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Has anyone fleshed out any encounters or events for Magnimar? I played up the city as massive, colorful, and wondrous and I would not want to disappoint the country PCs with the typical, bland city encounters. I have already decided to yoink the improved Faceless Stalker encounter by Jodah.
However, I want to know what you guys have done with this city to make it your own.
I've slapped together some quick and dirty encounters with a sort of thieves guild run by the Princess of the markets, the unofficial civic leader of the lower city (the mostly lower class Varisian population).
Part of the party's situation at that moment played into my hands quite nicely. They first arrived in Magnimar during the second adventure, and had a dead PC along with them, hoping to hire a raise dead for him. They went to the temple of Desna in the lower city, where a young altar boy saw a couple of the PCs, including the dead one, wearing captured Sihedron medallions. Add to that the idea that the Sihedron murders were going on in Magnimar, too, it made sense that the Princess of the Markets would send someone to investigate.
And, since I have a blast-first-ask-questions-later party, they killed the team of rogues and thugs sent to find out what was going on at the temple.
For the encounter I used a variety of "dagger guild" characters from the DMTOOLS web site: http://www.dmtools.org/
Now that they've returned to the city after the third adventure, they're going to have another run-in with the princess, with whom things have also progressed a bit.
Here's the plan I have: The party killed "angel" at the end of the second adventure, and have been celebrated in Magnimar for their good work defeating the giants and ogres that had taken Fort Rannick, which they now have been given. The Princess, who doesn't forget a slight, sees lots of opportunity there. She plans to ask the PCs to come see her -- when they come to see her she'll be waiting for them in the freezer room below a large inn, where the bodies of the thugs they killed are laid out.
She's going to ask for blood money to compensate her for the loss of her lieutenants, knowing that the PCs are not likely to want to pay it. When they balk at the price, she'll offer some alternatives -- including the right to place some of her people in the staff of Fort Rannick (including a Chamberlin who will run the day-to-day business of the keep), and giving her free passage to operate her smuggling business through that corridor without interference from the party.
She also has a "door number three", something she's been working on ever since the party's first stop in Magnimar. Her agents were the first to arrive on the scene after the fight in the clock tower, and they discovered the dead bodies of the cultists (boring) and the golem and the corpse of Xanesha, the lamia matriarch behind the local cult in Skinsaw Murders. The Princess of the Market (POM) has put her necromancers to work to raise Xanesha as a dread zombie (pulled the template from the Advanced bestiary), and has the zombie trapped in a side chamber -- if a fight breaks out, the party gets to see what's behind door number three. ;)
My plan is for the Princess to be speaking through a decoy in that meeting -- she's in the room posing as one of the lounging thugs in the room, but the mouthpiece that actually speaks to the party is a decoy in disguise. If things go south the POM makes a break for it, releasing the Dread Zombie Xanesha on the way out.
Again, I've fill the room with a variety of prepared Dagger Guild NPCs from the DMTools web site. The only custom work I did myself was apply the Dread Zombie template to Xanesha.
It's just a minor subplot in the campaign that I'm planning another bit of development for before the party returns to Sandpoint for the first part of the Stone Giants adventure, but when I set this thuggish plot against the pomp and circumstance the PCs enjoy in the upper city as the heroes of the wealthy and powerful Chelaxian population, it should help flesh out the city a bit -- and make clear on of the interesting details of the city, the divide between upper and lower.
-rg
Wow thanks! This was exactly what I was looking for.
I have several 'events' lined up for my PCs
Event 1) PCs are going to witness a crime which they can stop. They can then agree to testify against the criminal in court wherein they get to meet Judge Ironbriar. Ironbriar thanks them profusely and invites them to dinner at his mansion. He talks a bit about the city and then apologizes for not being able to reward the PCs with money, but instead he gives them all tickets to see an opera at the Triodea.
Between the two events, the PCs will meet a rival adventuring group who took credit for a bounty that the PC's killed on the road to Magnimar. The rival group is led by Viorian (the Champion of Greed from PF#6) who is just discovering the powers of Karzoug's golden scimitar. (She's the same level as the PCs when they first meet).
Event 2) Phantom of the Opera ripoff: The opera is haunted by a deformed vampire bard who has been smitten by the innocence, talent and beauty of a young soprano who has just recently been "discovered" by the owners and is now beginning a meteoric rise in the music world. The vampire kidnaps the girl after the show and her fiance, a paladin of Iomedae, asks the party to help rescue her. They go into the bowels of the opera house, fight undead, hideous fish creatures, and deal with deadly traps before putting an end to the vampire (who forcibly wanted to "marry" the girl by transforming her into his vampire thrall)
Event 3) Soon after, they have a dream where a dead former party member approaches them and gives them a riddle, which when solved, outlines a strategy that they can employ to kill Xanesha.
I might have to put your encounter in there somewhere :)
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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They first arrived in Magnimar during the second adventure, and had a dead PC along with them, hoping to hire a raise dead for him. They went to the temple of Desna in the lower city, where a young altar boy saw a couple of the PCs, including the dead one, wearing captured Sihedron medallions.
Almost exactly what my players, the Oh! Cursed, are like at this point. They still have to defeat Aldern. But one of them was killed by a Haunt and needs a resurrection. I think I'll make it impossible for that to happen in Sandpoint, although Raise Dead can be had.
Then when they reach Magnimar... with the murderers and them wearing runes like those marking the corpses we add in a bounty upon their little heads. Now I just need three 9-10th level NPCs.
Wow thanks! This was exactly what I was looking for.
I have several 'events' lined up for my PCs
[awesome descriptions]
I am so ripping these off. Thanks!
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My group finished Skinsaw Murders a few weeks ago.
I ended up fleshing out the Magnimar stuff with the following homebrew content...
1) On the way to Magnimar, the party was waylaid by a group of bandits.
After defeating the bandits, the party captured several alive, and handed them over to the authorities in Magnimar. The next day, the party was called to the Pediment Building in Magnimar to testify against the bandits in a preliminary hearing before Justice Ironbriar.
2) After the next scripted event in Magnimar...
...I had a long roleplaying encounter. First, over breakfast at the inn the party was staying at, the morning newspaper's headline was the latest of the "Demon-Star Murders." This time, it was one of the Councilmen! The article gave a brief overview of some of the other victims and when they had occurred: publicly, there have been seven other murders whose victims had a star carved into them.
After they had been puzzling over the newspaper for a while, an official messenger came in, and told the party that Justice Ironbriar wanted to see them that afternoon, to discuss the case against the Bilger Gang. When the party met him, Ironbriar quickly started asking them about why they were in town, and referred to several of their deeds in Sandpoint, and asked several knowing questions about what they had been doing in Magnimar.
He then gave them a red herring: he said that he suspected that the "Demon-Star Murders" were being carried out by members of a cult of demon-worshipers connected to the notorious Sczarni gang, The Gallowed. He then asked the party to try to infiltrate and spy on the Gallowed for him.
This of course, mostly makes the party suspicious of Ironbriar.
The rest of the game was pretty much straight.
3) After the defeat of the final villain of the module...
...the party had a short dungeon crawl inside the Irespan! More clues about the nature of ancient Thassilon and the enmity between the Runelords Alaznist and Karzoug were unearthed.
4) After a three-week downtime (both in-game an in real-life), I'm going to run a non-arc side quest: a modified version of the Pathfinder Society Scenario King Xeros of Old Azlant, set in Magnimar's harbor instead of Absalom's.
So far, I'm doing a pretty good job of running RotRL on the Medium advancement progression by adding homebrew and modified published material.
Looking ahead: I'm planning to add Carnival of Tears to the events of Hook Mountain Massacre, setting it near Turtleback Ferry instead of Darkmoon Vale. I plan to connect the dark fey of Carnival with...
I've been trying to figure out how best to incorporate Feast of Ravenmoor as well, but now that my party is level 6+, I think it would be too hard to beef it up to make it worthwhile.
Anyone else adding a lot of extra content to Runelords?
I added in the Boggards of Brinestump marsh and my own personal writeup on Chopper's Isle.
http://www.dorkistan.com/dorkistan/PFRPG/creatures/chopper.htm
Have you checked the Community Created Content thread? Alot of good material in there.
Edit: I had Ironbriar pay the pc's to investigate a "murder scene" where he had unleashed a dire tiger from the zoo. After locking them in with it he had a body at the scene and told some townguards that there were some evil adventurer's breaking into houses and wanted for murder.
Guards show up, pc's think they are in someone's pocket fight breaks out and they are now guilty of killing a bunch of townguards over a miscommunication. It was ugly.
I added in the Boggards of Brinestump marsh and my own personal writeup on Chopper's Isle.
I also ran your Chopper's Isle adventure as part of Burnt Offerings. It was a lot of fun! Thanks so much for writing it and sharing it with the community!
A added a sub-plot to your adventure involving Madame Mvashti and my PC's desire to have somebody craft them a wand of cure light wounds. They never followed up on the Sandpoint Devil plot hook you put put in Chopper's Isle.
I had Madam Niska be a dragon turtle in my game, I put a sea cave underneath her house that connected to the beach cave from the Catacombs. My players always wondered why she was wet and smelled like seawater. The basics of it were there was a flavorful encounter with a shoanti rebel hidding out in the town, and some hellknights demanded entry into her home, but some old treaty with the local shoanti kept her home as sacred land.
Basically centuries ago she had been the protector of the local tribe and as she got older they venerated her and forgot about her draconic heritage. I killed her off when the giants attacked with the red dragon.
I also gave her a small horde in her cave, one of the shoanti in the party "cave dived" and found out about her little secret, but they kept it to themselves and he looked up to her after that.
I kept her human, but upped her character level, so that she was the highest-level NPC in Sandpoint.
My write-up for how I ran your "Chopper's Isle" scenario can be found on my campaign log at Obsidian Portal.
To sum that up: the party went to Mme. Mvashti to commission her to build them a wand of cure light wounds. She told them that they were destined for great things, but that they had to prove themselves worthy in small ways, too, and said that they should talk to the blacksmith, who needs their help but is too bitter to ask for it.
That set into motion the events of "Chopper's Isle," which I ran pretty much straight. Two days afterward, a messenger delivered a fully-charged wand of cure light wounds to the party cleric.
"Chopper's Isle" was the first time my players encountered a haunt, and the first time I'd run one. It was very creepy, and nicely set the stage for "Skinsaw Murders."