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That's a wonderfully out-there Rhoswen, Cintra. I've been thinking of using a wild hunt dynamic with Ranalc too, actually. If the PCs don't take him out immediately after Varnhold vanishes, that is. And the mirrors are a great touch. What'd your players end up doing with the bottled Rogarvias?

I love the abstract, story-book natures you're illustrating, Mackenzie. The literal taste for story-weaving and the dependence on being remembered is great. Can't wait for the rest.

Philip: Yeah, Ranalc will be replacing Vordakai in this one, though he's not really undead. If he were a product of necromancy Pharasma would have had no problem having him destroyed. But he was resurrected back into true life, which is beyond Pharasma's domain of influence. I don't allow resurrection magic for PCs in my games, because I feel it lessens the drama of death, and when it does happen it's a big mythical deal like in this case. But just like necromancy it still goes against the cosmic order that Pharasma oversees.

While he's not not undead Ranalc is no longer really human anymore either. After all he's been through he's almost fey himself. Pharasma gave up the hope of seeing him come before her for judgment in the afterlife, but there had to be consequences. So now in Ranalc's second life Pharasma has condemned him to act out the death that he and Nyrissa defied and has interred him in a crypt as if it were a jail cell. Once he gets out he's going to have gone a little mad and be much darker. And while he's not undead himself, his history with death will lend itself to undead minions and themes and so on like Vordakai.

I have a planar theme going where Nyrissa is aligned with the First World, Ranalc with the Shadow Plane and Rhoswen with the Ethereal Plane.

Mackenzie: Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad that the tragedy and ambiguity comes through. By all means, I'd be delighted if other people shared their own work and perspectives.

Hey all. So, I'm beginning my second game of Kingmaker with a new group and I can't wait to see how they do things differently and what paths they'll go down. Further, I've had the opportunity with my first game and group to get a feel for the campaign and figure out what my vision for it is. As such I've come up with a new backstory for the campaign that addresses or changes such things as Vordakai's total lack of relation to anything else, the logic behind Briar, and how Nyrissa is not an active presence up until the sixth book.

Just as many folks on this forum have integrated Realm of the Felnight Queen into their games, I'm using Rhoswen. But the similarities pretty much end at the name. If anything she'll be a guide or ally of the PCs. To name Choral's dragons I borrowed from the pair encountered in Rise of the Runelords; Fortress of the Stone Giants. You'll notice I've changed other names, these are just because I felt like it.

Pharasma's involvement is predicated on the fact that I run my games hardcore in respect to PC death and resurrection magic is almost unheard of.

I still haven't figured out the how and why of the Rogarvia Vanishing, maybe Nyrissa did it. Though I know Choral was a red dragon in disguise and has been slumbering on a vast bed of gold for the past centuries, just doing what dragons do, and will at some inconvenient point erupt forth to do more of what dragons do.

I'm eager for thoughts, reviews, ideas and criticism and hope that at least some folks enjoy this.

Descriptions of House Rogarvia report them to be ruthless kings that ruled and maintained unity by intimidation and rule of authority. I'm assuming that Hellknights are exclusive to Cheliax and its vassal nations but I just keep imagining that the Rogarvias would have assembled a Varingian Guard-style company of Hellknights, seeking ever more effective tools of terror to compensate for not having dragons. It could also play to the rumor that Choral the Conqueror made a bargain with a devil for his rule by pledging his descendant's blood.

Can Hellknight chapters exist outside of Cheliaxian authority? Are exile, mercenary or rogue Hellknights at least a thing?

I trashed the quest for the egg and gave undead stats to the roc, for Vordakai's grasp had grown long by that point in our game. It was no longer simply dangerous wildlife but became an active Big-Bad minion and obstacle as my party crossed the mountains.

I also made sure that the weather was gray and thickly overcast so that this zombie roc could fly up into the cover of the low-hanging clouds and strike from anywhere in the sky without warning. My players were very shaken.

I think having this villan count on his ghost stone bomb to discourage the PCs to attack him is a bad plan. The PCs will likely attack him anyway.

I know, it's an awful risk. But I have hope for my PC's thinking it through.

I've already stranded them on this side of the Tors, with a blizzard blocking off the pass behind them (that damn wendigo) and capture a certainty in now-Surtova-held Rostland should they attempt to loop around the northern end. I did it basically to cut them off from their kingdom and force them to be real adventurers again for a while. I was getting a little tired of "we have people to do that for us."

Anyway, this means that if they think it through when Aleksi lays down the threat, they should realize that not only will a horde of thousands of otherwordly fiends will be unleashed upon the land, but that they will be stuck dealing with it without the support of their kingdom's armies. It's just my style to present difficult, high-stakes choices that could have deadly and merciless consequences, even for the villain. And I just wanna use the Ghost Stone war after building it up to this scale. Even if the PC's back down and Aleksi doesn't unleash the xills and phase spiders, it'd have not gone to waste for the impression it made.

Besides, if they do go for it and kill Aleksi, I do like that idea for a contingency to teleport his corpse for resurrection. I like it even better for the "dark fey" idea, avoiding there simply just being one more lich. And he might need to achieve immortality at some point to remain relevant to the plot anyway. This campaign has already spanned two generations of PCs and over half an in-game century.

I hadn't planned for Aleksi to encounter Count Ranalc until after he escaped from V's tomb and took the Ghost Stone to the Ethereal plane, but perhaps Ranalc made contact with Aleksi as soon as he first studied the Stone. With Nyrissa's plots Ranalc doubtless has eyes of his own on the land and has already devised a use for Aleksi: He could work for Ranalc all along, even while dealing with V. Perhaps I can amp up the importance of the Oculus of Abaddon somehow to make it of some macguffin importance to Ranalc's own plans.

Now I'm thinking a new angle for the Aleksi encounter: He has already stolen the Oculus from V somehow and is preparing to escape the tomb when the players encounter him. So even if the players do slay him, which would become more difficult once an enraged V bursts in, he'll have the Oculus on his corpse when the contingency teleports him out to Ranalc for resurrection. The connection to Ranalc through the Ghost Stone may be severed if Aleksi makes good on his threat before he's killed, but the fabric of the Stolen Lands is like swiss cheese. Aleksi's corpse and the Oculus would get to Ranalc somehow.

Hey all! So, my players have just crossed the Tors of Levenies and are beginning to explore the abandoned city of Varnhold. The crossing of the mountains was made quite difficult by the previous character of one of my players, named Aleksi, who turned villainous after he began researching necromancy, engineered a civil war for personal gain and was driven from the kingdom. I have since then taken over control of Aleksi and am trying to craft him into an antagonist second only to Nyrissa in importance to the plot line.

Aside from being stalked by a wendigo, all opposition through Varnhold pass reeked of Aleksi's plots, with the undead template being applied to the VV module's roc and a tribe of stone giants holding the pass against the party. The stone giant leader had been taught necromancy by Aleksi to enslave their ogre rivals. (I borrowed heavily from Rise of the Runelords for this portion. Barl Breakbones was the stone giant necromancer, the Headless Lord was also present, and they had captured Fort Rannick, which in this setting was established by Varnhold to keep the pass open against these same giants and ogres.)

Anyway, the PCs are through the Tors and have entered Varnhold. After surviving redcap ambushes through the empty streets, they're about to handle the spriggans in the fort and will presumably follow the course of the module by encountering the centaurs and eventually tracking down Vordakai's tomb. Thing is, Aleksi has been out here for a while and has already uncovered quite a few secrets ahead of the players. He discovered Vordakai's tomb and, rather than bring down the lich's waking wrath on himself, visited Varnhold in disguise and started a rumor of treasures within the tomb. This led to the module's course of Willas Gundarson stealing the "bracelet" and bringing doom to Varnhold, only in this iteration Gundarson was tricked into it.

After Vordakai vanishes Varnhold (alliteration!) Aleksi presents himself, claiming credit for awakening the lich and offering his assistance. After all, Aleksi himself is a brilliant man who, having until recently been a ruler in the PC kingdom, possesses connections and knowledge of the outside world that Vordakai could make use of.

Of course, Aleksi does this not out of respect or awe for Vordakai. Aleski does nothing that would not benefit himself. Truthfully he covets Vordakai's knowledge as well as his Oculus of Abaddon. (While Aleksi was still a PC, the player purchased an Eye of the Void from their kingdom's lively wondrous item trade. Later on, during Aleksi's violent exile from the kingdom, another PC put out one of his eyes. So of course what else was he to do but place the Eye of the Void into his empty socket? The Oculus of Abaddon would be quite an upgrade if he could wrest it from Vordakai in betrayal.)

Further, I've expanded the extraplanar conflict around the Ghost Stone. Now, rather than one phase spider and four xills, the Ghost Stone stands in the middle of a remote valley where an all-out war between xills and phase spiders has broken over into the material plane and raged on for centuries. The xills and phase spiders seem focused on controlling the Stone and slaying one another and in all the ages of their conflict have never taken it beyond the valley, which Varnholders have taken to calling Hell's Ditch. This is of course an inaccurate name, as the Ghost Stone connects not to Hell but to the Ethereal Plane.

Before even discovering Vordakai's tomb, Aleksi's interest was piqued by rumors of this tumultuous valley. He is a brilliant academic and wizard, so I expect that he would have found a way to bypass the otherworldly combat that surrounds the Ghost Stone and study its properties.

So here's where I get to the point of my post: I don't want Aleski to go down with Vordakai. He will be an ally to Vordakai, but only as far as it suits him. He is there purely to learn (and steal) what he can from the ancient lich in return for his own knowledge of the outside world. He can tell Vordakai much about the PCs. But betraying Vordakai to the PCs for amnesty once they close in on the tomb is not an option. The PCs despise Aleksi and want his head on a spike. There will be no chance for bargaining. So here's what I have vaguely figured so far: Aleksi has hedged his bets and somehow figured out the Ghost Stone enough to devise some form of failsafe.

Aleksi will be encountered in Vordaki's tomb, in W23, the Feasthall. He is not himself undead and is not eating anyone's brain but is rather eating a civilized, candlelit meal of conjured food at the table, sitting nonchalantly alongside the arranged corpses as if at a banquet. Aleksi is powerful but it's not his style to engage directly. He's a manipulator and simply considers himself above getting his hands dirty, so this won't be a boss fight if I can help it. He'll immediately resort to his Ghost Stone contingency.

Keeping in mind that this is not made possible by Aleksi's actual spells and that I'm simply providing him with a DM macguffin, this is the concept I've been working with:

Aleksi has forged something of a deadman's switch on the Ghost Stone and if the players make any move on him, he'd promise to trigger it and destroy the stone or simply sever its link to the Ethereal realm. This will break the force that keeps the xills and phase spiders anchored within the bounds of the valley and though still frenzied for battle, it will deprive them of the motivation to fight each other for control of the Stone. I've made sure that the PC's are well aware of the valley of Hell's Ditch (rumors throughout their kingdom have been overblown to say that it's a second Worldwound ready to burst open) and Aleksi's threat to turn its otherworldly hordes on the outside world should give them pause.

But the finer points of this scheme is where I turn to you, the community:

-How would Aleksi have gotten close to the Ghost Stone to work his machinations, I wonder? It's literally surrounded in a valley roiling with otherworldly warfare.

-Could said machinations on the Ghost Stone actually be explained and legitimized by in-game spells or will I simply have to rely on "because the DM said so" to make it work?

-The PCs REEEEAAAALLY wanna kill Aleksi, so hotter heads may prevail and they could attack anyway. It'd be neat to unleash an Ethereal horde on the countryside but my primary objective is to keep Aleksi alive for the endgame. (Simply keeping him out of the way until then is too boring and not an option) Perhaps there is a plan B I could devise or something else to compliment the first plan and lay on the deterrence real thick?

-How might Aleksi escape with the Oculus of Abaddon or return to steal it for himself after Vordakai's defeat? If the player's arrival does not force Aleksi into abandoning Vordakai and rather he makes his move first and betrays Vordakai, I can can always simply buff up Vordakai to compensate for his lack of an eye to keep him a challenge when he is later encountered. Further, what other spells, items or bits of secret knowledge might Aleksi steal/learn from Vordakai and escape with?

-And finally, should Aleksi's gambit work and they begrudgingly allow him to leave in one piece, he will continue his work with the still-intact Ghost Stone by whatever means. Through his drive for forbidden knowledge and his wish to avoid the interference of the PCs, Aleksi will use the Ghost Stone to pass over into the Ethereal Realm. I'm unsure if it's quite this way in Pathfinder canon but in my game the Ethereal Realm is a crossroads specifically between the First World, the Material Plane, and the Shadow Plane. Aleksi will find his way into the Shadow Plane, drawn by the necromantic energies that lie at its heart, and it is here that he will encounter his newest tutor/ally/patron; Count Ranalc.

A connection with Count Ranalc of course positively hums with possibilities to bridge over into Nyrissa's plotline, but I haven't thought that far ahead yet. If anyone has any ideas building off of his collaboration with Aleksi I would be delighted to hear them. (I'm unsure if its canon that Ranalc has met some unknown fate and vanished, but in my game he is still active but simply exiled to the Shadow Plane.)

Obviously I can't provide you guys with the entire context of my game and have you know every possible point that may be relevant to Aleksi's schemes. But I run pretty open-ended games, drop, edit or add lore and canon to my world and have been known to rule by "because the DM said that's what happens" to move along the plot. So I'm open to any range of ideas. Thanks!

Thing is that while Nyrissa can be beguiling and adept at moving events to her whim, I feel she also epitomizes that erratic and arbitrary feyness and is half-mad to boot from the trauma she's been through. And I won't tell them when the Geas is cast, seeing as there is no saving roll and he has no spell resistance to speak of. It'll be there by default and he needn't be aware.

But I just had a thought that another great way to show her feyness and to just have a flavorful aspect for the spell is to have her recite some jaunty little riddle-poem or nursery rhyme with little references or clues. It'd get stuck in the player's head or come to his mind when Briar is concerned.

I have no poetic skill whatsoever. If anyone with a sense of rhyme at all happens to think up a clever little poem about Briar I'd be much obliged.

Thing is that while Nyrissa can be beguiling and adept at moving events to her whim, I feel she also epitomizes that erratic and arbitrary feyness and is half-mad to boot from the trauma she's been through. And I won't tell them when the Geas is cast, seeing as there is no saving roll and he has no spell resistance to speak of. It'll be there by default and he needn't be aware. I'd make the call that he doesn't immediately suffer negs for failing to follow the geas, as the course the geas must drive him down is not yet apparent. When they attend the Rushlight tourney and the hint about Briar is dropped, I will say out of the blue that the character suddenly feels compelled to an action.

Also, my players already know something is up. I should mention that this whole thing involves a fifty-year gap that all have agreed upon. I'll explain: One of the players has come to see the flaws in the third-party psionic class of his character and has come to regret it and doesn't really have fun with the gameplay. So I gave him an out and said that we could jump forward in time with little effect on the modules, and he will be playing his character's grandson, now a cavalier. One of the other players had just had his character devoured by Talonquake so he was rerolling anyway and cool with it, but the last player, the ruler, is quite attached to his character. So I placated him by saying we could pull a Rip Van Winkle (or more appropriately an Arthur/Barbarossa "once-and-future-king" deal) of some kind, and here we are. He's expecting to vanish for fifty years, though to him it will seem only as if a single night had passed. I suspect Nyrissa took him and the tower to the First World or the Shadow World. The barrier between worlds is of course thin at Candlemere, and I plan to build on this and use that Ghost Stone in the Varnhold Vanishing as a portal to the Etheral plane, giving them a crossroads to the First World or even a Shadow-version of their own Kingdom in the Shadow World.

It's a shame that they have to have any foreknowledge but sometimes you have to talk them through it, y'know? I'm finding that I've had to negotiate with players in this campaign more than any other. As for the campaign cooperating the only continuity thing with the modules I found that I really had to clean up to account for the fifty years was Irovetti. It says in the Adventure Background of War of the River Kings that he became king of Pitax by swindling two brother-kings out of it. I've simply been playing them as the kings thus far; they've sent the player's the head of the Iron Wraith's commander. When Irovetti comes in somewhere during the fifty years, he'll actually seem like an alright chap compared to those two old bastards. And he is an alright chap, really. Depending on how far Nyrissa can tangle up the ruler character in her schemes Irovetti may end up being the hero with the magic sword.

With my players accustomed to the idea of something fantastic happening, their first reaction won't be suspicion. In fact spectacle such as disappearing towers and becoming kings of local myth delights them. I'd say Nyrissa can play a good guy without having to keep the guise of Beldame and even after kidnapping a player if she just plays up the fey whimsy of it and frames herself as the cursed princess and Irovetti as the oppressor, when in fact Irovetti is the only guy who knows what's going on. But he'll always be an enemy of the PCs out of paranoia that they are Nyrissa's unwitting lackeys, whether that comes to be true or not.

I will be introducing Nyrissa to my PCs rather early by having her take the ruler captive. In the guise of the Old Beldame she told to them the secrets of Candlemere Tower and ferried them through the enchanted fog I had placed on the lake, all this on the condition that they grant her whatever she asked in five years time.

Well, the five years are up and this next game session the Old Beldame will appear at the court of Stag's End Keep to take her due. She will ask that the ruler make her his wife. Of course, the players are smart enough to expect horrible curses befalling their kingdom from a broken oath and a spurned witch, and the ruler's an honorable sort, so he ought to consent.

The ruler has taken up residence in Candlemere Tower since clearing it out, making into a center of magic and learning, and one night it will simply vanish. The ruler will awake in his tower, alone except for the Old Beldame, who will assume her true form as Nyrissa in a very Wife of Bath fashion.

From here on out Nyrissa will be using her very convenient spell set to woo and beguile the ruler and she will take him as her lover. But of course she is simply going through the motions, as her ability to truly love is wound up in Briar. Perhaps she is actually trying to convince herself that she can still love but eventually she grows bored and releases the ruler from his spell-addled adoration. But she still needs him. Now, here is where I run into trouble. To what purpose could she use this player?

She ultimately wishes to bottle the Stolen Lands as an offering to powers greater than she. Perhaps marriage to this player is the mechanic by which it can be achieved. Kings are often symbolically linked or "married" to the land they rule, would her attaining queenship by way of the debt claimed as the Old Beldame ceremonially grant her the influence over the land she needs to truly make it hers, perhaps? The character is in fact an Anastasia-esque survivor of the Rogarvia family, so his blood truly is the blood of kings if Nyrissa could use it in some Melisandre-esque fashion.

Or perhaps she keeps the ruler under her enchantment of love, but tells him of Briar as if she were an innocent maiden placed under a terrible curse by awful wizards. The ruler character should be convinced that Nyrissa is his true and destined love and Nyrissa would play to that, saying how she could gladly love him as he loves her were he only to find the sword Briar and return it to her so that "The curse may be broken." In fact Nyrissa may not even need to use too many spells to charm him, as it seems like it would be pretty easy for her to play the part of a GOOD fairy queen. But of course we know that she simply wants Briar so that it cannot be used against her and she's using the ruler as an errand boy.

She has to resort to this because her last consort, Castruccio Irovetti, has gone rogue and keeps Briar to himself. He thinks it a well-kept secret but Nyrissa knows that he withholds it from her and can no longer be trusted. I want to make Irovetti a less outright treacherous, pompous jerk. My Irovetti's actually not a bad guy. He fell under Nyrissa's spell for some time but now has broken free of her will by use of his Technic League artifacts and is aware of her plans. If he attacks the NPCs it is not out of uninspired treachery but because he'd suspect them of being pawns of Nyrissa, and the PC kingdom may well be the aggressors if the ruler catches wind that Irovetti holds Briar, for Nyrissa will place a Geas (actually in her spell list!) on the ruler to seek out Briar and return it to her by whatever means. The Rushlight Tournament will still be an opportunity for Irovetti to size up the PCs, but I will be dropping a hint of Briar's presence for the ruler's Geas to home in on if he notices it.

What do you guys think of these ideas? One or the other? Both? Perhaps there are other ways that Nyrissa could play the PCs like a fiddle?

Yeah, I'm half-considering calling their bluff. I feel like they need to get smacked down hard at some point. I recently gave them their first encounter with Pitax; at a meeting with Restov officials at Fort Serenko, a Pitax diplomat came in and tossed them the head of the Iron Wraith's commander, warning Restov to come no further west. (This was a scene I picked up from these forums. You guys rock)

The diplomat had quite an escort with him, which is why he was able to force his way in so rudely, but the players were unfazed and are already talking trash about invading it.

I almost want them to give Pitax an excuse.

Hey there, everybody. I'm DM'ing a run of Kingmaker and we're currently about to begin the Varnhold Vanishing. Things are going well and all involved think it is one of the best campaigns our group has ever done. Never have we seen a campaign that provides such agency to the players. The campaign plot allows for them to go at their own pace and being rulers opens up so many gameplay and roleplay options, and I'm just happy to see them have fun with it. However, at times I feel that being rulers goes to their heads and that they need reigning in.

They started off with big ideas right out of the gate. The week after they killed the Stag Lord the players were presenting me with the floor plans of oversized fortresses, claiming overly-grandiose titles for themselves and now calling a 500-man levy a legion. I've had to explain to them several times that palaces don't spring up overnight and that calling themselves or their country an "imperial" anything is a joke when even the smallest neighboring River Kingdom could still wipe the floor with them.

While I as DM have been trying to put story before mechanics, all three players are of the sort that take more gratification out of optimized stats than a well-crafted roleplay persona.

I can't be too defensive about whatever the players choose to do with this campaign, as I didn't write it, but I've endeavored to bring things to life with a sense of authenticity and sometimes I feel that my players care little for the world beyond how it may serve to glorify their characters. Wish fulfillment and escapism is fine, but I'm concerned about when it bubbles over into ego-tripping. And I'm not trying to have them play out Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, here, but I don't want them turning my campaign into a comic book either.

What can I do to inspire deliberate and thoughtful roleplay from these guys fitting the monarchs they are supposed to be? Thanks.