - not a secret society, as such, but more like a loosely affiliated bunch of Necromancers, whose goals are (a) to become liches, and (b) to release Tar-Baphon, the Whispering Tyrant, an ancient Lich who wants the entire world to become undead. He is one of the three major threats to life on Golarion. Releasing him seems like a bad idea? But I am fortunately unaware of the inner mental workings of your common necromancer, so perhaps there is a deeper purpose that I remain blissfully ignorant of. Sheila also tells the party that a serial killer is operating in Magnimar, who the police are calling the Star Killer (some knowing nods go between Our Heroes at this moniker!). She says she'll send word to Detective Aramil Torne, who's looking into this case, and suggests Our Heroes meet with him to share information. The next stop is Aldern Foxglove's townhouse, one of a row of townhouses in a wealthy Magnimar neighborhood. It is an hour after sunset and the house appears dark; Torvan, Vig, and Shayliss sneak inside through a third-story window while Antwon and Kendra wait in the back alley. A sweep-and-clear of the third floor finds it vacant; no sheets on the bed, and only linens in the closets. A crack of light comes from under one of the second floor doors, which Torvan opens, to be confronted by a woman in nightclothes who says she's Iesha Foxglove, and demands to know what Torvan is doing in her house! Torvan explains that he's friends with Aldern, which is met with suspicion from Iesha, but she agrees to go to Aldern and figure this out. Aha! This was all a ruse! Torvan is stabbed in the back by 'Iesha', who shifts form into a faceless humanoid monster, holding a longsword bloodied with Torvan's vital fluids! Two other Faceless Stalkers emerge from other rooms, and battle is joined; Torvan is wounded most cruelly but his boldness (aided by Vig and Shayliss) allow Antwon, Nelson, and Kendra to break the backdoor lock and drop two of the awful abominations. The third flees the house, but Antwon and Vig track it down and subdue it while Kendra sees to Torvan's wounds. The house is searched; it appears staged for sale; outside of the three rooms on the second floor - and a bit of a horror-show in the basement (where the monsters apparently fed on the blood of various animals) nothing is lived in, and the furnishings are more for show than for use. Torvan finds a secret keyhole in the sitting room fireplace, however, and the key from before - referenced in the first paragraph of today's missive, if you are in need of a gentle reminder - fits and opens a wall safe of some sort. Besides a sack of 200 platinum pieces, there is a stack of legal documents pertaining to the townhouse Our Heroes are currently ransacking, and a deed to Foxglove Manor, a stately house that overlooks the ocean, about halfway between Sandpoint and Magnimar. The deed indicates that an organization called "The Brothers of the Seven" partially bankrolled construction, backed by The Sevens Sawmill in Magnimar; Foxglove Manor will revert to the Brothers of the Seven 17 years from now (January 6th, 4724 - it is currently mid-October, 4707). There's also a ledger, which details Aldern's buisness expenses - primarily trips around Varisia, it seems. The last three months, however, include entries labeled "Iesha's trip to Absalom", which Aldern was paying 200gp a week to "B-7" for. Hmmm. The Faceless Stalker is brought back to consciousness and questioned, and revealed that his tribe in the Mushfens was contacted by someone named Xanesha, who Frogmouth (for that is this monster's name) was ordered to work for by the shaman of her tribe. Xanesha ordered Frogmouth and her two tribemates to stay and watch this house, becoming Iesha, Aldern, or their butler; refusing entry to anyone who came by. Xanesha is described as a woman from the waist up, and a snake below, and she would bring livestock every now and again for Frogmouth and co. to feed on every so often... And at that we close curtains, once again, until the return of YHN and Our Heroes.
EIGHTH SESSION NOTES: One of my players said, at the start of the session, "I'm glad to be leaving Sandpoint. It seemed like a nice little town at first, but DANG there's a lot of messed-up stuff going on here. These people are Forked." He may have used slightly different words. They're ready for Magnimar, though, for sure. Since right now the party is a Cavalier, a Monk, a Ninja, and a Rogue, I added Shayliss to the mix as a sorcerer, so they could have some arcane support (flight and teleport, eventually, was my thought.) It starts to get a little much - and when Shalelu rejoins them, the players kept messing up the names. It was also tricky with the two Kendras - the mayor, and the Oracle NPC. Totally didn't catch that when I was planning this mash-up. Torvan has a background trait that gave him Necril as a bonus language. The party heard him try to talk to the ghoul - the player made up something - and promptly called the language 'Sh*t-mouth'. So, that's what the undead speak now, it looks like. Hellknight Brey and the Tarot cards are hooks for later. They meet Brey again in Magnimar, but it's more fluff-and-flavor than anything; they haven't done anything more with the Harrow reading. Some hooks land, and some don't - but these hooks I can use later in the campaign to re-direct attention if things start going off the rails. I'm kind of excited to throw those three Harrow cards at them again in a few levels and see if anyone picks up on it. I'd forgotten they had tamed and rescued the riding Gekko from Ripnugget. The party had a tough time - they were kind of spread out when the ghouls attacked - so I had the Gekko and the near-dead farmers take a couple attacks. They did a couple of one-or-two ghoul encounters and just rolled right through. Even the single Mythic tier is upping their power and damage output; a pair of ghouls went down in the first round without getting their turn. So Big Combats are the way to go, I think.
It is now the 14th of October. Our Heroes first arrived in Sandpoint on the 21st of September, not even a month ago. What an interesting and exciting month it has been! There has been death and suffering and pain, true, but remember the adventure equation: Fun + Danger = Adventure And who are Our Heroes if not Adventurers! Kendra has received an offer to purchase her house - and at full asking price! The couple will be back in Sandpoint to exchange keys for money, and asks that some minor changes be made. Kendra puts The Party to work painting and performing light carpentry work. The days pass quickly - there's something good and satisfying about building and maintaining a house, especially when in contrast with Our Heroes' other work of fighting demons and being Haunted by the malevolent dead. Two days after Harrowstone Kendra receives a letter from Adivion Adrissant, which states that he has some business and research in Magnimar for the next month or so, and inviting her (and by extension The Party) to the house he has rented there. He also offers to come to Sandpoint at some point; Kendra shows the party his letter, and appears to be conflicted between wanting to see her Uncle Adi, and worried from her father's warning. The construction in her house decides her, and she writes back saying that she's coming to Magnimar soon and will see him then. The next day a messenger comes from Ameiko - a Hellknight has come to town, with a retinue of Barristers and Porters, and she thought The Party might be interested in that. They certainly are! Our Heroes head to City Hall, where the Hellknight and her Lawyers have gone in to meet with Kendra; a sneaking spying mission is considered, plans are begun to be formed, and then Nod abrogates the entire issue by entering the Mayor's office. He's asked to leave, of course, and does so - putting his cup to the door to listen. When Sherrif Hemlock arrives Nod is hearing a conversation which he thinks is the Hellknight telling Mayor Deverin about her familial duty, which the Mayor rejects. The Sheriff tells Nod, "I can't condone your actions, of course, but - what are they talking about?" Nod fills him in, just before he enters the room. The Hellknight is impressive, both in her armor and her stature - standing over 6 feet tall she dominates the room, in her burnished black armor, decorated with spikes and metal skulls for epaulets. Her lawyers are just that - nebbish and middle aged, neither thin nor fat, skinny nor tall - even without the Hellknight here they would blend in like water poured into a pond. The party converses with Hellknight Brey for a moment, and it is not as tense as it could be. Mayro Develin is apparently an heir or inheritor of some property in Cheliax, and Hellknight Brey is tasked with serving her papers summoning her to Erogan to deal with this issue. The Mayor does not want to, and is refusing the Hellknight's request. Or her threat? It is difficult to tell, given her imposing nature and manner of speaking. At some point Vig sneaks out of the conversation, catching up with the Hellknight and her retinue and inviting them to dinner and even to stay with him at Kendra's. She gives her name - as Hellknight Brey - and when asked for his name, Vig deflects, a social convention that seems to make the Hellknight smile to herself. She accepts. Dinner is pleasant, and many conversational threads are navigated; Antwon receives some legal advice regarding contracts and contested estates, and it seems that the Hellknight herself isn't evil - just driven to enforce the laws of the land, and the laws of Cheliax. No penalties will come to the Mayor - it'll just take longer for the probate courts in Erogan to process things for her family there. She leaves the next morning, bound for Magnimar. Perhaps Our Heroes will meet her and her retinue there? It depends on how many bullets are loaded into Chekov's gun, I suppose. Anything is possible but right now there are so many possibilities, so many leads - there is too much signal and not enough noise. Is the party chasing Petros' assassin(s)? The Whispering Way? Dealing with the Sihedron Rune killer and the Sihedron rune stuff in general? It is difficult to say, at this point, I would imagine. Hopefully more illumination will be found in Magnimar! Another week passes. It is the 25th of October, an hour before dawn, when the Sheriff bangs on the door to wake the party up. There has been a murder at the Sawmill, and The Party (specifically Antwon) is implicated, and the Sheriff is going on to brief the mayor, and then alert the temple, and then inform the family, which might buy the party some time to make their own investigations. No, the Sheriff doesn't believe that anyone from The Party is involved in horrible mutilations and murders. There was another attack two days ago, with a witness and a similar note, and a 7-pointed start cut into the victims (as appeared on one of the victims at the Sawmill as well). The note is still at the scene, and one of the guards can fill the party in on the details. The party treats the Sheriff with the courtesy and decorum that Belor Hemlock has come to expect, and gathers up to head to the Sandpoint Sawmill. One of the guards looks a little green; the other is a 30-year veteran of the Sandpoint Militia, and has seen some things, and warns the party that some of the things he's seen are currently in the Sawmill right now. When they come out, he says, he'll tell them what he saw at the other attack, but the Sheriff said they might not have much time so they should probably get in there. Inside might be horrifying to people who had not seen some of the sights that Our Heroes have seen - although it is still a bit disturbing even to them. A mutilated corpse of what was once a man is pinned to the wall with equipment hooks, his face torn off and his jaw removed, bites and scratches all over his skin, and a seven-pointed star carved into his chest. Over in the log splitter is the corpse of a woman, who was pushed, or fell, into the blades. There is blood everywhere, and an odor of charnel - of rotten meat. Besides the boots of the two people the party finds several bare footprints, like a human but with sharp claws - each of which smells strongly of rot (as do the wounds in the male corpse). The footprints lead from the river, and then back into the river. There's also a woodchopping axe, with bloody handmarks on the handle and rotten viscera drying on the blade Ghouls - or at least, one ghoul. This was an attack by a ghoul. There is a bloody envelope on the body, with the word "ANTWON" printed on it. I'll post an image of the notes; this one says "You will learn to love me, desire me in time as she did. Give yourself to the pack and it shall all end." Dang. The guard outside fills the party in: The man was Banny Harker, one of the managers of the Sawmill.
Katrine and Banny were lovers, which was something of a not-so-secret in town. They would meet at night in the sawmill, and run the mill so the noise would hide the sounds of their trysting. Ibor Thorne is the other Sawmill manager - he found the bodies, and he's currently at the Sheriff's Office being interviewed. Two days ago, on patrol, a man was found wandering, delusional, talking about an attack in a barn. When they investigated the barn in question they found three mutilated bodies, similar to Banny Harker's corpse. There was also a note at the scene (reprinted in another post). The man found wandering was taken to the Habe Sanitarium. The party is given directions to both the barn and the Sanitarium. The party heads back to Kendra's to get their gear and armor, and then checks in at the Sheriff's office. Ven Vinder is being dragged in, upset and raging at the news of his daughter's death; the party stays long enough to insult the Sheriff and then heads south to the barn.
In the sanitarium the party meets Erin Habe, who is reticent at first. The party convinces him of their intentions to question the man brought in two days ago - Erin is nervous, he explains, because people misunderstand his methods. Instead of magic, he proposes that talking to disturbed patients can help lead them back into the land of the sane. I suppose, for families that cannot afford the Heal spell or those who are unwilling to turn to the aid of priests, that this might hold some small benefit - if nothing else, the patients are kept away from the decent and the unblemished, to be placed outside the flow of the world, but I would expect long-term care to be both more trouble and more expensive than a simple spell that can be found in the Big Cities. But, your humble narrator is open to the possibility that Mr. Habe might hold a different, and separate, truth. Erin Habe leads the party up to Grayst Sevilla, describing his discovery on the road, muttering, wounded, ill, and insane. He is bound in a strightjacket, muttering and twitching in his cell, and looking both demented and afflicted. "Ghoul fever," mutters Kendra, "an advanced case of it." Upon seeing the party, Grayst lights up and presses himself close to the bars, staring at Antwon and speaking in a fevered, half-moan half-growl: "He said... he said you would visit me! And here you are, here you are, His Lordship... His Lordship - the one who unmade me - he said so. He said so! He has a place for you - I am so jealous - he has no place for me only the message.... the message... I must remember, I must - he made me remember it. I haven't forgotten. His Lordship would not let me forget! I remember... Mmmmm, yes, I remember: He said. He said! He told me to tell you... Antwon! He said these things. He said that if you came to his Misgivings, that if you joined his pack, then he would end his harvest in your honor." At this, the poor man twitches and falls over, and dies. Dies to undeath - a scant three heartbeats later he stands, eyes rolled back in his head, the beginnings of the ghoul stench beginning to emanate from his putrescence as he stands and bursts free of his restraints! At this point let us consider Antwon, the shortest member of the party. Let us consider how - or perhaps why is a better question? - let us consider, anyway, that Antwon speaks in a dialect of groans and hisses and coughs, and the Ghoul who used to be Grayst Sevilla answers. What they talk about is of no consequence; the ghoul is almost entirely mindless and wishes only to feed on the flesh of the living. Where and how Antwon learned to communicate with horrors such as this is, I believe, quite a more interesting question - but alas, with all that the party has to go through, one that must wait for the morrow. Grayst dies quickly and ignominiously. Erin Habe scribbles furiously - notes on the transformation, it seems to Vig, reading over his shoulder. Making a cursory examination of the rest of the Sanitarium as they leave, the party, finding nothing (especially and specifically not finding the necromantic lab in the basement), heads south. South to explore the Woods - very few Clues, or even clues, are discovered, but Torvan gives a wise-woman 2 silver for a 2-card Harrow Reading: First Card: The Fiend. This card depicts a fiend consuming innocents: Second card: the Midwife. This card depicts a midwife, with her bloody apron, holding a fiendish newborn while a man hides his face in his hands in the background: Mee Maw interprets this as follows: "There is great evil ahead, both generally in the world and specifically around you and your friends. Birth is violent and painful, and this is the process that the world generally, and you and your friends in specific, must undergo." "Perhaps you have started this process already? You smell like a person who has seen the heartblood of another pour out around your knife." "There are many forces gathering and flowing in the world, and you have begun to attract their attention. I do not have the power to see further for you. My mother could, but I never had the Sight that she had. You would do well to seek out one who can advise you on your journey further." "I will do you one more card - this one is for free, for my own sake..." Here is the one-more-card - The Twin: "Oh dear. That is the... well. An unfortunate last card - it calls into question the rest of the reading. Perhaps your work to fight evil will ultimately bring it about? That is always the danger, with heroes, you know. Perhaps it just means indecision, or too many opinions." "I am tired now and will return to my room. Good luck, Heroes. When you fight demons remember that your loyalty and trust of each other is stronger than anything demonic." "Fiend, Midwife, Twin - remember those cards, my lovelies," she cackles as she totters out of the room. The party has much to mull over, and it is nearing evening, so they head back to town. They're met by a guard who tells them the Sheriff's at the Scarnetti Manor - Titus Scarnetti has been killed. His body lies in his bed, a Sihedron rune carved into his chest and bite/scratch marks all over him - the sheets are soaked in blood. The Sheriff interviews the maid - she heard a noise, came into the room, and saw a man in tattered finery kneeling over Scarnetti, eating his face - when she came in the "man" - really a ghoul, as you probably already suspected, being the perspicacious and germane sort that is drawn to Adventure Tales such as this. A ghoul attacked Titus Scarnetti, is my point. That last sentence kind of got away from us, hey? The next day Shayliss - formerly Shayliss Vinder but now rejecting her family name - comes to Kendra's house, asking to go with Our Party to Magnimar and start looking for the person / people / things that killed her sister. There's some stuff about her family life, too, which our party neglects to care about, because they hear "Fudge this town - I want to GO, and I don't care where." That sentiment resonates pretty closely with Our Heroes. Kendra's house is sold! The Party begins gathering their stuff - a cart, pulled by four horses, for Kendra, Shayliss, and Vig, a riding horse for Torvan, sturdy Nelson for Antwon, and Nod's fine with a nice walkabout. They're met on their way out of town by a local farmer in trouble, because of course they are - they're The Heroes. Trouble and Heroes go together like Backwash and Shared Beverages. This time the herald of Troubles is Maester Grump, a farmer from the southern farmlands talking about walking scarecrows and attacks on people in the night; the troubles seem to stem from, "The old Hambley place - things just ain't been right there for a few days now. Everyone knows that's where the problems started - we went there to check, earlier today, and done got attacked by corpses that wanted to eat us. They got Davey and Little Jim - and they even ate the dogs! The dogs!" Maester Grump is a broken shell of a man now - but let us have pity for a man who loved dogs as much as he, as we follow Our Heroes south to the Old Hambley Place. The first sign that things might not be right at the farm is when the party sees a scarecrow up on a pole, twitching and shuddering. A ghoul! The party has little trouble with a crucified ghoul, either singly or in small groups. Some of the scarecrows are traditional scarecrows - clothes filled with straw - and some are less traditional scarecrows - corpses in the process of becoming ghouls. It's pretty squicky and no one is having a good time with any of it. Especially when the corpses of three children are discovered, all animated as ghouls. Two scarecrows are determined to be still alive (although infected with ghoul fever and close to death/undeath). They are Horram and Lettie Guffmin, who were dragged from their farm last night, bitten and infected, and left up to 'ripen'. The life cycle of the ghoul is not a pretty one. The Guffmins are untied and brought to the cart, where Kendra ministers to their wounds and tries to ease their suffering, as Our Heroes head towards the farm buildings. The barn is L-shaped, with a giant 12-foot high stone head in the crook of the L. It stinks here. It stinks of the grave, of carrion, of the abattoir - it stinks of rot and undead. Ghouls. And ghouls there are! Six ghouls jump out as The Party enters the barn - and combat is joined! Soon after another group of ghouls - this one led by a ghast - moves to the cart to attack the Guffmins; Kendra and Nod, backed by Torvan and Shayliss (who seems to be a sorcerer, as she blasts the Ghast with magical missiles) defend the cart, while Vig and Antwon and Nelson finish off the barn ghouls. And yet another shroud of ghouls appears! The two farmers, alas, are slain, as is the riding Gecko that Ripnugget used to own - but otherwise, The Party is victorious. A hard-fought battle! The barn is empty of anything that the Modern Adventurer might consider to be treasure. Is a set of old pitchforks and rusty tools good treasure? For some people - collectors of such things - I might argue that it is, but not for Our Heroes. The farmhouse is also devoid of anything like treasure. There is, however, a dead homeowner, with a sihedron rune carved into his chest, and a note, adressed to Antwon: "Take the fever into you, my love - it shall be but the first of my many gifts to you. -Your Lordship" And that, gentle reader, is where we must draw the curtain for the nonce.
SEVENTH SESSION NOTES: I put some spooky music on for this session - something suggested in the forums here. We also lit candles and turned the lights down a bit. It added to the ambiance, but only a little for my group - the next haunted house (the Misgivings) we didn't do any of this for, and my group thought the music and all wasn't worth it. In the THIRD haunted house I just played some atmospheric spooky house sounds from my tablet, and I think that worked the best - they didn't mention it, but they were pretty freaked out by the end. I also split the post into two because it was getting pretty big, but Harrowstone was all one five-hour session. We can't really go any longer than that, so I'm glad we made it through in one go. Kendra is a 'haunted' oracle; I gave her that curse so she could channel Vesoriana. At the end of the very first session, they were talking with her (me in character) about their next moves, and mid-sentence I rolled my eyes back and used a different voice for the Vesoriana stuff, and then went right back to the original sentence. Then I packed up my books and dice and all and we ended the session - BAM cliffhanger! We maybe rushed through Father Charlatan - I wasn't going to do anything at all with it this session, actually, but the player who triggered it rolled a 1 for an acrobatics check when they were up on the roof, so we just rolled through. I think it worked okay how it happened, in retrospect. I put all the BBEGs in one fight in the basement; we generally like a big dramatic fight instead of six small ones, and the mythic stuff lets this be a viable and survivable way to play.
Before the party leaves Vesoriana's room, they ask about Petros Lorrimor - Ves felt him on the prison grounds, several weeks ago, and then just inside the prison a few days after that - and on his third visit, he was slain by a spell cast by an old man, bald and with a hook-nose, wearing armor either made of bone, or stylized to look as such. The man then directed several of his associates to topple one of the Harrowstone Gargoyles from the roof onto Petros' head, crushing his jaw, before his team captured V's husband and left. Hmmm. The rest of the main level is investigated, and a secret room with five labeled items is discovered - each item corresponding to one of the malevolent spirits which assails Vesoriana: Well. Our Heroes, after a brief strategy discussion, decide to head upstairs first. They encounter a ghostly Piper, who animates several skeletal inmates and summons a swarm of stirges; the party dispatches the skeletons, and the spirit, rather handily. Most of the rest of the upper floor is empty, save for the mess hall (with a haunt of rotten and repugnant food, which nauseates a few of Our Heroes), and an empty cell containing a skeleton wrapped in chains. Perplexed (Vesoriana reported two spirits in the upper level, and the party has only dispatched one), Nod heads to the roof, followed by Vig, and then by Torvan. Moving around on the ruined beams and precarious tiles of the roof Torvan slips, and falls - apparently to his death, on the floor below! Here our narrative must bifurcate. Torvan's experience is that of death, and then being Raised from the Dead by a friendly priest in Sandpoint months later. The Sandpointian priest soon seems to become a figure of horror, as Torvan struggles with the spirit, struggles for the safety and sanctity of his very soul. The rest of the Party sees Torvan wrapped in ghostly chains similar to those found in the property room below. They also, each in their own way, attempt to help Torvan in his struggles... And, are ultimately successful. Torvan is shaken, but harmed only spiritually; the party has put down two of the five spirits that haunt Harrowstone prison. And so on to the basement! I'm sure that the basement of a haunted prison will be a delightful journey into the best of Varisian architecture and - dare I hope - perhaps an occasion of mid-century Varisian Mosaic works? No. No, those are vain hopes, and the basement level of Harrowstone are a sepulchral horror. The party finds a pit leading down, with broken machinery where once was a lift to raise and lower heavy objects or particularly bound prisoners; Nelson is a tricky challenge in the descent but eventually all stand in a partially collapsed chamber, ankle-deep in black chill waters as they consider what lies before them. Torches and lights burn with half as much light, and the mood is oppressive and anguished. Oubliette: noun, a secret dungeon with access only through a trapdoor in its ceiling. The Heroes move deeper into the dungeons, and are confronted with the Northern Oubliettes, the Southern Oubliettes, or the Cells and Torture. They are labelled "Reaper's Hold", "Hell's Basement", and "The Nevermore" to add to the levity and whimsy one typically finds in areas such as this. Moving north the party feels resonant terrors of this kind of prison: A stench, first, of fear, old sweat, and blood. Next a sound of dripping water and the occasional moan of another wretched soul. But these are distractions from the crushing sense of hopelessness; your life is now the pit, and will be only the pit, forever. All you know is this circular pit, too small to stretch out in, and dark, dark, dark, except for those few moments when food and water are lowered down to you, and your old buckets raised up. You always surrender your buckets, for if you do not then the pit is allowed to fill with water. Always the dark, the cramped space, and the ALONE. Dark. Cramped. Forever. Oh my. Our Heroes are shaken by this, each in their own way, but resolve to press on. They are not yet actually imprisoned in a pit, they realize, and while it is dark, and oppressive, they have each other, friends and friendships forged in battle, tempered by sharing experiences such as this. Nothing moves, in the Northern Oubliettes - neither alive, nor undead. The Party continues on. The prison cells are also as still as a tomb. A tomb is exactly what it is - cells with burnt skeletons line each of the walls, and Our Heroes in their (so far) brief adventuring careers have experienced enough already to realize that when the tomb is as still as a tomb, that is the more pleasant of the alternatives. A door labeled 'Torture' is investigated and opened, and behind it is a kitten sanctuary, filled with purring small felines and soft cushions. A lute and harp duo play soft music, while light refreshments are offered. No. No, instead a burning headless skeleton attacks the party with a battleaxe, while behind it a fiend that can only be the Lopper rushes insubstantially at The Party! Soon these two foes are joined by the Mosswater Marauder, also incorporeal with his terrible hammer, flanked and orbited by several floating skulls, and finally the Splatter Man, another incorporeal foe who wields terrible magics. Kendra falls. Nod falls. Our heroes are on the verge of being defeated by these terrible undead foes but somehow pluck the eyeball of victory directly from the face of defeat, as if they were crows on a battlefield.... Oh, I am sorry for that metaphor. I believe the dread and excruciating nature of this place has seeped into my soul, somewhat. My apologies. It is a hard battle but Our Heroes eventually dispatch their foes. The torture room is - well, unpleasant. Grisly implements of pain, cages and chains hanging from the ceiling and the walls, a grim iron maiden decorated with the face of a tormented woman, and a skeleton in a tattered guard's uniform strapped to a stretching table in the center of the room. The skeleton has a ring of keys inside its pelvis, and an oval disk of metal inserted into its shattered jaw; this is the warden, his remains a silent testament to the pain of his final hours. His severed hands are animated but easily shattered and dispatched. Our Heroes return the badge and keys to Vesoriana, who sighs, stops weeping, and then exhales sharply. She turns to the party, smiles slightly, and expresses her thanks - and there is a feeling of relief as the oppressive horror of Harrowstone lifts, leaving only the feeling of age and ruined structures. Vesoriana starts to fade, but turns to Kendra - they appear to have a silent conversation, after which Kendra nods, once, and says "Yes, I accept," upon which Vesoriana fades out. Kendra reveals that Vesoriana has asked if she can accompany Kendra as one of her haunting spirits, and then smiles, saying it's like having a sister, but one inside of her, or one guiding and advising her. The party leaves Harrowstone and returns to Sandpoint that same day, arriving just after suppertime. It has been a long day.
And we rejoin Our Heroes as they stand outside the gate to Harrowstone prison, looking inside through the ruined gate. They have walked around the structure - mostly, anyway, since the ravages of time and a collapsed sub-level have caused a lake to form, blocking transit around the prison - and seen the main prison building, with a patrolling scythe carried by two skeletal arms, and a smaller house next to the prison. As Our Heroes enter the prison... Oh. I - mmm. I, Your Humble Narrator, must confess something here. My - both my mother, and my grandfather, died in the Harrowstone Prison tragedy. This... this is difficult, for me. I apologize, for making this personal; I generally try to remain a neutral and objective observer but - well, this is a lot. A lot to process, and a lot to remember. My father and I would reminisce about his wife and father, my mother and grandfather, as we ate dinner by the fire - and now, all these years later, my memories of this connection, of my father working through our grief, are even stronger than my memories of my mother, or of my father's father. Perhaps this is why I follow the chronicles of these adventurers - broken and damaged people that they are, but agents of change in the world - wild card actors who Do Things, who Make Things Happen. Well. Again, my apologies for the digression. Let us continue - I think that might be for the best, all things considered. As the Party passes through the broken gates of Harrowstone Prison they feel a sudden burst of claustrophobia - everything is closing in on them, and then a split second sensation of fire, of burning, of a flame that is burning THEM, burning their skin and tissues to the bone. Breathing heavily, the Party takes a moment to shake off this feeling, as they begin to worry, each in their own way, as to what is to come in this Haunted Prison. Kendra and Antwon (mounted on Nelson) stand just inside the gates, while Torvan inspects the towers near the gate, and Nod (followed stealthily by Vig) moves to the small manor house. Torvan finds one guard tower empty, but the other infested by a swarm of giant rats - Our Heroes wisely decide to leave the rats alone. Nod and Vig enter the manor, and search its few rooms - until a footstep on a loose board is enough to cause part of the roof to collapse. Shaking off the dust, Nod and Vig rejoin the party and advance closer to the Prison proper. As they pass by a ruined and dry fountain just before the entrance there is a sound, like the noise of a muttering crowd waiting for a performance, where all of the voices are rough, and deep, and impatient. Another step closer to the Prison and the voices gain in volume - still a crowd-mutter of indistinct words - and now the sound is... directed, somehow, at Our Party, and then a SHOUT of rage, of fear, of pain - and then the sound vanishes, and all goes silent. The sky darkens. It will rain soon. The party moves to inspect the Prison before entering - and finds the grasses and weeds cleared from the foundation, and runes painted on the stones. Kendra is able to read them, being in Varisian, and though she is not trained enough in the Arcane arts she does recognize them as being part of a ritual that involved abjuration and necromantic magics, with the name "Lyvar Hawkran" repeated several times. As the party continues around the outside of the prison, they find where part of the eastern wall has collapsed into a murky lake. Figures rise from the lake - some skeletal, and some ghostly, and some seeming to be forms of ectoplasm - each rises from the lake and points directly at Our Heroes - and each member of the party sees each accusing finger pointing directly at themselves. The figures hover, for a moment, and then start to dissolve back into the lake; falling or fading or dissolving as appropriate, until all that is left is seven score hands pointing in judgement. Then the hands fall apart and again, all is silent, except for the light rain pattering on the lake and the ruined roof. And then, We enter the Haunted Prison. The foyer is dusty - no one who might leave tracks has entered recently enough to leave tracks, and considering the ruined nature of the outside of the prison, the doors and stonework are in surprisingly good shape. Each of Our Heroes has a vision, upon entering the Foyer - each of a different spirit, with a different physical focus, and a different way of entering the Prison: The haunt lasts for a brief moment, after which Our Heroes come back to their senses, look at each other and shrug, and begin to search, as adventurers are wont to do. Offices and privies are found; safes are smashed open; doors are investigated for locks and traps. Some small amount of loot is procured, as well as: And then the party, in a room labeled "Workshop", meets Vesoriana, the ghost, and formerly wife of Warden Hawkran. Vesoriana appears as... but, let us let her describe herself: "I am Vesoriana Hawkran, formerly Wife to the Warden of this Prison and now the last defense against the malevolent spirits infesting this accursed place. I wear blue - in my dress, and my hair, and my skin - both as my favorite color, and appropriate for one who died of asphixiation; my eyes weep blue tears, and my words breathe out with ghostly blue smoke." Well, Vesoriana, and what is your role here? Do you mind talking with us about this place? You seem... well, friendly, which is refreshing considering the horrors we've seen so far. "Mmmm - thank you, Abstract Narrator. When I came into the prison in the middle of the night, to see what was keeping my husband, I fear that in my panic and haste to rescue him I set off the traps; I ruined the lift to the lower level instead of allowing the guards (and my Lyvan) to rise to rescue, and I doomed everyone to death, here all those many years ago." "For these last several decades I have wept, here alone, remorseful for my actions and missing my husband, but time gives one perspective and while the sadness was and still is a raw wound of pain and longing, constant and chronic exposure has allowed a part of me to become inured. It is a most curious feeling - his absence, in the last handful of days, is more relief than anything, for while I know he has been taken more permanently from me I am no longer haunted and aggrieved." "Perhaps, if you were a ghost as long as I, this would make more sense to you. Hmmm. More pressingly, though, is the presence of five malevolent spirits - evil haunts that my Husband, as the Warden, was able to keep in check, to keep at bay. I have assumed that burden unto myself but I am merely the Warden's Wife, and without the metaphoric symbol of office I am not strong enough to withstand their spirited assault." "Well, yes, I suppose that is a sort of pun! How nice of you to notice - I find that levity, in the face of despair and overwhelming depression, can be somewhat of a relief, don't you?" "Mmm. Perhaps not. But - to the problem at hand. These five spirits assail my nature and my... my soul, I suppose - and I can feel them gaining the upper hand. If you could quell them with your magic and your blades - and then give to me a symbol of my Husband and his Office (his keys, or his badge, might work), then I feel that I could put them - and this vile place, by association - to rest." The party speaks further with Vesoriana - finding that she is the spirit who has spoken through Kendra, that some tools exist that might resonate with said Bad Actors (two in the floor above, three below). More questions are asked but, as I said before, my observation of this Party is fraught with deep emotions from my past and I fear that I must continue my narrative on the morrow.
SIXTH SESSION NOTES: I'm starting to push Harrowstone a bit more now - and finally, someone read some of the notes I've published and said, "Hey wait - this Harrowstone place is different from those tunnels under the Glassworks!" I was worried I was either going to plot-hammer the party, or avoid running the place entirely - I've been looking forward to the haunted houses from the get-go, and here comes the first one. I threw the bandit attack in with the meeting-hall fire to make it more challenging; the demon was to tie some of the BBEGs in a bit more (for a World Wound connection). The party almost abandoned the burning theater to chase the demon flying away - and after the fire was out headed straight to Magnimar - but once they got there they dropped the idea and just followed some leads from Chad. I wasn't planning a Magnimar Adventure that night, so I added a gambling boat (like near TBF coming later) mostly as a way to introduce them to some contacts. They also got to go shopping, which is always nice. I originally thought about randomizing the gear available for purchase, but that'd just slow down the game I fear, and it's more fun to have carte-blanche for gearing themselves up. I'm trusting that the APs are balanced as far as loot goes - so far they seem to be about where they should be, gear-wise. As we move forward, they generally do their shopping outside of gaming time. I also send them all an email after the session with the treasure list, so we don't have to slow down the action for identifying and splitting loot and all. Maybe not for everyone, but it works for my group. They're starting to wrap their heads around the Mythic stuff, too - reminding each other to use surges, mostly.
We rejoin Our Heroes in Sandpoint, the day before a funeral and two days before a Town Hall Meeting. Lyrie and Orik have left for Magnimar already. After his experience with the demon, Kand also realizes that perhaps he would be better suited in the big city. Nod 'finishes his vision quest' by which everyone understands him to mean that he has run out of delicious grapes and is ready to return to the Adventuring Lifestyle. Grapes really ARE delicious, but after the second bunch of them one generally starts to feel a little - upset. In the tummy parts, I mean. It is bad for adventurers to stumble into too many grapes for, like a chest of gold, it presents an almost irresistible temptation. Unlike gold, however, a Chest of Grapes leads quite quickly to nausea and, as we all know, nausea is just about the worst of the conditions an Adventurer can suffer. Only a single move action each turn? Why bother even dungeoning, I say. Anyway. The afternoon and evening pass uneventfully; Vig and Nelson sleep outside of Kendra's room to keep her safe, Antwon sleeps in a comfortable bed, and Torvan and Nod sleep on the roof of the cathedral to watch for letters written in blood. Nothing of interest transpires during the night. The next day is a funeral for the former High Priest Abstalar Zantus. Today passes mostly uneventfully, except for Kendra channeling some sort of spirit: "Please.... help me.... The five - they are growing in power - I do not know how much longer I can keep them at bay... please.... help me...." The evening passes thoroughly in through night and down onto morning, with no particular events transpiring (except for a late-night tête-à-tête betwixt Ameiko and Vig). And then we have a meeting with the Town of Sandpoint. The local theatre is rented for the occasion, Sheriff Belor Hemlock has returned, and besides the Party - the Heroes of Sandpoint - Mayor Kendra Deverin, Sheriff Belor Hemlock, and new interim High Priest Koya Mvashti. Mayor Deverin welcomes everyone and introduces the panel, and then gives a VERY quick run-down of the troubles Sandpoint has faced in the last few weeks, and the Party's role in dealing with said troubles. Then Antwon speaks to the crowd, with what starts with an explanation and ends with an exhortation to be better citizens, and better parents. It's quite moving, and when he's finished the crowd is momentarily silent, processing the new information (a demon lived under Thistletop! Nualia faked her death and was behind the goblin attacks!). During the speech a guard enters and whispers to Sheriff Hemlock, which Vig (unnoticed as a Person of No Consequence) overhears about trouble at the docks that the Sheriff must come deal with. Sheriff Hemlock leaves through the theater's side door, and Nod leaves through the front door to circle around and catch up, while the crowd asks questions of the panel about Nualia, and fires, and goblins. Nod gets to the alley next to the theatre just in time to see Sheriff Hemlock smacked with a club from behind, slumping down unconscious. Five thugs are assaulting him! Nod leaps to attack and drops one of the thugs immediately. Battle is joined! One of the thugs is a wizard of some variety, but Nod is not cowed by his illusion magic and moves to prevent further mischief being done to the Sheriff. His battle cries attract the attention of the rest of the party, who follow close behind; a scrub of street thugs is no match for Our Heroes, however. Yes, 'scrub' is the collective noun for street thugs. For goons it is a 'plunder', and for gangsters it is a 'knuckle'. But these fine gentlemen are neither goons nor are they gangsters, and I stand by my venery. I am fascinated by collective nouns, as, I would imagine, are all right-thinking people who use language in some capacity. Here are some interesting places to investigate further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_terms_of_venery,_by_animal Wikipedia is, as always, the primary source. You might also try: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_collective_nouns_by_sub ject But there are some inconsistencies here: 'Swiss' is capitalized, for example, but 'swedish' is not. My apologies for the digression. Combat, as I mentioned, was joined! And quickly left, with one thug surrendering, two unconscious, one dead, and one who leapt into the air, sprouted wings, and flew off to the south. Vig and Nod run to follow the flying thug, while Antwon and Torvan hear screams and smell smoke - the theater is On Fire! The Rouge and Cavalier run inside to see the wall sconces in the theater have erupted into flame, which is rapidly spreading to the rest of the theatre. Torvan hustles Mayor Deverin outside, while Antwon, seeing that the other side door is sealed somehow, charges and bursts it open with a precise lance strike. Vig returns to secure the surrendered thug and see to the other prisoners, while Nod runs to the Theatre front door to find it chained shut. If only Our Monk had a tool that was good for bursting and shattering things like chains used to seal theatre doors shut! Our Monk does indeed have such a tool, as it happens. Huzzah for Adamantine Handaxes! The front doors burst open and people begin pouring out into the street, away from the flames. Vig continues to bind the prisoners' wounds and keep Mayor Deverin safe, Kendra and High Priest Mvashti cast Create Water repeatedly to try and quench the fires, Torvan begins tearing down tapestries and decorations, and attempts to beat out the fires with heavy clothes, and Antwon directs people in the back of the crowd to the rear exits. Nod smashes a hole through the wall next to the front doors, allowing more people egress, and then moves to the roof to smash a hole in the ceiling to vent the smoke. A collective of flamingos is a flamboyance! That to me is delightful - it just fits, you know? I could read about collective nouns all day. The party reconvenes outside the theatre - charred a bit but mostly okay - and without needing much discussion realizes the REAL threat has flown off to the South. To Magnimar, most likely - Nod and Antwon (on Nelson) take off running, while Torvan, Vig, and Kendra procure horses and follow close behind, with the surrendered thug ("Yes, my name is Chad - what's wrong with that? Chad's a fine name - it was my father's name! Why are you people being so mean to me?") bound and along for the ride. A ride which, for Chad (recently a Thug and now a Prisoner) is both physically and emotionally uncomfortable, you can be sure. Our Heroes meet at an Inn - the Carbuncle's Jewel - which lies roughly halfway between Magnimar and Sandpoint. The innkeeper does not ask about Our Heroes' bound prisoner, and no explanations are given, and Chad at this point is lost in thought about how his recent past has gone, and what his near future might be like. Was 150 gold worth it for a month of work, kidnapping a Sheriff and holding him for ransom? If the boss turned out to be a demon or something, would he in fact have lived through this experience? The adventurers could have killed him, or left him for the authorities, but chose instead to keep him bound and along with them on the way to Magnimar! Deep and heavy thoughts indeed. Oh look - it is an Ostentation of Peacocks! That just - it just works. I did not know that before now, but I nod my head because of COURSE a group of peacocks is an ostentation! Sometimes when I am sad about the Evil That Men Do I realize that a world which works well enough to combine those words in that way is not ENTIRELY gone wrong. Magnimar is ENORMOUS. I mean, Sandpoint has 1200 people and a lot of action, a lot of dramas. Magnimar has more than twelve times as many people! It's really, really big, and has a lot of history, both recent and ancient. On every streetcorner is some sort of monument - some recent, but most old. Like, 12,000 years old. The city lies across a high cliff, with the wealthy neighborhoods above and the poorer folks (and the docks. warehouses, industrial buildings, etc) below. The first part of an ancient bridge stretches several hundred feet into the ocean - a bridge built by the ancient Thassilonians in time gone by. It is magnificent! Our heroes are tired and, perhaps, a bit intimidated. Still, they have several thousand gold - each of them, that is - and so do what adventurers traditionally do in the Big City - they purchase gear that lets them be more effective at Murder and... well, adventuring. Kendra buys the prettiest dress she's ever owned. She's about to sell a house and feels comfortable spending money on frippery. She also gets her hair redone to hide where large patches were singed in the recent fire. She looks around for a mani-pedi, but at this hour and this section of town she comes up with nothing, on this day. The rest of the party is bemused - if it isn't armor, or weapons, or magical tools that can act as armor or weapons... well, why waste one's money? Our Heroes have a contact in Magnimar, but are tasked with waiting another two weeks before contacting Montagnie Crowl, a professor of Antiquities at Magnimar University, to deliver some books, and Justice Embreth Daramid to deliver a fourth book and receive 500 platinum. They are supposed to use that time being watchful of their Patron's daughter Kendra - but here she is, shopping and getting her hair did, and clearly NOT staying anywhere away from things that can be described as 'trouble'. Such is the adventuring way, one supposes. So instead they follow a lead from Chad - he was given a seven-pointed star tattoo that looks VERY much like the Sihedron rune,. By having the rune tattooed on his skin he was given a 10% discount on a casino boat in the Magnimar Harbor! On reaching the harbor and inquiring around, the party learns that the boat burned and sank three days ago, with no survivors found. Nod and Vig swim out to check - a barrel is chained to the wreck, so Nod swims down to see a barge, still with everburning torches illuminating the broken hull, several bodies feeding several large predatory fish, and two external doors chained from the outside. Oh my. The dockworker (Cam Vancascarian, recently of the Riddleport Vancascarians) shows his own tattoo, and expresses his desire to have it removed, perhaps by a mage who can cast the erase spell. He also suggests to the party that if they want a kip with no questions asked (looking meaningfully to Chad, who is still bound and looks rather pensive at this point) that they find an abandoned building in The Shadow - or Underbridge, the region of Magnimar that lies in the shadow of the Irespan (the fragment of enormous ancient bridge stretching several hundred feet out to sea). Our Party is a bit put off by Cam's attitude, until they realize that they're either filthy or wet from the bay, and have a bound prisoner along with them. The Party find the offices of the Harbormaster, and from there connects with Bektilda 'Becky' Thasslegrove, the Guard liaison to the docks. After introductions she proves quite willing to work with Our Heroes - she's heard of their exploits in Sandpoint, and is frustrated by budgetary and bureaucratic issues stalling her investigation (the Mages and the Mayor's office aren't willing to work with each other to provide divers with water breathing is the main thing). Some other beans are discovered, and at this point I - your Humble Narrator - must apologize, for I am not sure about who revealed said beans, or even in what order the information was procured. I might be experiencing some hearing loss in my left ear, and as we all know that is the ear which Hears Things What Are Secrets, and I think at least one of the NPCs is a bit of a mumbler. So. The casino boss was a beautiful redhead named Lucretia. The casino boat had been in operation for several months - since early May, people thought. Its name was the Paradise. No money was recovered or found, and the bodies strewn around were most likely pulled out by predators, or swam out but killed by sharks and barracuda. There was some fishy business - pardon the pun - with the Star Tattoos, but Becky was having trouble finding more information. Most tattooed people were pretty tight-lipped about the whole thing. Hmmm. Well, realizing that there was most likely nothing more at this time to be discovered in Magnimar, and that they had some significant clues left undiscovered in Sandpoint, the party returns there. Chad is left behind to pursue his own interests, with the understanding that said interests will be legal and morally upstanding. Kendra meets with a potential buyer for her house, and schedules an inspection, while the rest of the party sleeps (in a bed, or in a chair, or on a roof). Vig realizes, perhaps in a dream, that the reference to Harrowstone in Prof. Lorrimor's journal was not necessarily to the tunnels under the Glassworks, and so Our Heroes set out to find more information. Okay. Okay, just one more. It is an Ambush of Tigers. Wow! Alternately one could call a group of tigers a 'streak', but why would you? Ambush is MUCH more appropriate when one is discussing things of a tigerish nature. There is no reason to do otherwise, I say. Perhaps at one point Our Heroes will be set upon by an Ambush of Tigers! It is certainly more likely to happen now than it was before. Fine. It is a Tuxedo of Penguins. But that is the last one. Oh - let's see. Information! Tonya Basaltdottar is one of the smiths in town, a dwarf who has lived in Sandpoint longer than almost anyone. Initially unreceptive to the party's exhortations: "Harrowstone? It's just an old ruin. Let the bones stay buried." She is persuaded to reveal what she knows; her husband was the stonesmith and carpenter there, and perished in the fire that destroyed Harrowstone prison. At this point, I would like to quote from "The Medium to Recent History of Sandpoint and the Sandpoint Region", an as-yet unpublished work by Brodert Quink: "The ruins of the prison of Harrowstone are contained within a stone wall served by a single broken gate on the southern wall. Within the grounds the prison stands as a two story building with a western balcony on which many executions occurred. Two observation towers guarded the campus from on top of the walls. The warden's house was situated to the south of the main prison building and, to the east, lay a prisoners' graveyard. Today the graveyard is a murky pond after the area collapsed due to the fire which destroyed the prison. Within the prison was a chapel to Pharasma." It's not a very nice place, for sure. It was designed to house the worst of the worst - the only way prisoners left Harrowstone was when they found the sweet relief of Death and their Final Judgement, and more often than not said trip down that Darkest of Roads was due to their treatment in the Prison. It's three hours outside of town for Our Heroes, on a brisk Autumn day. We will rejoin Our Party next time - they stand outside the walls of Harrowstone Prison, wondering at the path that has led them here, and wondering further what, if any, horrors await them inside.
FIFTH SESSION NOTES: During the session I gave them a handout about Mythic stuff; I posted it to my blog ("Congratulations on your First Mythic Tier!"). Then they fought Malfeshnekor - with max HP and two initiatives a round. They still made short work of him. One of the PCs asked Zantus to come with them. I rolled a 1 for the Good Father's reflex save, and then a natural-20 for the Glaive strike. It's been a tough time in Sandpoint. This is the place my players started talking about leaving Sandpoint as soon as possible because of how messed up the place is. I don't plan to use the later, Sandpoint-based parts of RotRL so that's okay. And one of the players, when I told them the message, said something like, "Wait - Alaznist? That name sounds familiar..." (looks at his notes) "Oh - yeah, she was that illusion from the funeral. Hunh." She probably won't come up again, so we don't need to worry about her, I think. Well, Book 1 of Rise is done! Now to get them into Harrowstone.
We rejoin The Party in a library under Thistletop, in the dead hours of the night. Vig and Torvan scout ahead to make sure their path free of this place is clear, where they find that Shadowmere has apparently slain the Goblin Druid (and Ripnugget the chief, mostly as collateral damage). After healing the War Horse's wounds, the party arrives back in Sandpoint an hour before dawn. Depositing Nualia in the prison, the party retires to the Lorrimor house for some well-earned rest. The next morning finds Shalelu gone to scout the remaining tribes of goblins, and Lyrie and Orik off for Magnimar. A conversation is had with Mayor Deveros and Father Zantus, about Nualia and what the party found under Thistletop. The Mayor and the High Priest are - stunned, and confused, and go to talk to Nualia - but not until the Priest agrees to help the party fight a demon. Father Abstalar Zantus asks to wait until the next day, so that he can prepare spells appropriate for demon-fighting. I'm not sure exactly what spells that the High Priest of Sandpoint might feel appropriate for fighting a demon - but, as we shall see, that is a moot point. This is the place in which you, the reader, will nod sagely about the foreshadowing, for when one fights demons, one feels the demons entering them, and ... well, and now the entire literary device has broken and fallen apart. I'm sure you can see what's to come, seven paragraphs from now. In the morning they procure some Holy Water and head back to the caves under the Glassworks, where they destroy the Sin Pool. It's - whoa. It releases some strange energies, and the party is infused with power and powerful magics. There's a moment of unpleasantness, and then Our Heroes feel themselves taken apart and put back together again, and then they are... more. Yes. After they recover, they feel like the people in the elevator scene from Big Trouble in Little China. "Yes," they say to each other. "Yes, we should go fight a demon now! I have a very positive attitude about this." On their way home to recover they're met by Aldern Foxglove, the Magnimarian Merchant-Prince, who invites the party to his home in Magnimar. Perhaps in three weeks? Aldern agrees to introduce Our Heroes to the kind of merchant who can handle their more specialized - and higher-priced - shopping needs. The next day after recovering, they return to Thistletop for some Demon-Fighting. Shadowmere is left behind to guard the town of Sandpoint. Our Party wends their way through the hedge maze, across the bridge and into the structure on top of the Thistletop Monument, and then downstairs and again down stairs to the lower level of the Thistletop dungeon. Doors are listened at and opened, and a clear and obvious trap is spotted - an easy jump, for most of Our Heroes. Most of Our Heroes but not all - Father Zantus stumbles, lands on a pressure plate, and is beheaded by two statues wielding glaives. Count it back now - I'll wait. I might, myself, have been slightly inaccurate with my information; Your Humble Narrator is not quite Untrustworthy, but might not describe events exactly as Our Heroes would find them to have transpired. Stunned and more cautious, the party explores the Thassilonian crypt, finding strange and mysterious chambers and even, at one point, battling the shadows themselves! A collapsed treasure chamber is found with an enormous golden helmet - five feet across, as big as a giant - which turns to face the party! Giant construct heads are strange and scary, but not quite demons, so the party persists in their investigations. Vig finds some small cracks in the mortar of the complex's brickwork, sized for coins - and, after some false starts, the Party discovers how to open a hidden door. A torture chamber - or operating theatre - is investigated, and a key found there used to open another door... Yes. There is a demon behind that door. If not for our party's new powers and abilities, granted by the release of the energies stored in the Sin Pool, Malfeshnekor the Demon would have slain the entire party. It is a close-fought and difficult battle, but Our Brave Heroes emerge bloody, exhausted, and triumphant. The last door in the complex has a ghostly figure sitting on a throne - which the party NOPES right out of, leaving the complex with Abstalar Zantus' remains, back to Sandpoint to report their victory over the Demon and the Goblin threat, but at the cost of Sandpoint's high priest. It is a complicated and difficult conversation, with the other priests at the Cathedral. Mayor Deverin is - stunned, to say the least. Tomorrow will be Father Zantus' funeral. The day after there will be a town meeting, where Our Heroes are asked to speak to the town, and assure them that the goblin threat is over. They agree, hesitantly - for while Sandpoint might be out of immediate danger, Our Heroes are beginning to sense that larger forces are gathering - larger, evil, world-changing forces. But first they need a Thassilonian scholar to help them investigate the remainder of the Thistletop Dungeon - and so we meet Brodert Quink, Sage and Thassilonian Expert. He translates several sets of runes on the way down deep under Thistletop. The Giant helmet turns out not to be a construct, but a Giant Hermit Crab - Torvan is grabbed in a Giant Claw, and almost drowned, but quick work by the party (and a surprise assist by Brodert and a wand of Magic Missiles) makes quick work of the Crab. Finally, the ghostly image is revealed to be just that, an illusion that repeats the same message over and over in Ancient Thassilonian: "… is upon us, but I command you remain. Witness my power, how Alaznist's petty wrath is but a flash compared to my strength. Take my final work to your graves , and let its memory be the last thing you..." Let us now consider that message, playing out for millennia in the silence, in the darkness. Playing out forever to no one - perhaps at one time it was a long speech, a soliloquy or a last directive from an ancient King to his most loyal followers - but now, all that is left is a snippet, a brief look into times long, long past. And so Our Heroes return to Sandpoint. Tomorrow is a funeral for a priest. The day after, a performance to help a city heal and move on. And then, eventually, to the Big City of Magnimar, and to Bigger and More Adventurous Times!
FOURTH SESSION NOTES I wanted Lyrie to be a recurring NPC. We'll see her again in Kand's background, and I hope to sneak her in to tie the Sinpools in to both the Runelords and their return, and to the demons / worldwound. Nualia, too. Before the next adventure I posted Nualia's journal - I made the dates line up, and added a TON of entries I found somewhere online. Thank you, to whoever wrote her expanded journal! My players said it really helped them see some of the NPCs as real people, so that's awesome. One thing I've always done at the start of a new campaign is make a call about the Gods of the world - do they exist, where and how cleric spells come from, and what motivates the world's Powers. Golarion has an awesome pantheon - but why don't the gods just close the Wound? Why put the Wardstones up with their potential dire flaw? I also wonder about the three main Demon Lords in WotR - what do THEY want, and how does all of this help them get it? The Runelords' motivation is a bit easier - they've met one already (although they don't know it yet) and they'll meet another in Magnimar, and their motivations seem understandable and all. But I don't like when a Big Bad's plan is YARR DESKARI SMASH - especially when they're supposed to be a Demon Lord, one step below the gods. Anyway. I have some ideas about this. Hopefully we'll get there and the party can help the Big Bads without realizing it! Heh heh heh.
It is mid-afternoon, and the party is tired, out of spells and (for some of them) moderately injured. Perhaps now is a good time to have a rest, or return to Sandpoint? But a conversation with their prisoner Ripnugget - former chief of this goblin tribe - makes them realize there are still mysteries - and villains - left to defeat in the dungeons below the goblin tribe's dwelling. Ripnugget seems neither cowed nor remorseful about his actions, and actually seems to think the Party's either weak, or stupid, or both, for not putting him to the sword. Our heroes might not be aware of how goblin children are raised, or perhaps they are (as Ripnugget assumes) soft in both heart and head. He is only tied up - in hempen rope, no less! - and not hobbled or crippled or just dropped in the ocean. Longshanks like Our Heroes are weird and it is hard to understand how their tribes are as spread out and pernicious as they are. Perhaps showing affection to children makes, in some strange and mysterious way, for a stronger tribe of adults? But that is clearly insanity, bred from being alone with his thoughts, gagged and bound and waiting to see if this 'trial' thing the Longshanks practice is really as bad as what Tsuto said it would be like. Meanwhile, the party frees and, eventually, befriends Shadowmere the Warhorse. Shadowmere is pissed, enormous, and intelligent, and he and Nelson agree to be respectfully aloof. Besides, that little one has some grain and a brush and FINALLY that bit is out of his mouth! Then the party rests. Spells are relearned, wounds are healed, and a meal of oats and sausage is procured for all of the dwarves. At midnight, feeling antsy, Vig and Torvan decide to explore the basement, which is dark. With his orc-blood eyes Torvan is able to see the chamber at the foot of the stairs, and hears a strange noise at one of the doors - a noise of... oh. Umm. Goblin lovemaking elicits cries and bellows of what might be best described as 'disgusting love', or perhaps 'brutal romantic conquest'. What better time to attack! And so that is the plan enacted by the party - but first, to secure Ripnugget, the former goblin chief is tied to Shadowmere the horse. And now Ripnugget sees. Oh the truth is laid bare to him, to his eyes in what he is sure is his last moment - it is not weakness at all but the most unbridled cruelty, of a kind to rival demons themselves - the party left him tied up instead of dead, to make his certain demise all the more ... well, Ripnugget is not sure if 'demiseful' is a word but that seems like what is sure to happen to him. A horse! Of course they found the horse. They were merely softening him up for the horrors of Horses! But we need not think on this goblin any longer, for Our Heroes burst in on a scene of sexual depravity! Bruthasmus the Hobgoblin and Shalelu the elf spot each other at once - each is the others' nemesis! It is refreshing when your nemesis also has you as their nemesis - how disappointing to have a nemesis who is indifferent to you! I would think that to be worse in some ways than what is currently happening to Ripnugget. Combat begins! Bruthasmus and his four goblin concubines draw weapons and attack - Bruthasmus with arrows which cause grievous harm to Shalelu, and the goblins with dogslicers which are significantly less harmful. At one point Kand closes the door to the trysting room, protecting Shalelu from further harm.... Just in time for several more goblins to rush in, drawn by Bruthasmus' bellows! Bruthasmus is wounded and starts to flee from the scene, with Vig and Antwon in hot pursuit, as the rest of the party shows the lessons they've learned from fighting goblins in the last several days. The lessons are ones of pain, and the goblins are the subjects in question, but I do not think the question is very interesting because the answer is... well, this metaphor has gotten away from us so let's just conclude that the goblins all die with little trouble to the party. Except for Antwon and Vig, who pursue Bruthasmus into a kind of chapel, where two twisted and evil extra-dimensional monsters emerge from corners of the room - they are Yeth Hounds, and their visage is terrible and their cries more terrible still. Bruthasmus falls, and Vig and Antwon are almost overcome before the rest of the party arrives, killing one hound and driving the other off. Shalelu drives her dagger into Bruthasmus' eye and leaves it there, satisfied that her enemy has been slain. The party looks at each other, shrugs, and nods - there are times for prisoners and justice, and perhaps other times for a rougher, more immediate sort of 'justice'. More exploration finds a second barracks, jail cells, and torture room, all of which are empty, and a room that we might describe as the 'sacrisity' except this room has a basin of unholy water (with a decaying Nutria for extra nastiness) and the chapel has a sacrificial altar, and shrines to both Lamashtu and Deskari. It's unpleasant all around and the most ugly-feeling place Our Heroes have ever been. I suspect as their adventures continue they will find less pleasant, less holy, and more horrible places, but one never forgets their first. Continuing their explorations the party finds a library, of sorts, with a woman sitting behind a desk, looking at the party, who says, "You appear to be a heavily armed band of adventurers, I would like to negotiate for safe escape from this place." A conversation is had. Some of Our Heroes - Kand, for instance - are more interested in the research and translation of Thassilonian runes that this woman is working on. Some of our heroes - Vig, for instance - might prefer the situation to be resolved swiftly with a blade applied to soft places. But the conversation with Lyrie (the Thassilonian translator) and her bodyguard Orik progresses from High Tension through Slightly Less Tension to Maybe You Should Help Us Out. Lyrie has discovered some secrets that she does not want to reveal to Nualia - for that is who hired her and Orik - because of the Lamashtu worship, and the sacrifices, and the attack on Sandpoint. The secrets she knows, once an agreement for her life has been secured, are: the True Name of the demon Malfeshnekor;
Lyrie and Orik just want to leave and escape, but agree to help Our Heroes finish their explorations of this complex, and to destroy the Sinpool - or Runepool - which the party found under the glassworks two days ago. Was it only two days ago? Well, perhaps three since it is now two hours past midnight. Being tired, and sorely wounded, and again out of spells the party sets watch and begins to rest. Whew! It has certainly been an invigorating day, we think, as the lights are dimmed and the party settles in... And another Yeth Hound bays! Many people (and wolves) are sorely frightened and routed, while Kand, Antwon, Kendra, Shalelu, and Lyrie are left to hold the line; following the Hound is Nualia, filled with fervor and fury and here to cause pain and death. But instead she finds only her own pain - her hound dispatched, she attempts to flee but Vig and Antwon put paid to that plan, dropping her and taking her captive. And so now, in the dead of night, sorely wounded the party sets themselves to rest again - and so now we draw the curtain again to see what adventures will be had upon the morrow, as the remaining caverns under Thistletop are explored!
THIRD SESSION NOTES: I put a winged skeleton in Nualia's 'grave', as a potential subplot for something with Magnimar; the party never followed up with it. "Eaten too many Grapes" is the party's shorthand for why a character is absent when the player can't make it. Nod and Kand both left soon after this (Kand's player went to California for the summer; Nod's player lives an hour way, and needed to simplify the demands on his time). They didn't exactly NEED Shalelu along with them, but at this (comparative) level she's a damage-dealing beast compared to the rest of the party. I wanted her in to show off the party's development when they meet her again at Fort Rannick. I've also collapsed several encounters in the AP down to a few larger ones here - it's working well so far.
Our group's long long day continues, first at the Jail and a conversation with Shalelu in front of Tsuto and some goblins, and then with Tsuto about his messed up family life and miserable experience growing up, and then with Mayor Deverin, about many of the same topics. There was a modicum of Skull-Duggery too, but no new beans were to be had, it seems. Nod the monk finds that perhaps eating so many grapes disagrees with his stomach, and retires to a room in the Lorrimor house, to be tended to by Bettina the maid. Sandpoint has its share of sad f*&&ed up human misery for sure. That's made more apparent when our Heroes meet with Father Zantus and hear more about Nualia's rough childhood too. It's like I've always said - life's hard when you're one of the Pretty People. No wait - I've never said that. Your Humble Narrator is significantly glad to be Of The Pretty - YHN is CERTAINLY appreciative not to be born into one of those Uggos families where everyone just looks a little odd. Anyway. A plan is devised to talk to the other priests about how a different body was buried in place of Nualia, but as it was late, and getting dark, and the party had had a Very Long Day indeed, they decided to get some sleep before the funeral of Petros Lorrimor on the morrow. Not before looting a crypt, though! Petros Lorrimor's journal suggested that one of the ancient Crypts in the Sandpoint Boneyard contained an ancient cache of treasures from long-forgotten priests of Pharasma - and so it does! "It's not grave robbing if there was no body to begin with," justifies the party to itself. The next day, dawn breaks with a hint of the chill soon to come; September is a time to prepare for winter. The funeral proceedings are interrupted by some of the seedier members of town - Gibbs Hephenus eggs several Sandpointers on to prevent 'Th-th-that N-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-nEcromancer from being buried in our g-g-g-ggraveyard. Just t-t-t-t-t-take him up the road, M-missy, to the Pauper's g-g-g-graves, if y'y'y'you know what's best for you." But the party's heroics in helping fend off the goblins, and some quick thinking and smooth talking, de-escalates the situation, and the funeral and burial happens apiece. As the party files out of the graveyard back to the Lorrimor house, a giant 'V' is painted on the side of the new Cathedral. Father Zantus is right freaked-out, but the party agrees that, while ominous, that is not anything that they can worry about right now. They have Goblins to Slay! And slay they do. Shalelu and Kendra Lorrimor both accompany our Heroes to the strange island of Thistletop, 60 feet off the Lost Coast and accessed through a thicket maze of thorns and brambles. Goblin Dogs, Goblins from the Birdcruncher tribe, and a Goblin Druid with his Firepelt Cougar companion - none pose much difficulty for our Band of Heroes. Maybe the Druid, but he vanishes into the briars, escaping the party with ease. Three goblins in a watch tower are also dispatched handily, with missile fire. Vig and Nelson almost fall into the water when the rope bridge collapses, but Nelson jumps backwards and Vig grabs the one remaining rope just in time to arrest his fall to the churning water 80 feet below. The party uses a second rope to cross safely, except for Nelson the Wolf, who stays back and pines for his Antoine. The Ninja and the Thief begin to explore the complex, when Gogmort the Goblin Druid reappears and strikes Nelson! Missile fire, once again, is the solution to life's problems; the druid is scared off. The ninja, at this point, finds one of the barracks; ten goblins charge and attack! Our Sneaky Friends manage to run out to where the rest of the party is - and the goblins close and bar the door behind them. Kand the Dwarf, meanwhile, has studied the fallen bridge and believes he can fix it; an hour of work later and the party has, once again, a working rope-and-board bridge to the mainland. Antwon and Nelson reunite with much wagging and licking of faces, and as a group another sortie is made into the wooden structure on top of this rock. Very little of interest is found, outside of some few trinkets, until the party stumbles on a large open room, with a door that's boarded and nailed shut from the outside, and the bodies of four dead goblins around it. When our heroes start to pry the nails and boards off of the door they hear the sounds of a large beast - perhaps a horse? - but choose to leave it alone for now. The other room of interest is the throne room of Chief Ripnugget, sitting next to his pet Giant Gecko, apparently waiting for the party to enter. "Stop right there - let us talk," shouts out the surprisingly well-spoken Goblin Warchief. Our Sneaky Friends Vig and Torvan sneak into the room while Chief Ripnugget points to Kand the Wizard: "You there - you may approach so we may speak together!" When Kand is 30' from the throne the trap is sprung! Several Commandos drop from their hiding places at the top of the pillars holding up the roof of the room; a Warchanter begins his vile Goblin Song, and Chief Ripnugget leaps to the back of his War Gecko! The fight is long, and several party members fall unconscious, but in the end they emerge victorious and only slightly bloodied. Perhaps more than 'slightly' bloodied for the Mage and the Ninja, who went toe-to-toe with tough melee foes. Ripnugget (formerly the chief of the now dead Thistletop Goblin tribe) is taken alive, but the rest of the goblin tribe sails down that dark river which leads only to the sea; past memory, past time. Gathering what loot they can find - and a significant number of Goblin ears for a bounty - the party leaves back for Sandpoint to rest and heal. Will they return the next day? Will their Monk friend recover from his bout of intestinal discomfort? We shall see next week!
Second Session Notes: I never can tell when the party will get offended by an NPC. I played Belor as gruff, and wanting to give the party some work - they got pissy and refused his offer - then told him he must be pretty bad at his job if he needed other people to do it for him. PCs, am-I-right? The party had an ethics discussion regarding Tsuto, which is always nice to see. It's been mostly RotRL so far but we'll start branching out pretty soon. At this point I added the note found in Ameiko's room, and a fan-remade version of Tusto's journal. I also posted some information from Shalelu about Goblins, including the 10 things from the AP's intro. Then as a hidden bonus the Skipping song from Carrion Crown, including a link to someone singing it on youtube.
Our heroes are reeling from Kendra's fugue-state moment, and a bit panicky, when a New Friend joins them - Nod the Monk, someone who used to dig at excavations for Petros (and tell funny stories to Kendra, apparently). He's a bit simple, but means well, and the party accepts him with minimal propers. Meanwhile, Kand starts researching several of the things / places / organizations / people in Prof. Lorrimor's notes, which will occupy him for a short little while. That stands in stark contrast to Sherrif Belor, who offends the party by offering them his notes from his investigation into Prof. Lorrimor's death, and a job patrolling the city - an interaction with Father Zantus doesn't go quite as bad, but I doubt anyone involved walked away pleased with the interaction. Mayor Deverin, on the other hand, tells the party that Petros told her some of the people at his funeral were to be trusted and some not, but neglected to say who was whom, and asked them very pointedly to identify who Petros was investigating before telling the party what she knew. It wasn't much; however, the party DID get Kendra Lorrimor out of her shell and engaged with the investigation: "Fudge that stuff - I want to know who killed my father." High-fives all around, gentlemen - SOMEONE got convinced to put on her big-girl chainmail today. Then there's an argument between Ameiko Kaijitsu and her father, which Vig defuses by frog-marching an old man out and away from his daughter. Drinks on the house! Great cheering! Ameiko blinks away a tear and goes back to work. On the way home the party is met by a panicked and crying woman - her young son had complained about a monster in his closet, and the parents discounted this until the family dog was killed and the boy was bitten. Probably by a goblin? Upon investigation it was definitely a goblin, who the party finds eating the woman's husband, who it has just killed. It is a difficult night in the Barrett household. Amele Barrett is taken in by the neighbors until her family can arrive from Magnimar to take her and her children away from this place of horror for them. Hopefully the boy Aeren will not grow up to become a villain, intent only on the ruin of our party; but that's generally how that sort of thing begins. The next morning Ameiko's assistant Bethana comes to the party in a panic - Ameiko did not start the day's stew, and her room was open with a note written in Minkaian, which Bethana has translated into Varisian. Ameiko was asked to meet her half-brother Tsuto at the Glassworks! Assuming she is in trouble the party heads there quickly - Antwon (and Nelson), Nod, Torvan, Vig, and Kendra all hasten there. Nod swims across the river and arrives first, taking up watch on the roof; the curtains are all closed and no-one is around, but the chimneys of the Glassworks are all belching smoke. Picking a lock the party enters, and hears goblin voices from the factory floor - but Nelson has Ameiko's scent and leads the party down some stairs and into a storage closet, where Ameiko is found bound and unconscious, but alive. While Kendra tends to Ameiko and most of the party takes up defensive positions, Vig explores the rest of the basement, finding a man snoring on a mattress in another room. Vig attempts to search him but apparently Tsuto - for that is who this is, Ameiko's half-brother - wakes up suddenly, slaps Vig, and attempts to run out down a dark corridor to freedom... ... But Nelson is faster, and so Tsuto surrenders. While some of the party asks Ameiko what happened - and it's fractured, because (a) her brother told her that he, Tsuto, was in charge of the attack on Sandpoint, and (b) her father was blackmailed into putting the ladder against the wall inside the city, and then (c) Tsuto killed her father Lonjiku with molten glass and then (d) beat Ameiko unconscious and tied her up in the basement. That is a difficult day for anyone, I think. Anyway. The rest of the party questions Tsuto, who seems both willing to describe what he's done, and unwilling to describe why, and gets smacked around a bit by Torvan. Vig suggests that Tsuto is a coward who would not be willing to do the honorable thing and kill himself, to which Tsuto responds in the negative, suggesting that yes, with a knife he would perform the correct actions. For Tsuto the correct actions are to go after Torvan, but the party quickly sets Tsuto down again, wounded close to death, and only saved by the quick actions of the friendly monk Nod. A discussion is had about the role of justice, and who should perform justice sorts of actions. In the end it is decided, sort of, that Tsuto should stand trial of some sort - mostly because Ameiko wants Tsuto's story heard. Personally, if I was an f-up nihilist, disowned by my mother's husband because I was the living testament to my mother's infidelities, this is perhaps the best thing my sister could do for me. Plus, it sounds like Lonjiku may have killed Ameiko and Tsuto's mother so that's another level of messedupedness. But I digress. There are still goblins in the glassworks! Speaking of messed-up-ed-ness I give you the common Varisian goblin - during the combat one goblin goes to throw a sheet of glass at the party, loses his grip, and ends up braining himself with the glass and bleeding out on the floor. Another goblin grabs a ladle-full of molten glass, but instead of throwing it at the party he trips, killing a different goblin with the glass and knocking himself out on the floor. Goblins. Dang. The party captures 3, kills 3, and 2 escape. Goblins are messed up. Ameiko is taken back to the temple to heal and recover, and Tsuto and the three unconscious goblins are taken to the jail, and then the party returns to the Glassworks basement to head down the passage that Tsuto tried to escape through. The musty and damp tunnel leads to a smuggler's cove, with a crappy dock and a fairly deep channel for smugglers to row in and out of. A side passage, however, leads to an ancient cavern, which at one point was bricked up but recently cleared. The party is attacked by a SinSpawn - and, just for the record... GROSS. But being intrepid and bold heroes our party has no problem putting it down. A bit later they find some jail cells and two other Sinspawn, who appear to be role-playing a game of 'prisoner-and-jailer' and it's difficult to tell how sexy they plan to be. And again: GROSS But the party knows what we do with monsters - Massive Amounts Of Damage. Even the addition of a Vargouille and a wacked-up mutant three-armed goblin are not enough to dissuade our Heroes from their quest. It's touch and go and probably good that an Oracle of Pharasma was along to help with healing. Thanks Kendra! We feel bad that you got petrified by a Vargouille scream and then nauseated by a mutant goblin vomiting acidic blood all over you. Sorry. Anyway. The party explores the rest of the ancient temple complex - filled with strange runes and undecipherable inscriptions - until they come across a strange temple, with statues of Lamashtu, Deskari, and Urgathoa... Wow. I thought that mutant goblin was gross. I mean, DANG. Anyway. In the room is a Quasit, who gives the party a little bit of trouble until Nod manages to grab her in a grapple and smash her into a paste of bones and Quasit slime. Our band of Heroes then Destroys the statues and loots the complex. Let us praise them as Heroes, for that is usually the other way around, as far as order of behaviors go! And with that, we must draw the curtain for another week.
DM Note: I'll post all the additional stuff that I wrote / adapted here; most if it is also on my blog. I dunno what the rules on copyrights are, exactly; I've cut-n-pasted some images from the web of AP handouts, other additional fan-made material, and the occasional image of people or monsters or places - none of that will appear here, just in case. You might recognize those names from the APs. Most of them I intend to make Big-Bads, eventually - except maybe Adivion. I'm still not quite sure what will become of him! The party's currently at the point where they'll start meeting some recurrent villains and major players in the world. I also introduced another party of NPCs with the idea that they are not alone in the world; they just recently (in Drezen!) heard about the 'Flail Sisters' again.
An additional note is tucked inside Petros Lorrimor’s journal. It is dated from four weeks ago. Dear Friends, If you are reading this, then I thank you for taking the time to humor an old man’s final wishes. Perhaps this is foolishness, or the paranoia that comes with age – no matter. Take for this what you will. Besides the Eight of you, I invited four people who have struck me, throughout my travels and studies, as those who are particularly inimicable to Good People and perhaps to Golarion itself. Adivion Adrissant is, I fear, associated somehow with the Whispering Way, a Society that seeks eternal life through Darkest Necromancy, and perhaps even the return of Tar-Baphon himself. He is knowledgeable and powerful; do not trust his words even in the slightest. Areelu Vorlesh was a student of mine, briefly, back when I taught in Magnimar, Long before my daughter was born. She had a darkness then, which I fear has only grown deeper with time; I have heard rumors of pacts with the Abyss, and Trafficing with Demons. Of Azlaznist I know little; she began correspondence with me three years Prior. She seemed… off, somehow, as if she had studied magic in a slightly but significantly different fashion from the typical Wizard or Witch. We met, once, and she struck me as someone who seethes with rage, ill-concealed, bubbling just below her surface. The raw magical power I sense in her was… frightening, coupled with such wrath. Finally, Aravashniel is an elven mage and Riftwarden based in Kenabres, near the World Wound. A recent conversation raised suspicions within me that he had been twisted or turned, the way the World Wound does. Perhaps I am mistaken about him – I certainly pray that I am! – but I feel he still bears scrutiny. The gifts I left each of these individuals serve many purposes, but for you one main one. Inside the chest where you found this letter are four vials, each one containing a small sliver of wood, taken from the box I left each one’s inheritance. Perhaps, as I say, this is the nervous nattering of an aged scholar, but then again, perhaps at some point these will be useful to you. Please keep my daughter from your plans – she is a good soul, and I would not have her tainted or corrupted by their evil ways. My thanks and Good fortune, my friends.
Our heroes make their way to Sandpoint for the funeral of their friend / patron / mentor Petros Lorrimor. They are met by his daughter Kendra Lorrimor, a wizard and associate of Petros named Adivion Adrissant, and a fledgling sorcerer named Jaxom Wyandotte. Kendra's servant Bettina serves dinner just as Jaxom's friends Yaris Molybdenum (dwarven fighter), and sisters Viola and Charmaine duClair (Paladin of Sarenrae and Cleric of Groetus, respectively) enter. A rousing dinner conversation is had, but after Kendra and Bettina retire Adivion reveals that Petros did not die from an accident, because there was no blood found near him, and his head was crushed suspiciously - specifically, his jaw was pulverized, preventing Speak with Dead - a difficult injury to have been caused by falling bricks. Hmmmm.... says the party. Many theories are thrown around, mostly over drinks at the Rusty Dragon where Vig has been employed. The scene of Petros' death is investigated, which proves inconclusive. The next morning is the Sandpoint Swallowtail festival! Lunch is had, games are played, speeches are spoken - but at dusk, just before the temple is consecrated - Goblins attack! The party fights three waves of goblins - first near the Temple, then in a plaza just south, where goblins set fire to the cart of fuel for the night's bonfire, and then to a third intersection to the east, where goblins are killing the dog of a local Nobleman named Aldern Foxglove. Antoine is terribly injured and Nelson is laid low and close to death, but the party - and in general, the town of Sandpoint, is victorious over these small nasty and insane invaders! The city is in shock at this attack - Father Zantus heals the injured and the party is hailed as heroes, but a good dozen of Sandpoint's residents lay dead. Father Zantus casts a spell to consecrate the temple from a scroll, without ceremony, as the stunned city generally gets some well deserved rest. That evening the party investigates the cemetery, finding a disturbed unmarked grave, a small mausoleum with a shattered door, and a ladder leaning against the city wall (with a twin on the other side - the obvious way the invaders entered town). Tracks are followed but lost in the river. The next day - the town is still somewhat in shock, but three of our heroes are hailed as heroes - as saviors of Sandpoint! Vig is somehow ignored, mostly, for all of this. Except by Shayliss Vinder, that is, who throws herself awkwardly at the Nidalese Ninja, leading him to her family's basement for some afternoon delight until caught by her father Ven. Fortunately, the sneaky Vig is able to sneak away, and meet up with a priest of Desna, who leads Vig down to see the body of Petros Lorrimor - where he confirms the horrific and fatal injuries caused to the august Professor's face. The next day the party is off for a quick Boar hunt in the Tickwood with Aldern Foxglove (who the party rescued from certain gobliny death!) And then in the afternoon, the reading of the Will, where our four heroes, the "Flail Sisters" (Jaxom, Yaris, Viola, and Charmaine), Kendra and Bettina, and Adivion, are joined by two other mysterious personages - Areelu Vorlesh, and Alaznist. Adivion, Areelu, Alaznist, and someone named Aravashniel are given strange small boxes. Adivion opens his to find a strange curved silvery knife (with runes in Thassilonian reading 'Alderpash'). Alaznist finds a small violet stone inside of hers, which makes her give a small but angry smile. Adivion opens the box for Areelu, which contains a purple crystal inside, that gives off palpably evil energies - Areelu curses and vanishes. Very peculiar and wizardly - and Alaznist and Adivion leave soon after, teleporting away together (presumably back to Lepidstadt, where Adivion is the Dean of Students at the University there. Then, the 'Flail Sisters' are given a small box, a sheet of instructions, and a pouch of money, and leave immediately for a secret assignment in Magnimar. Bettina is left a pouch of coins, and the entire rest of Petros' holdings are left to Kendra - with the exception of a small chest, which contains several books. After the lawyer leaves the will reading, our Heroes open to box to find Petros' journal, a separate note tucked inside said journal, and four other books: On Verified Madness: This black book is a treatise on abberations and other entities with ties to the Dark Tapestry. Serving Your Hunger: a copy of an Urgothoan unholy text. The Umbral Leaves: a translation into Taldane of the unholy book of Zon-Kuthon. The above three books are marked to be delivered to Montagnie Crowl, a professor of Antiquities at Magnimar University. Additionally, the chest contains The Manual of the Order of the Palatine Eye, locked and sealed, a book with a purple cover and a note saying the book is for Embreth Daramid, a Judge in Magnimar. Embreth Daramid will also give our Heroes 500 pieces of platinum to share for delivery of said books, as long as the party waits a month, as Petros wishes them to stay for at least that long to help Kendra adjust. As our Heroes consider what to do next, Kendra tells them they are all welcome and honored guests, and suggests they rest until her father's funeral... And then her eyes roll back in her head and in a different and gutteral voice she croaks: "Help me - I have not much time - the five must not be released.... please...." At which point Kendra comes back to herself, and continues about her father's burial which will take place in three days time, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And here is where the curtain must drop, at least for now. Exciting times and adventure are sure to be ahead for Our Brave Heroes!
DM NOTES: Through most of the first several adventures, I spell the halfling cavalier as 'Antoine'. His player corrected me after several posts - I'll try to catch 'em as they come up. Kand's player was out of town for several months, but has recently come back to the table. I combined RotRL and Carrion Crown's starts, because they're both awesome. I think it worked out okay, except it was a bit too busy, and the prep-work for Harrowstone got lost. They almost missed it, actually! That's how good Sandpoint is. Also, there's a LOT of overlap in names. Two Kendras got a bit confusing! I made the CC Kendra a DMPC - an oracle of life Healbot.
And now, let us meet our adventurers! So far we have, in Alphabetical Order: Antwon, halfling Cavalier, riding his War Wolf Nelson. Antwon is motivated by the suspicious death of his father and his noble lineage to seek his fortune in the world - and, perhaps, to clear his family name. He is spirit-touched by the ghost of his dead dad. Kand, Dwarven Wizard, and his electro-bird Birb. Kand is an architect of constructs and things mechanical, and is fascinated by things Thassilonian. Torvan, Half-Orcish Rogue. Charming and dextrous, Torvan strikes from the shadows with his hand crossbow. He was Exposed to Awfulness as a child, and perhaps that Dark Heritage is why he passes so well for Human. Vig the Mysterious, a Ninja in the service of the Black Butterfly. Rescued from evil Nidalese rituals, he Stole the Fury he was exposed to and made his way to Sandpoint. Broke and hungry, our young group is thrown together during a Goblin attack and a mysterious Will by their dead friend and Patron Petros Lorrimor, and set out together for adventure!
Hello! The tl;dr of this post is: I'm running a group through some best-of bits from several APs, going to level 20 and Tier 10. This post will be design ideas; after that it'll be the blog posts I write after each session, interspersed with some DM notes and thoughts. My name is Dave, and I'll be your Humble Narrator and Friendly DM today. Hey Aaron, Chris, Jason, Paul, Zack - if you're reading this, maybe... don't? You've read almost all of it already on the blog, and the other stuff is behind-the-screen info. Also - SPOILERS. I'm gonna try to alternate adventure log posts, and DM-thoughts posts, so there's MAJOR spoilers. Do I even need to say that in a Campaign Journal Blog? If I do, then consider it said. Several months ago I went through several of the Paizo APs, making a spreadsheet of what happened at each character level and seeing if I could mash something up. Shattered Star, Rise of the Runelords, and Return of the Runelords all seemed connectable; I wanted to add Mythic so Wrath of the Righteous was a good fit, and Harrowstone and Illmarsh resonated with me so I added Carrion Crown. I made the assumption that one tier = one level, and that I could adjust hp and all on the fly to make encounters challenging. What REALLY tied everything together for me was reading about DMs running games without XP - my last couple campaigns I'd been fudging the numbers anyway, and this felt... freeing, in many ways. It's turned out to be awesome so far - my group and I aren't bored with running a bunch of trash mobs to bulk up XP and get to the good stuff, and I can make bigger fights because the party hasn't spent resources fighting their way to the BBEG. One of the things that's come from this is the party isn't motivated by XP - as an example, they broke into a lab (Vorkstag and Grine's Chymic works) and found the closet of skins - and instead of clearing the place out, they reported the crime to the authorities. Good RP, makes sense, and lets us get on with things - a win all around! Mythic's making things weird, like I knew it would from creeping around these boards, but we're rolling through it. I find it refreshing, really - I don't have to fudge rolls if I get a long series of crits, and I can play the enemies as smart (focus on the healers first; don't spread the damage around but lock them down and then take them out one-by-one) and the party mostly can handle it. They make most of their saves, so no-one's shut down for a few rounds in combat, and everyone's REALLY feeling that power-fantasy thing. The cavalier recently did 94 hp on a single hit, at 7th level and 2nd tier. The rogues on the regular are doing 30 points on each hit, and have the potential to do several of those a round. Fights feel EPIC when they can dish out that much damage and monsters are still standing. It also lets me focus on making things FUN for everyone, instead of REALISTIC - I just automatically ID treasure, let them buy whatever magic gear out of game, when the combat's down to just the scrubs we can call it a win instead of playing it out, etc. When there's a rules dispute I can say things like: "okay - evens you can do that, odds you can't" and we move on instead of looking everything up. It's not for everyone, I suppose, but it works for my group. They just got 8th level last night; they'll get Tier 3 the session after next. We play every week, and we've mostly been able to keep to that. We get 4/5 hours in at each session, which is pretty good for people with day jobs and kids. So far we've gone through the first three books of RotRL; the first book (and a half) of Carrion Crown, Lady's Light from Shattered Star, and they're just about to assault Drezen from Wrath. Nothing from Return of the Runelords yet - I think that one's higher-level stuff fits better. Oh, finally, I make the swears in several of the posts: If my swearing has offended,
I sure hope I catch them all before posting them here! Let me know if I miss any and I'll sanitize things. You can find my blog at: https://demonsandsins.blogspot.com - but I set it so the newest posts are at the top - the opposite of on here. That is easier to read for my players to stay current; this will be easier to read coming in fresh. But I do drop some f-bombs (and a variety of other Bad Words) on the blog. Also, some of the Paizo APs can get a little rough - I don't think I've gone TOO far away from the boundaries set (Foxglove Manor is a Messed Up Place!) but keep in mind that some of the material gets a bit scary and tough. Also - I've cribbed just a TON of ideas from other blogs and forum posts. I wish I could attribute all the other ideas, but at this point I don't remember where I heard most of them, let alone who said them first. I'd like to specifically mention Kol Korran and his Wrath of the Righteous summaries on the Giant in the Playground forums, and myxzplk on his Geek Related blog. Between them I realized that I wanted to run people through a bunch of Paizo APs. I'm calling them out specifically because most of the rest of my good ideas are not really my ideas at all, but have come from these forums, or the APs themselves. I've been DMing for a long time, and I am continually impressed with Paizo's design and world building. Thank you!
Hi everyone, Is there a list somewhere of Adventure Paths, broken down by what happens at what PC level? RotRL and CC examples:
For instance: Rise of the Runelords 1 (Burnt Offerings): level 1 is goblin attack, other Sandpoint stuff, and the Glassworks; level 2 is the catacombs; level 3 is Thistletop and the dungeon there.
Carrion Crown 1 (Haunting of Harrowstone): level 1 is the funeral, city stuff to the town meeting; level 2 is entering Harrowstone and the upper levels; level 3 is Harrowstone basement. I'm planning out a mashup using mostly Carrion Crown and Rise of the Runelords - with bits and pieces from other Paths. I'm not going to do experience, but give several things to do at each level, and level up when the party starts the first 'new level' piece. I figure this will let me plan out the themes so I can drop hints about big bads and all right from the start - and my players won't feel railroaded, but like they can avoid any of the adventures that sound boring. I started to break down some of the APs that I have, but then I thought I'd see if there's already something like this out there.... Thanks!
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