Product still pending... :(
I know this is a bit of repeat, but would it be possible for someone to give brief description of the resolutions of the remaining three campaign traits?
Will have to say I love the move Desna pulled to raise Ash. I love seeing the reverse temptation pulled by a good god that both feels so well done and so appropriate to that mentality.
I especially loved the fact that it was her relationship with Sarenrae that gave Desna the strength to circumvent her desire to just nuke Arueshalae in retaliation :)
Sometimes our relationships with others can bring out the better parts of ourselves :)
Dont suppose anyone would be willing to give a spoiler on Arueshalae for us? (Not got my copy yet and so woant to see if a theory of mine is true.)
What would you like to know? :)
I'm at work right now and don't have access to my PDF, but I'll try to answer what I can from memory.
What are Arueshalae's class levels? (and mythic tiers, if she has them).
Thank you!
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Will have to say I love the move Desna pulled to raise Ash. I love seeing the reverse temptation pulled by a good god that both feels so well done and so appropriate to that mentality.I especially loved the fact that it was her relationship with Sarenrae that gave Desna the strength to circumvent her desire to just nuke Arueshalae in retaliation :)
Sometimes our relationships with others can bring out the better parts of ourselves :)
Yeah, part of why I'm still a little upset we didn't get more reverse tempters for the side of good yet (a "redeemer" if you will). That being said I'm happy to see that the concept at least is alive and well and with any luck we'll get something to fill that void.
Yeah, part of why I'm still a little upset we didn't get more reverse tempters for the side of good yet (a "redeemer" if you will). That being said I'm happy to see that the concept at least is alive and well and with any luck we'll get something to fill that void.Will have to say I love the move Desna pulled to raise Ash. I love seeing the reverse temptation pulled by a good god that both feels so well done and so appropriate to that mentality.I especially loved the fact that it was her relationship with Sarenrae that gave Desna the strength to circumvent her desire to just nuke Arueshalae in retaliation :)
Sometimes our relationships with others can bring out the better parts of ourselves :)
There is a redeemer angel in Chronicles of the Righteous.
One night, while she was draining a priestess of Desna that she had seduced, Arueshalae decided to try an experiment. Outsiders don't sleep, and therefore don't dream, but she wanted to see what it was like. So, she used detect thoughts on the priestess while she slept.
She ended up getting sucked into the Dimension of Dreams and was trapped there when the priestess died. In daring to try to dream, Arueshalae came to Desna's attention. Desna almost obliterated her on the spot, but her pal Sarenrae has smoothed her edges over the millenniums and she ultimatly thought better of it. Instead, she reached deep into the succubus' core and filled her heart and mind and being with her mortal memories. When she woke up, she remembered her previous life and felt ashamed, so now she seeks to redeem herself with the help of her new goddess.
She's CN when the PCs meet her, but she's so close to pushing past that last hurdle and becoming CG. She's got DR/Lawful instead of Good if I remember correctly, and her succubus powers work a bit different.
I also have to say that the art they ordered for her in this book is incredible :)
I think what Tirisfal is saying is actually:
Tinkergoth's got it right :)
Ah, my mistake.
** spoiler omitted **
Probably? I dunno - that's more of a James question.
I just got home and looked over it, and there was one last thing I forgot - my favorite line in the entire book:
:3
Interesting. It kind of makes you wonder how many other fiends the gods have mindscrewed into goodness.
It probably only happens if they are in the god's domain and are the kind of god that would redeem a fiend.
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@ Alleran,
I might be able to add some insight here. Let's talk about good and evil...
(I also refer to some Runelord's plot elements by way of comparison, so there's some spoilers for that too..)
I come at it from the perspective that very very few people, if any, just are born evil. Maybe some are, as I've seen psychological case studies on sociopaths and feral children, but for the most the path of evil is just that—a journey. It's not a singular decision. It's not a function of an instant. It is a descent. You see this mirrored over and over in pop culture, literature, and even fantasy gaming. I could list examples, but they are numerous. Often times, it is part of the tragedy. You, the audience, can see it coming.
I think one of the misconceptions about outsiders is that they're incapable of a range of emotion. Even in Golarion's myths we see gods experiencing a complex range of emotion that doesn't always fit neatly into rigid alignments (Pharasma's cursing of the lamia, Asmodeus's complex relationship with the brother he once loved and then murdered, and Desna's sense of wrath towards Lamashtu over the murder of her friend and mentor). Taking it down a notch, based upon James's comments I believe that demons can experience a similar range of emotion but do their utmost to avoid it. Why? Because it is a liability. A demon that allows itself to love opens itself up to being destroyed, especially by its fellows. I imagine most demons do tell themselves they are incapable of feeling positive emotion, and repeat that to themselves over and over again because they really want it to be true! I imagine most powerful demons and demon lords reinforce this notion, over and over again, because they don't want any of the rank and file to experiment in order to find out. Otherwise you end up with a traitor like Arueshalae.
But common sense says that if an angel can fall, they reverse is also possible. Perhaps it's just more unlikely.
There is also the matter of memory loss. I think that is incidental to the years of torture, suffering, and humiliation that a soul endures as it forms into a demon, but having your mortal memories is also a liability. It is baggage that lends itself to liabilities like regret.
Also, demons are formed from many different larvae. Bits and pieces of multiple souls. I imagine Arueshalae's dominant personality is the soul of the largest and strongest larvae that her succubus form was composed of... that was the one that Desna located and restored to awareness. Wiping away the centuries of torture and shame, so that she could see clearly and objectively again. Good lord, and to think that a kindness? To force someone to take a good hard look in the proverbial mirror and see your own wasted life and the countless number of ruined lives you've left in your wake? It is a testament to Arueshalae's strength and pushes herself to try and undo some of the damage. It speaks to Desna's compassion that she allows Arueshalae to try.
In the case of the Nightripper, he might be more of a composite entity created from the fusion of a thousand serial killers... none of which have been singled out and awakened as with the case of Arueshalae.
But you see, very few people just wake up one day and decide "I'm going to be a monster." Let's look at Runelords for a second... Nualia certainly didn't just decide to be evil one day. She was responsible for her choices, but she never asked to be isolated from her community. She never asked to be objectified by her beauty or by her race. All she wanted was someone to love her. Instead she got used for sex and abandoned. She never asked for her baby to be born a deformed half-fiend monster, it happened because she gave herself in love to an undeserving young man (motivated by lust) too close to an evil shrine to a Demon Goddess of fertility and monsters. After the midwifes buried her monster child in secret, she never asked for her only parent to lock her in a church, plan to send her to a convent, and tell her to pray for forgiveness for all the wrong she had done. Her sins? Like she asked for any of that crap? Wanting to be treated like a person and not a freak, and for someone to love her? To be blamed for wanting what everybody wants? To be loved as a person? Good heavens, its not surprising she snapped. Mind you, I don't give Nualia a free pass. She's responsible for her misdeeds and she was a villain—but that girl didn't wake up one day and decide, "I shall be a monster!"
I don't know.. I am rambling now. Maybe you'll get the gist. I'm going to let James get his two cents in here now. :) And hope he doesn't mind me speaking up.
Alleran,
I regret forgetting the Nightripper's history. It gets challenging to remember all of the canon. I am not ashamed to say I'm not the first freelancer who has said it is difficult to keep up on our reading!
:)
You sound comfortable with your interpretation, and I think that is a fine thing. I am not going to tell you that you're wrong, even if I have a different perspective. When it comes stuff like this I don't think the game or this adventure needs an absolute truth. My job is to entertain, and if you and your group are entertained, that is good enough for me.
Yeah, that may sound kind of "safe" and or "slippery" but I mean it—we agree that there is 'a' way for a demon to be redeemed. The story works fine either way you see that happening. I hope you have fun!
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There is a redeemer angel in Chronicles of the Righteous.Yeah, part of why I'm still a little upset we didn't get more reverse tempters for the side of good yet (a "redeemer" if you will). That being said I'm happy to see that the concept at least is alive and well and with any luck we'll get something to fill that void.Will have to say I love the move Desna pulled to raise Ash. I love seeing the reverse temptation pulled by a good god that both feels so well done and so appropriate to that mentality.I especially loved the fact that it was her relationship with Sarenrae that gave Desna the strength to circumvent her desire to just nuke Arueshalae in retaliation :)
Sometimes our relationships with others can bring out the better parts of ourselves :)
I know and I love that guy but to me he always feels like one built to work with mortals more then outsiders. I mean we have so many angel breakers it feels like floating around the multiverse for evil, I would love to see a "Demon redeemer" that shows up somewhere in the mix.
Is anyone else still waiting for their order? It goes up for sale for non-Adventure Path dubscribers tomorrow and it still shows as 'pending' on my Account screen. :(
Is anyone else still waiting for their order? It goes up for sale for non-Adventure Path dubscribers tomorrow and it still shows as 'pending' on my Account screen. :(
Yep, still waiting :(
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This month there was some major problems with the sheer amounts of orders and volume of products being submitted to Paizo. Not to mention some computer glitches that happened. Hence some of the issues that have arisen because of this. Sara Marie has assured us as subscribers and such that they are working on the shipping issues and they WILL ship as soon as they are able to. If your subscription order (under "My Subscriptions" at the top of the page) does not say Pending... you should get in touch with Sara Marie and or customer service right away. Otherwise you are in a queue and on the list to have your orders ship soon. So it will happen.
So they do ask for patience while this happens. We all know that we are not promised to get our orders before the Stores and street dates happen but usually we at least get the PDF's before hand though. But not even that is promised to us either. It does not happen often but it DOES happen occasionally. Meanwhile we wait :)
(This has all been said (not verbatim) by Sara Marie in the customer service area under October subscriptions. You can find it here; http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2q7qu?-October-Subscription-Shipping
I wish you all luck as I too wait for my orders to arrive as they have not been shipped nor do I even have the PDF's yet either.
Creative Director
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Question for Amanda Hamon (or whoever, really...it's just she wrote up that section of the book).
How is the locust that walks a 'variant'? Perhaps it's jsut because it's not spelled out, but I see nothing that distinguishes it from a normal worm that walks...
Its stats are unchanged... but it's appearance and flavor are changed. That's enough to qualify it as a variant in my book! Especially since it's not made out of worms.
Thanks, guys! Now I have nothing standing in my way of making a fly that walks...
Except Asmodeus, he seems the type to be upset when someone steals his ideas.
Thanks, guys! Now I have nothing standing in my way of making a fly that walks...Except Asmodeus, he seems the type to be upset when someone steals his ideas.
ORIGINAL CHARACTER, DO NOT STEAL
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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My two C-bills on Ash.
When she was alive, she was an evil person, maybe just on the edge, maybe full blown CE. Either way, she died, and her soul was judged and sent to the abyss. Maybe she had regrets when she arrived, maybe she didn’t. Either way, her soul was beaten, folded, spindled, and mutilated into a succubus.
We don’t know how long she was a demon. Time is immaterial to this case. What happened was that Ash-the-succubus was a slightly exceptional member of her kind, and did the ‘normal’ succubus things.
Then she crossed the wrong deity.
Ash-as-awakened apparently didn’t hit bottom, she shot right past bottom and found a new sub-basement. Ash-with-memories-of-her-life was mortified that she’d done things (sure, technically it wasn’t Ash-before-she-died, but the memories are all of what they’ve done) that she’d never even consider. Seducing a wife to break up a marriage for kicks? Sure. Maybe even poisoning a lover? Sure. But Ash-before-she-died likely never considered eating someone’s life force, or sending their soul to be shredded by demons. Or Worse... So she re-evaluated her new life, like the guy who was a binge drug user and woke up one morning beaten and naked and not able to remember what happened. So she’s strong enough to pull herself up, without the aid of a Demons Anonymous. (More importantly from a player PoV, she’s able to ‘pull herself up’ to CN, and needs them as a support group to make it to CG.)
At least that’s how I see her.
Cydeth, I wanted to thank you for the five star review (and I am sure that James does too). It's always gratifying to see people enjoying the adventures!
Cydeth, I wanted to thank you for the five star review (and I am sure that James does too). It's always gratifying to see people enjoying the adventures!
No problem, I absolutely loved what you did with the adventure, and am so looking forward to running it and inflic-I mean letting my players experience it. Thank you so much for writing it!
Now I need to finish my adventures...
@ RogueShadow3,
Thank you for your kind words! I'm pleased that we could provide you with some NPCs that hopefully lead to some really meaningful roleplaying. Thank you again for your review!
Edit: I'll link your review to the website feedback. Maybe Robot Chris can have a look at those interactive maps when her schedule permits.
Pending, Pending, Pending........................................
This is ridiculous.
Just received my hardcopy in the mail today. The postal service treated it more roughly than I would have liked and scrunched up one of the corners. Disappointing. :(
I found myself rather disappointed after reading through Demon's Heresy. The players are essentially demoted from the mythic leaders of a great crusade against evil to a bunch of errand boys/girls for Irabeth as she takes command of the city they liberated. It's basically a small uninspired sandbox with little in the way of story beyond "scouting" out the area and helping Irabeth rebuild her new city. The story doesn't really pick up again until you encounter the reformed succubus, but first the players need to gain a few levels scouting and what largely amounts to running errands. And that's where this story suffers. There are lots of small and relatively uninteresting encounters/side-quests.
Ultimately, I think SoV sets up those players inclined to general their own battles and rule their own lands to expect DH to be something different than what they ultimately get. And I think that can make for some disgruntled players.
In the real world, a letter like the one Queen Galfrey sent to the players after they liberated Drezen would be considered a demotion and something of an insult despite the effusive praise. I can already see my group of players, who -loved- Kingmaker, saying "Screw this! We're out of here. Let's go adventure somewhere else." when they're stripped of their command of the knights and Irabeth gets promoted to ruler over them.
Now it wouldn't be that hard to edit DH to make it work, ie. give them rulership of the city they liberated, and make it feel more like Kingmaker, and less like Pawnmaker. This way they won't feel like they've been kicked in the teeth, and I don't have to hear things like, "You told us in part 2 (as per the book) that our knighthoods entitled us to rule land", and "If the Queen wanted Irabeth to rule why didn't she put her in charge of the mission to liberate Drezen?"
I've just reached a point where I don't have a lot of time to edit adventures. My free time isn't what it once was. So I'm going to grumble when books like this one are produced that aren't very well thought out.
Well, you could also give them the vague religious explanation that Queen Galifrey believes that Iomedae has greater plans than rulership in mind for the PCs.
They're far too important to the crusade to simply get a "desk job" like ruling a city.
If your PCs feel like they've "been demoted", then they may be more invested in petty rulership than they are in closing the Worldwound, and this may not be the AP for them.
I have to disagree. Most of what you are shrugging off as scouting and errands are actually tied to each character's personal story and background trait they chose. If you treat them only likely little errands, that's all they're going to be...but there is so much more potential in each of those side-quests, even before the succubus. Whether they feel worthy of mythic characters or vital to the story falls a lot on the DM running it.
Speaking for myself, if I was in there shoes I wouldn't want to be tied down to running a city anyway. You're sitting in the middle of the world wound, surrounded by armies of slavering demons ready to rip your head off and you want a SimCity experience? I like the idea of taking the fight to them on their own lands on our terms and not huddling up in the one little bastion we managed to take.
I recognize that there is a significant slice of the player audience that will happily delegate command of the expeditionary force of knights to Irabeth in Sword of Valor, because they don't want that responsibility. All they want to do is kill monsters and collect l00t. And they'll have no reason to be disappointed with Demon's Heresy when Irabeth is given command of the city. They're not my group however.
In Kingmaker, which this AP has misguidedly been compared to, rulership was by no means a "desk job". So the precedent of rulers who adventure has already been set, and it's a precedent that is much loved by my players.
This precedent is built upon in the Ultimate Campaign book, which the preceding volume in this series, Sword of Valor, integrates heavily, creating expectations. Demon's Heresy however drops the ball, stripping the players of both command and rulership without giving them anything meaningful in return. And it's that dropping of the ball that is the problem.
Furthermore there is no plan to close the Worldwound presented in DH, not even a search for a way to push it out of the newly reclaimed land. It's just a lot of scouting until you finally are high enough level to free Ash. And rulership is no more petty than looting dead enemies, and quite a bit less morally less questionable. Both provide resources that can be intelligently allocated in the demon war.
Okay. Maybe you should write a review if it's bugging you that much?
Regarding the background side-quests:
1) Instead of being available to all mythic paths, they're each associated with a different path. So if you want a certain mythic path, the associated background is forced on you.
2) Some players, including my own, prefer to craft their own backgrounds. To those players, canned backgrounds are an unwanted imposition on player freedom to craft their own characters.
I thus doubt that more than half of my players, if that, would choose to integrate elements from the canned backgrounds associated with their mythic path.
Regarding "Huddling Up in Drezen in the middle of the Worldwound":
1) If you think I'm arguing for huddling up in the city, then you really don't understand what Kingmaker was about. There was a lot of both adventuring and domain expansion occurring in Kingmaker.
2) The city is not less safe than the wilds of the Worldwound, or even Mendev itself now that the wardstone wall has fallen. Drezen at least now has the Sword of Valor protecting it thanks to the PC's.
3) The city is not in the middle of the Worldwound, it's pretty close to the Mendev border.
In Kingmaker, which this AP has misguidedly been compared to, rulership was by no means a "desk job". So the precedent of rulers who adventure has already been set, and it's a precedent that is much loved by my players.
For the most part, I am going to step back and let James respond to this critique, if he wants to.
However, may I ask where exactly this "Kingmaker" comparison came from which has created an expectation which led to you being disappointed? This is a genuine question, I'm not trying for a "gotchya". I have seen the fan-base community make this comparison, but I have never seen it promoted as such from the "in-house" side of things.
If it has been promoted as such, could you give me a pointer? I promise not quibble about this either way. I'm just honestly curious.
It sounds like you dislike this module because it isn't Kingmaker.
This AP isn't Kingmaker because its Wrath of the Righteous, not Kingmaker. If you want this AP to be more like Kingmaker, then you need to adjust the AP to your needs.
I'm not going to get into some sort of arguing match that takes up pages on this product page. I disagree with you, heavily at that, but you're free to your own opinions and I hope you find a way to adjust that works for you and your group. My own group is really enjoying this adventure path and how it has been done, so to each their own.