Pathfinder Adventure Path #115: Trail of the Hunted (Ironfang Invasion 1 of 6) (PFRPG)

Let me tell you a story: a tale of how my one-shot PF session last Sunday went far off the rails. Every GM has stories of games going haywire when the players and GM don’t see eye-to-eye. Sometimes, this can be a cause for frustration. But this time, my players genuinely surprised me with a shocking twist, turned script of the campaign upside-down, and left everyone at the table with an experience that everyone found both memorable and satisfying.
First, the context. I’ve been GM-ing consistently since 2013. I’ve had a long time to accumulate knowledge and experience, but I still tend to slip up every now and then. Two things that irritate my players are A) using abyssal demons and their cultists as antagonists frequently enough that my players are sick of it (especially since such enemies are usually irredeemable fanatics who can’t be reasoned with) and B) having villains withdraw or teleport away from encounters before they can be finished off.
One thing my players like to do for one-shots is to agree on a single party theme or class, without my knowledge, and then surprise me with it. One time they brought an entire party of synthesist summoners (I have yet to forgive them for this), and another they came up with an entire party of paladins.
Keep these things in mind.
So, midway through my winter break, I decide to set up a one-shot. I’ve been delving deeper into the official Pathfinder setting and Golarion lore more recently; and I wanted to give my players something new. I looked into two countries in the Inner Sea region, Molthune and Nirmathas, that are perpetually at war. Molthune is a predominately Lawful Neutral, militarized, imperialistic nation where common folk and foreigners can become citizens through five years of military service (which amused me, since it immediately invokes parallels to the movie/book Starship Troopers). Molthune shares it’s northern border with Nirmathas, a primarily Chaotic Good nation of Robin Hood-esque freemen, wild folk, rangers, and frontiersmen with no centralized structure of authority binding them together. In the setting lore, the Nirmathi are portrayed as heroic guerrillas opposed to Molthune’s imperialism.
I decided that this would be the setting of my one-shot, but rather then having the party be Nirmathi underdogs fighting back against the Molthuni war machine…they would be soldiers serving the military hierarchy of Molthune, undertaking dangerous missions in exchange for their citizenship. Rather then a holy crusade against demons or devils, they would be plunged into a grim, bloody war between two non-evil nations that had been dragging on for decades. To facilitate this, I decided that Nirmathas in my campaign would be Chaotic Neutral, as opposed to Chaotic Good. Sure, they are free-spirited, nature-loving folk who hate centralized authority. But maybe they have a lot of bandits, thieves’ guilds, and other criminals amongst them. Maybe they’re strongly xenophobic, extreme, and quarrelsome, like the Wildings from George R.R Martin’s fiction. This makes the war between the two nations less a mere struggle of underdogs against an empire and more a battle of order versus chaos, industry versus nature, and centralized power versus anarchism. But this would be the overall backdrop of the session, not it’s focus. I decided that my PCs would indeed be facing evil antagonists: Nirmathi extremists who worshipped an evil Fey goddess and wish to tear down civilization as we know it. I fear my players would not be invested if they weren’t facing evil enemies, and this would flip the coin on the setting’s assumptions: we get to see the Molthune imperialists acting heroically, and a darker side of Nirmathas. But at the end of the adventure, the PCs would be forced to make a fateful choice, and their response to it would determine their ending and possibly their alignments. I allowed any race or alignment so long as they could justify working for a Lawful Neutral military command structure.
So I posted the event, under the title of “Pathfinder: Service and Citizenship” and six of my friends made time in their schedules to attend. Little did I know what I had just put into motion…
The following the way that the adventure was EXPECTED to progress:
The PCs are the Imperial Special Tasks Force, also known informally as the “Petitioners”; due to the low survival rate within the unit. The Petitioners undertake the most lethal, dangerous missions in exchange for a faster track to citizenship.
After attending a parade in Molthune’s capitol, Canorate, and being granted the privilege of dining for one night at a high-end restaurant usually open only to citizens (this privilege being granted to them to honor their service and provide them with more motivation to fight towards citizenship), they are sent to the Nirmathi border for a new assignment. There, the Petitioners meet their commanding officer: Zeo Armadus, the Iron General of Molthune. He is a gearforged (ported over from Kobold Press’ Midgard setting) who lost his human body in a bloody battle against Nirmathas, and had his soul transplanted into a body of iron and clockwork before he could die. A ruthless, fanatical commander with a body of dark metal, crimson gemstones for eyes, and a shocking greatsword across his back, Armadus is a threatening figure. He gives the PCs a lecture on citizenship and the superiority of Molthune’s way of life, before assigning them their mission. It turns out that there is a band of Nirmathi rebels calling themselves the Green Ones who are raiding villages in both Nirmathas and Molthune, killing some and abducting others. According to some reports, they are a druidic cult based around a figure calling herself the Green Maiden. Armadus wishes to put an end to this, so he orders the PCs eliminate the Green Ones. They are based in Goldenfield, a village on the southern edge of the Fangwood Forest, and in the forest proper.
The PCs were to travel to Goldenfield, where the Green Ones were oppressing the villagers, and drive them out. It would be discovered that they worship a Neutral Evil fey goddess, the Green Mother (who the Green Maiden is a herald of), and that villagers are being taken into the forest as “tributes” and not returning. They would then enter the Fangwood forest, where they would be ambushed by Green One cultists, moss trolls, and evil fey. The Green Maiden herself appears during the ambush in all her splendor as an NE druid and Moss Lich (check the Advanced Bestiary for that template), but the PCs presumably lack the means to kill her, so they can only drive her off.
That night at camp, a Shadowman (CR 5 evil fey from the Colossal Creatures Bestiary) would attack the the players. After destroying it, a shadowy fey or fetching would approach them and congratulate them on passing their trial. He would go on to say that he represents the other Eldest fey gods, and that the Green Maiden is feeding villagers to a supernatural tree (with eyes and mouths) deep in the forest that uses their soul-energy to break down the boundaries between the material plane and the First World, realm of the fey. Once her dark plan comes to fruition, the First World will breach reality and Nirmathas would become the Green Mother’s domain. The reason her cultists support this is because A) they hate industry, cities, and civilization, B ) because it will enable them to invade and destroy their hated enemy of Molthune and C) permanent death doesn’t exist in the First World, so they would be granted eternal life. To this end, the messenger hands the PCs a magic skull that can be used to fire beams of negative energy (the means to stop a Moss Liches’ regeneration, which I feared the PCs wouldn’t have access to) and casting Desecrate, which would prevent the Green Maiden’s rejuvenation seed from regrowing.
Thus, it’s time for a final showdown between the Molthuni PCs and an eco-terrorist fey-worshipping death cult. The PCs travel to the Green Maiden’s sanctum deep in the Fangwood, along the way meeting a Nirmathi ranger hero who serves as her second-in-command. He’s become horrified and disillusioned with her, and the PCs get the chance to talk him down and skipping his encounter. Under the shadow of her nightmarish tree, the Green Maiden tells the PCs that her village was burned by the Molthuni army when she was a young human girl, and that she fled into the Fangwood before being taken by Fey and raised by the Green Mother in the First World. She declares that the power of primal nature will conquer the man-made cities and civilization of Molthune. The PCs may have one last chance to talk her down, but chances are that they end up fighting her. It was also possible that they could defect to her side, but I deemed this as unlikely…
Once the Green Maiden is done with, the PCs return to Goldenfield. There they find their commander, General Zeo Armadus, outside of town with a retinue of soldiers. He congratulates them on getting rid of the Green Ones and gives them one final order: slaughter the entire village of Goldenfield for their defiance and harboring of rebels. If the PCs comply with this command, they carry out their war crimes and are granted citizenship. If they refuse the General, they then have to fight him. They don’t commit the atrocity, but they are now fugitives who will be hunted by Molthune and never get their citizenship. Cue Starship Troopers theme as an outro while the PCs contemplate their final choice.
The theme of the game was going to be that the war was bringing out the worst in both countries. The Green Maiden and General Armadus were to serve as foils: one is a being of plants and moss, another one a being of gears and steel. Both of them had sacrificed their humanity for power, and were acting out of hatred and malice. Through the PCs actions, they could end up fighting both of them. The stage was set for a unique, awesome one-shot with interesting villains and an original theme…but while I wrote up the plot and the NPCs for my campaign, my players were making plans of their own…
HERE’S WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED:
The players arrived at my table around noon. I took out a notepad and asked them to tell me their names, alignments, races, and classes.
Azariah/CN “human” (later revealed as Kitsune) wizard.
Fellhide/CN human multi class monstrosity, one of which enabled him to wild shape into a crocodile.
Zing Xhao/CN skin walker (boar) alchemist.
Taran Wrex/CN human slayer
Krough/N Tengu sniper rogue
Malrium/“LG” “Human” “Paladin”.
This was a very strange assortment of characters. I had given people the guidelines of making characters willing to follow Molthune’s authoritarian hierarchy and have reasons for seeking citizenship; be it that they are mercenaries, criminals seeking pardon, patriots, opportunists, or anything within that broad category. So I was somewhat annoyed that they seemed to be chaotic neutral, but I figured that they could still have mercenary motivations or want the benefits of citizenship without having to be lawful. And Malrium, our paladin, seemed strange because I assumed that he’d be considered untrustworthy due to following his deity and code of conduct before the military’s orders. Lastly, most of my party described their backgrounds as being from Nirmathas, but I didn’t think of this much at the time. They were probably turncoats, who had joined Molthune because it had more to offer them and was the stronger country.
Hmm.
Moving on, we played out the scene where the PCs were in the restaurant. I told them to just talk, in character, in order to build character development. Azariah’s player then had everyone link hands to pray before their meal for fortune in the battles to come; a prayer which mentioned “the mother” and the hope they she would give them “the savagery to prevail in battle”
Savagery. That’s interesting. Well, it was probably just some edgy CN “mother” and Molthune probably doesn’t care about your religion so long as you get the job done.
Hmm…
I introduced two NPCs, a human soldier named Halden and Hobgoblin named Oktar, who requested permission to sit at their table. Halden wants to become a banker once he gets his citizenship, and Oktar wants to become a general and crush Nirmathas. The PCs talked to them before they excused themselves for the night.
Cut to the Nirmathi border. General Armadus gives his speech and their mission. The rather transparently Lawful Evil gearforged makes it clear that he views Nirmathis as vermin and the PCs as entirely expendable. He makes Krough do twenty push ups after the tengu calls him “shiny”. When Azariah shows the most authority and strategic planning out of the group, Armadus appoints him as squad leader and leans in threateningly, telling the Kitsune that he expects results.
Off to the mission! They come across a band of Green Ones looting the corpses of normal Nirmathi troops who turned down the Green Maiden’s offer. The party kills them easily (1 HD warriors aren’t much to a level 3 party) and infiltrate the village using their cloaks. They pose as Green Ones and try to ingratiate themselves into their ranks. They find out that the chieftain of the town is defiant towards the Green Ones and that the cult wants to dispose of him. But the PCs want to negotiate with the chieftain. The local Green Ones are suspicious, since the PCs just arrived and they aren’t sure that they’re truly loyal to the cult.
The fact that they attempt to infiltrate the cult isn’t so suspicious. But the PCs seem to do it very easily, and they come across as very cunning and “cultish”.
Hmm…
When their attempt at deceiving the Green Ones fails, the PCs simply slaughtered the entire occupation of Goldenfield, taking one of them alive. They interrogate him, ask what he knows about the cult (Not much. He’s a 1 HD shlub who was left behind with his buddies to control the town. I whipped up some 3 HD guys really fast who are the “real” cultists who reside in the forest, with the level 1s being the jayvee team). They ask him why he joined the Green Ones and why he serves the Green Maiden/Mother. It’s because he is a criminal from another town. He committed murder against a girl who turned down his marriage proposal. I improvised that, but it was meant to be something that would disgust any good or even neutrally aligned party into disposing of him right then and there.
But instead, they reassured him that what he did was a crime of passion and that in context, it could be seen as understandable. They offered to find him new opportunities and get him a new wife.
HMMMMMM….
Working with the chieftain, they asked him to organize a militia. The PCs would scout ahead into the forest. The chieftain asked them where they were from and why they were helping. They said that they were servants of the “true mother”. They also said that they were “all united against Molthune”, upon which I asked the PCs to role a Bluff check. But they replied that this wasn’t a lie.
HMMMMMMMMMMM……
Perhaps this was a party of Nirmathis, I thought, and their goal was always to betray Molthune. Perhaps they were a group of morally ambiguous anti-heroes who would turn against the bad guys and win the day for their homeland.
Soon, the truth would be revealed…
Scouting ahead into the forest, the PCs were soon ambushed by a moss troll, 4 3hd melee fighters, 2 3hd archers, and 1 satyr. They fought efficiently against these threats, when I had the Green Maiden reveal herself in all her Moss Lich glory: a darkly beautiful woman in a green dress with glowing green eyes and hair comprised of moss and branches. She began using her druid spells to inflict some damage against the party.
And that’s when the party dropped the facade.
The paladin’s player announced that his character’s hand was wreathed in black, eldritch fire that he used to heal himself, much to my puzzlement. He then showed me the holy symbol of Baphomet on his phone and told me that was the sign this “paladin” was holding up. Azariah displayed the holy symbol of Lamashtu.
Then the entire party announced to me that they were all demon worshippers, every last one of them.
Irredeemable demon worshippers.
And they had kept it secret from both the NPCs, and myself.
My eyes widened in astonishment.
I tried to keep the adventure on track. The Green Maiden said that this was an interesting development, and prepared to wild shape and fly back to her sanctum. But the PCs objected on account of me pulling that crap with fleeing villains before. Instead, they offered to ally with the Green Maiden.
And she accepted.
The party of demon worshippers returned to the village, assuring the mayor that the Green Maiden was dealt with and that the village needed to defend itself against the remaining Green Ones and Molthune. They told the militia to gather in the tavern and be prepared to defend themselves.
They they burned it down, with all of them inside.
The Green Maiden’s minions came out of the forest and abducted the rest of the village, dragging them into the forest to be sacrificed to their evil tree.
Their next task was to ambush and betray Armadus, with the Green Maiden’s help. Them fighting Armadus wasn’t unexpected (see my summary of the original script), but under these circumstances was unheard of. They met him and his retinue at the bridge (Halden and Oktar were there too, alongside the general)), while they buffed (with the excuse that they just finished a battle) while Krough remained hidden and sniping on the other end of the bridge and the Green Maiden concealed herself under the bridge using moss shape.
Malrium the Dhampir Antipaladin of Baphomet approached first, telling the general (correctly) that the cults of Baphomet, Lamashtu, and the Green Mother had joined forces. He asked what happened to Krough (who was hiding) and they reported, sullenly, that the poor tengu had died. Armadus coldly replied that he was “acceptable losses” and “could be replaced”. When he asked what happened to the Green Maiden, Azariah replied that she was “greater then death” (the trigger phrase to signal her attack).
The party swung into action, with Krough firing a tanglefoot bag and trip arrow at Armadus, entangling him and knocking him prone in one round. The enlarged Malrium began attacking him, while the Green Maiden attempted to use Call Lightning. Armadus, enraged, cursed the traitors and told them they would be massacred for daring to defy the Iron General of Molthune. Halden shrieked that the players had to audacity to betray them after having dinner together, and that he would kill them, become a citizen, and establish his bank with their heads on display there. Zeo Armadus managed to get up (provoking an AOO) and destroyed his entanglement with his shocking greatsword Nimbus. He survived another round and hit back at Malrium…critting on a 20 and confirming on a 15, killing the antipaladin instantly. The rest of the party kept fighting, wiped out his bodyguards, and Taran braved an AOO to sneak attack the general and reduce him to 0 hit points. Krough wrote something on an arrow and fired it, and as it embedded itself into his vulnerable gearworks the party could see the words “ACCEPTABLE LOSSES” written on the arrow.
The Iron General had been destroyed.
Now the villains stood victorious. Baphomet, in semi-corporeal form, manifested and put Malrium’s soul inside of Armadus’ body, overwriting his soul gem (the anti paladin had promised to fashion the gear forged into a new suit of full-plate and wear it, now he was essentially getting his wish).
Thus, Malrium used his new identity to infiltrate Molthune and secretly establish a Baphomet cult that would come to infest and dominate the entire country, the rest of the PCs became rulers of Molthune, The Green Maiden would transform Nirmathas into an outgrowth of the First World that she would rule over, and evil would reign.
I set out to create an adventure for my players that would be interesting, fun, and memorable. But they drew me into their web of secrecy, deceit, and outright lies. They turned a good adventure into a great one. And helped me create an experience that none of us will ever forget.
*****
Thanks for reading if you’ve gotten this far. Here are the statblocks of General Armadus and the Green Maiden.
GENERAL ZEO ARMADUS CR 5
Male gearforged fighter (Seasoned Commander) 5
LE Medium humanoid (gearforged)
Init +7 ; Senses Darkvision 60 ft; Perception +6
DEFENSE
AC 18, touch 12, flat-footed 17 (natural +1, armor +6, dex +1)
hp 49
Fort +7, Ref +2, Will +2
Immune disease, poison, 
magical sleep effects, enchantment effects, paralysis, fatigue, 
exhaustion�Weaknesses repairs required, water susceptibility
OFFENSE
Speed 20 ft.
Melee +1 shocking greatsword +11 (2d6 +10 plus 1d6 electricity/19-20/x2) or longsword +9 (1d8 +4/19-20/x2)
Special Attacks inspiring speech +1 1/day (3 rounds/day)
STATISTICS
Str 18, Dex 12, Con 16, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 14
Base Atk +5, CMB +9, CMD 20
Feats Weapon Focus (greatsword), Improved Initiative, Power Attack, Furious Focus, Outflank
Skills Intimidate +12, Sense Motive +7, Perception +6, Profession (soldier) +9
SQ adamant, rewind the gears, stable, tactician
Traits reactionary, suspicious
Languages common
THE GREEN MAIDEN CR 6
Female Moss Lich human druid 5
NE Medium plant (human)
Init + 7, Senses low-light vision; perception +
Aura wild growth (1 mile)
DEFENSE
AC 19, touch 18, flat-footed 11 (dex +1, natural +5, armor +3)
hp 53 ;verdant healing 5
Fort +9, Ref +2, Will +10
Defensive abilities rejuvenating seed, resist nature’s lure, DR 15/slashing and magic; immunities plant traits, poison
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft., verdant stride, woodland stride
Melee +1 flaming sickle +8 (1d6 +4 plus 1d6 fire/x2) or slam +6 (1d4 +3 plus entrap) or +1 flaming sickle +8 (1d6 +4 plus 1d6 fire/x2) and slam +1 (1d4 +3 plus entrap)
Special attacks entrap (DC 13, permanent, hardness 5, hit points 10), wild shape (1/day)
Domain Spell-Like Abilities (CL 5th, concentration +11)
9/day-fire bolt
Druid Spells Prepared (CL 5th, concentration +11; +15)
3rd-Call Lightning (DC 19), Fungal Infestation (DC 19)
2nd-Flaming Sphere (DC 18), Summon Swarm, Aggressive Thundercloud (DC 18), Stone Call
1st-Burning Disarm (DC 17) X2, Entangle (DC 16), Ray of Sickening (DC 17) X2
Domain fire
0 (at will)-light, flare, stabilize,
STATISTICS
Str 16, Dex 12, Con 16, Int 12, Wis 22, Cha 16
Base Atk +3, CMB +6, CMD 17
Feats Improved Initiative, Natural Spell, Combat Casting, Weapon Focus (sickle), Diehard, Great Fortitude, Endurance, Toughness
Skills Perception +22, Stealth +15, Survival +22, Intimidate +11, Sense Motive +7; +8 Perception, Stealth, Survival
Traits reactionary,
Languages Common, Sylvan
Gear
SQ moss magic, moss shape, spontaneous casting, trackless step, wild empathy