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When I ran What Lies in Dust, I had more players than the five books described in the library of Pathfinder Chronicles. So I came up with three more books so that everyone would have a book to read. Here they are for your enjoyment.

Spoiler:

The Enlightenment of Seppe Aoli

After boasting of already knowing all there is to know about the religions of the multiverse, a vengeful deity sent the Deva, Polus, to punish Seppe. Polus swept Seppe through a tour de force of the outer planes. Humbled by his experience, Seppe remained a recluse until his death.

A character who reads Seppe's writings gains the following:

  • +1 Knowledge Religion
  • +1 Knowledge Planes
  • +1 Diplomacy with Outsiders

Among the Apes of Sagawa

Francia Teppotini grew up in a trading post in the Chelish colony. She became fascinated with the great apes, which she could occasionally spy at the fringes of the forest. The attraction grew so powerful that she ran away from her family and befriended a family of apes. It was years later that she emerged from the jungle to tell her story.

A character who reads Francia's story gains the following:

  • +1 Handle Animal
  • +1 Disguise
  • +1 Knowledge Nature

The Story of Inquistor Zacharia Stefanovad: My Life in Death

Zacharia's parents were killed by a haunting ghost, leaving him to grow up as an orphan. The church took in Zacharia and he learned all he could about uneasy spirits. He used this knowledge to hunt and banish ghosts and other undead. As he aged, he realized that there was still so much to do. He used the knowledge he gained from his years of study of the undead to become one himself. As a lich he continued his pursuit of the creatures that killed his parents.

A character who reads Zacharia's story gains the following:

  • +1 Save vs fear
  • +1 Knowledge Arcana
  • +1 Sense Motive


Whew! It has been a two-year odyssey, but we have just finished the Twice-Damned Prince and the Council of Thieves campaign. There were highs. There were lows. We had a great time.

Blog of last session

Blog entries for the Twice-Damned Prince


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We started MoF on Wednesday. I had Aberten contact the party. (They let him go when they beat him in the Infernal Syndrome.) I wanted to have the party contact by someone they know and not introduce someone new.

I had a great run of the ambush. The rogue snuck ahead. His stealth was so good that no one saw him. When he got to Goren's door, he knocked. Yeah! Kruthe knows he's there. Rogue opens the door, Kruthe charges out and crits him. No kill, but I have the party scared now. The quick fighter charges to help, then the thieves on the rooftops drop 2 fireballs on the party bunched up at the entrance to the alley. The party is in no real danger of dying, Oracle channels most of the damage away, but they are scared anyway.

Kruthe retreats into the bedroom and the fighter follows only to be surprised when the Maglin tries to assassinate him. He fails the death attack, but two sneak attacks get his attention. The player get their comeupance on them when the rogue Tiefling moves in gaseous form behind the assassin and drop darkness on them all. Rogue has darkvision and their fighter has blindfighting. Now they have the advantage over Maglin and Kruthe.

I had fun playing Dog's Tongue, too. I tried to make him sound like Sylvester the Cat. We play in German so that was an added challenge. Good fun!

You can read the full details in my blog


Joshua North wrote:

Imars, your idea about printing out this map isn't a half bad idea. My group only has a small'ish battle map which we typically use since we use mini's as well. Was the 4x5 print out big enough to use mini's on?

Yes it was big enough to use minis on. It was roughly 30 inches wide and 50 inches long made of 20 sheets of paper.

I actually ended up doing the same thing with the buildings on the plaza and the dungeon itself. I selected sections 8 squares by 11 squares and printed room by room. I left out most of the hallways, since few of the encounters happen there. When the players get to a room I slap it down on the room on the battlemat. If I need the hallway I draw it there.

A quick note: You can see how I printed the map and rooms in my blog posts on the Infernal Syndrome.


We just started this book and had a blast. I had put the sound of a nuclear explosion on my computer along with a panicking crowd to get my players in the mood. I also printed out an enlarged map of the ruins on my color printer, 4 sheets wide and 5 sheets deep. I had it hidden under a Chessex map until the player got there and had the big reveal. Great fun. You can read about it here, My Blog, set for labels for this book, The Infernal Syndrome. Contains spoilers.


We just finished our run through What Lies in Dust a couple weeks ago and I finally posted my write up. My players had a really good time. I used the vampire's dilema as mentioned above and added my own twist to it. More in a minute.

In addition, for the last half of the adventure, I decided to use Lorefinder, the Gumshoe mashup for Pathfinder. This essentially splits the character skills into investigative skills and general skills. The general skills work just as in Pathfinder. The investigative skills give you points to spend to find things. It takes the rolling out of discovering clues. I am going to try it out for a few sessions and see how it works. It really sped up our dungeon crawling. I also think it really suits this adventure path.

What happened:

The party was out of spells and camped on the Rostrum of Vanishment. I waited until nightfall, when one of the vampire spawn discovered them there. Turns out the paladin, his family is a minor band of thieves. One of his cousins was the spawn. The paladin never got along with his family. So the spawn goes and gets Vahnwynne. Vahnwynne appears atop the ruins of the rope bridge and summons bat swarms, in case the players try to stay invisible. The ranger is a bounty hunter, so he recognizes Vahnwynne. That does not stop the party from killing them. They figure that the vampire is going to regenerate so they are faced with the dilema. Rest and get back their spells or go after the vampire while it is weak. The chase the vampire.

So they end up downstairs and go through most of the second level. When they end up outside the summoning chamber, they run into the Mazeflesh Man. They defeat him and he disappears under the door of the summoning chamber. Before they stumble into there, Missy Molly tells them to follow. She introduces them to Bisby, who gives them the clues they need.

They go down to face the last spawn and Jair. I made Jair the missing master of the wizard, who was his motivation for joining the Redshirts. He thought his master had been carried away by the Hellknights. Two of the vampire spawn were more cousins of the paladin. The players were not really in that much danger, but being out of spells and the fear of negative levels really ratched up the tension for them.

You can catch the whole story on my blog.

Very cool adventure!


In case you want to know how it turned out....

http://parhoon-naval-yards.blogspot.de/2013/05/for-paladin-his-word-is-his- bond.html

-Michael


ajbaker wrote:
Interesting character concept! As far as the curse goes I'd consider a combination of your ideas above- living with the knowledge that he's going to be suffering damnation as a traitor is one thing, but some sort of manifestation of his fate is even better. I'd go with something that happens each time he goes below 0 hp (does this happen often?), as that's when he's hovering at death's door and he's in greatest peril. Losing charisma is pretty harsh for a paladin, so you'd probably do better to just apply penalties to specific charisma-related activities. I like the idea of a creeping panic in the back of his mind as he's approaching 0 hp- even though he's immune to fear, it's a subtle way of corrupting him into behaving just a LITTLE more cowardly. Which might cause problems with his *new* god as well, and would suit Asmodeus just fine :)

I also like your ideas. He has only gone below zero once so far. (They are fifth level and we are just starting What Lies in Dust.) I had been thinking of giving him a devlish feature: horns, cloven hoof, tail, red skin, fangs, each time he goes below zero. This would make him more untrustworthy to good characters: progressively increasing penalties to diplomacy and bluff. I think I like your idea better. He needs to face some kind of danger when he is at death's door, but I do not want him to have to trash his character the next time he goes below zero. At the same time, there should be some sort of penalty that is bad enough to inspire this fear.


In my Council of Thieves campaign, I encouraged the paladin in my campaign to worship the Light Bringer aspect of Asmodeus. This made sense to me since everyone in Westcrown must at least pay token respect to Asmodeus. Now his character is beginning to realize that there is more to life than the Lawfulness of Asmodeus. He sees evil in the Church and his sworn Lord and wants to combat it. He has been learning of Iomadae from another player and is considering switching religions.

This character voluntarily took on the Runecurse from the Asmodean Knot. My plan is to have Asmodeus confront him when the Bone Devil appears to kill him and have Asmodeus prevent anyone from helping him as punishment for his infidelity. Asmodeus planned then to take his soul to Hell for torture. Iomadae will then intervene and temporarily turn his sword into a holy outsider bane, if the paladin turns to her. If the paladin survives, he has successfully made the conversion and suffers no further effects. If the bone devil defeats the paladin, I do not want to permanently kill the character; rather I want him to suffer some sort of affliction that does not ruin the character for the player.

First I thought I could have this character live with the knowledge that no matter how devoted he is to Iomadae, he is destined to be dragged to Hell as the lowest form of soul for torture. This does not appear to be damaging enough so I thought he could have some kind of visible runes written on his skin which all officials of the Asmodean church and devils would immediately recognize him as future slave of Asmodeus. It could give negative bonus on charisma-based skill checks.

I am looking for a curse that has some kind of game effect. Something he can play on, yet neither be too debilitating nor too harmless. Perhaps something that would get progressively worse, like sanity loss. Maybe he could slowly turn into a devil form, losing charisma as time goes on. Or any time he drops below 10 hit points he flies into a diabolical rage and attacks the nearest creature.

I need some good ideas!

Thanks!


My group just finished the Sixfold Trial. Here are two rather long blog posts:
http://parhoon-naval-yards.blogspot.de/2013/02/the-quest-for-chellish-crux. html
http://parhoon-naval-yards.blogspot.de/2013/03/the-quest-for-chellish-cruz- part-2.html


My group just finished Bastards and have now started Sixfold Trial. It was a real change of pace for them after spending two sessions slogging though the catacombs under the old church of Erastus. I am running the game in German using the translation done by Scharlata with the extra lines he added for Farus and Monris. We finished Act 3 so far and my players are having a lot of fun.

Check it out on my blog....

The Sixfold Trial, Part 1 at Parhoon Naval Yards


Robert Hawkshaw wrote:

Blog about someone assembling the demoness:

http://parhoon-naval-yards.blogspot.ca/2011/08/my-latest-project.html

And a reaper guide on a green craft mat with inches:

http://www.reapermini.com/Thecraft/50

I hope you like how it turned out. Feel free to drop me comments.

http://parhoon-naval-yards.blogspot.de/2011/09/finishing-demon-queen-of-spi ders.html


We just started our run. See my blog posting here for details:

http://parhoon-naval-yards.blogspot.de/2012/07/pathfinder-council-of-thieve s-begins.html

7 players all really excited. We are about half Germans and half Americans. Should be fun.