| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So a few weeks ago I found a group interested in running kingmaker on openrpg and we Merrily started exploring the Stolen Lands in hopes of carving out a piece of the river kingdoms to use as our own little fiefdom.
Our Party consists of the following:
A Magus who has some sort of bond with a crossbow
A Archer Paladin of Earstril
A Sword and Board Ranger
A Inquisitor of Earstril
A Sorceress with an unhealthy fixation for fire magic.
And me a Wizard/Cleric of Shelyn
So First session:
we get told we are authorized to enact Brevoy's manifest destiny in the Greenbelt, I'm thrilled with this because as my father's bastard I can't really rise up in my own society but if I kick ass in the Riverlands I will be able to fulfill my life's ambition to design and build a great city.
We head to our contact in the area's fort and after meeting with him get into an altercation with bandits. We kill two thirds of them and assign the remaining few to work off their crimes at Oleg's trading post after rewarding ourselves with everything they had of value, because as we all know the adventurers code clearly states: "You can kill people and take their stuff and its OK".
Once we did that and sold whatever at way too good of a return to Oleg (does he not understand he's the only shop in town and can set prices to whatever?) Oleg and his wife Svetlana get these golden exclamation points over their heads and start popping out quests, we collect a few quests that have me wondering if moon radishes aren't what cocaine comes from in Golarion and divvy up our murder loot.
In our party we divide all treasure up into equal parts +1, and leave the final share becomes the party fund. You see we feel that we are important people, and as important people we should have the clothes, cribs and unimportant hangers on that important people have so we set aside a fund specifically for the purpose of buying things like food, communal gear, pavilion tents, extra mounts, outfits and other silly things that either make us look important or handle the little things we basically don't need but helps us look like we are in charge. I call it the Saint's Row school of management.
Second Session:
OK, so we begin our exploration and promptly get attacked by trolls. Because we are primarily are a ranged party and because trolls suck at resisting grease spells we drive one off and kill another, its our first serious combat and we learn a few things that we did not know about our party. We learn that the Sorcerer is a bit of an idiot, she decided to try and bluff the trolls into thinking we are gods, we learned that enlarge person does not really work well for our builds but grease works like a freaking charm and we learned that we really need a healer as while nobody died everyone was reduced to nearly 0 hit points and we had no method of rapidly healing our wounds. The next day, we ran into a bunch of kobolds gorging themselves on heroin err moon radishes, we tried to negotiate with them but they attacked as soon as we started talking. A half dozen Kobold corpses later we filled our pouches with crack radishes and rushed back to the trading post.
Session 3:
Using the Party fund I commissioned a Pavilion with the colors and two headed dragon of Brevoy from Oleg's wife Svetlana, it will not be ready for 4 more weeks in game time, but its going to be pretty badassed when its completed. After dealing with turning in quests a kind priest asked us to look for a temple of Erastil in the forest, we agreed and promptly found it in the second place we looked and was attacked by a bear man who thanked us for killing it. We then found that the water in the temple pool was a potent healing potion with a very small shelf life.
Session 4:
The Paladin and the Sorcerer did not make it to the game and we found a bandit camp, this was the camp of one of the bandit camp's lieutenants (the evil chick with the two axes) and 12 of her meanest friends. We accidentally stumble into the edges of their camp because we don't have much in the way of stealth and immediately get shot at by archers. In the opening volley I am reduced to 0 hit points and think I'm going to sit this one out, but our Magus surrounds us in a mist and another player feeds me a potion and I get back into the fight.
What then proceeds is 11 rounds of the most nail biting, edge clinging exciting battle I have ever been a part of. I am tossing buffs and grease and just being as effective as possible every round, the ranger despite an obvious mutual animosity with the die roller is just kicking ass and the Magus is just shockingly good at filling the air with crossbow bolts and changing the terms of the engagement to our favor. The only sour point of the night is that the lieutenant managed to kill our Inquisitor.
Fortunately for us our GM decided to not penalize us for missing two players and allowed us to raise the inquisitor from the dead by tossing his hacked up corpse into the holy pool at the temple. Erastil be praised!
We leveled and I picked up my first level in Shelyn's faith but I will always have a soft spot for Erastil and his followers.
Session 5
We returned to the trading post after witnessing a genuine miracle in high spirits, we told the cleric where his temple was and of the holy act we had witnessed and collected some cash for killing bandits and I ordered a pavilion with my family's heraldry with my own growing funds. then we decided that the forest was too full of horrors and we should hit the plains for a while, we promptly ran into the hut of an old man who makes the healing potions Oleg sells, he gave us a quest and then we headed east. We found a giant trapdoor spider and I got to try my new cleric powers out. I blessed the party then went behind the party member who was next on initiative and buffed him with touch of luck. The spider bit him and poisoned him and I was able to treat the poison quickly and effectively. Our ranger explored the trapdoor spider's lair and found a corpse with a treasure map and a pendant that is a symbol for the local bandits.
We thanked the quest giver for letting us camp in his yard and then headed east, smack dab into the x of the treasure map. Weird.
The treasure contained some platinum, a ring, some stuff I do not care about and oh my gawd a spellbook!!!
4 spells I did not have before and one I did, in a water damaged spellbook. good on me.
Session 6
OK, we found a tree with a cave inhabited by mites and decided it was our business. Thinking the mites would be pushovers we went in and fought our way to a room with a nearly dead Kobold who offered us great treasure for a statue the mites stole from their tribe. Well, we found a chasm and our armored pally fell into it, then a freaking scary huge centipede appeared out of nowhere and attacked.
Well the combat did not go well, if we had spotted the centipede we could have opened up on it with arrows and killed it but instead it killed our paladin, who is an Asamir and a paladin of Erastil.
Here is where the story starts to stretch, when our Inquisitor died because two players where missing we had the chance to dip the Inquisitor in the pool of the ruined temple to bring him back, because it was ultimately not fair that he died when he likely would have survived if the other players who had legitimate reasons had made the game. So here we are with a freshly dead Palladin of Erastil, of course we have to toss her corpse into the pool, it worked once, it might again. But honestly having a resurrection point strains credibility at best and ruins the challenge at worst.
Ultimately we acknowledged that we have a huge karmic debt to Erastil and our pally was put back together, they then converted the parties one non religious character (two miracles will do that).
My solution to the Karmic Debt is to hire a construction crew and a team of soldiers to guard the construction crew to work on refurbishing the temple (and secure it) out of the parties collective pocket. By my math it comes to about 56 gp a week to have 10 craftsmen, 10 apprentices, 10 laborers and 10 soldiers on site working, and it works with the story we are weaving.
Session 7
After raising our dead comrade we decided we decided to give those freaking mites what for and rode in the most direct line towards them, on the way I spotted a cave that we poked our head in and struck gold.
Thats pretty awesome, and we might actually be able to pay back the Erastal for all the divine assistance.
We then headed back to the cave and got in a fight with more bugs and mites and won handily because we had killed their heavy hitter already and mites are not that smart.
Session 8
Last third of the Mite's cave, that location is dangerous!
we went in and got in a fight with a pack of mites and their giant tick pet, and where able to just barely kick their asses back to Narnia with the help of the local Kobolds. The fight went on for a while because we where down two players where not able to show.
this battle ended with us handing the local Kobolds their stolen idol and being invited back to their village for tea and crumpets. We have been offered a sizable amount of gold if we make peace with the Kobolds or kill them and here we have been offered a chance to feast with them in celebration for destroying their enemies home base and retrieving their idol. Perhaps we can even convince them to trade in crack radishes as well.
Session 9
So lets see, we went back to the Kobold's cave with the idol. We presented the Chief with the idol and he immediately smached it on the ground, claiming that the "curse" was lifted. Then he attacked his tribal shaman. We joined in the fray at the chief's behest and made short work of the shaman only to learn that he was in fact a gnome reincarnated as a Kobold. It was a tragic story punctuated by the fact that the Shaman had been goading the Kobolds to war with every surrounding power in an effort to kill them all. It was a tragic and horrifying story and I took his corpse so I could try and give his angry spirit a sense of closure.
We recovered a stolen wedding ring (a quest item) and negotiated a peace with the kobold tribe (a quest objective) and collected a small pile of magic items of varying value and coins.
Pretty good game.
We headed back to the trading post to turn in the ring and inform our patrons that the Kobolds promised to behave themselves. There we learned that if we kill or capture the Stag lord we will be richly rewarded.
The GM made a subtle declaration to me that going further south would result in death and anal rape, not necessarily in that order. So we explored west, first we found a grave then we found a hot springs and then we found a statue of the god Erastil.
Well, the grave we mostly ignored even after it was hinted that there might be treasure in it, grave robbing not being a habit that came easily to us good types. The hot springs immediately sprang into life as a TV trope as the Sorceress immediately stripped and jumped in the spring, the female paladin started to join her. It was amusing until the the giant frogs flanked the sorceress and tried to eat her, thats when it got hilarious.
We fought off the frogs and had our hot springs episode. The next day we located a second shrine to Erastil in the form of a dirty statue, we had previously had a vision of a hunting lodge behind the statue. So we decided to clean the statue and say a few prayers and that got us the effects of a keen edge spell for a week.
I took the opportunity at Oleg's to write my family to send a crew of miners and construction workers to us as well as some of my families men at arms. A group that knew me better would ask question about why the solder's are wearing my heraldry and not the group's.
Restoring the temple/running a mine/building a hunting lodge all play to my character's strengths. Some people may be bored by those little details but I freaking live for them. I am going to be able to make my mark on the greenbelt, first by restoring a temple and building a hunting lodge, later I will have the skilled labor necessary to accomplish my other goals.
First we have to finish exploring the map and kill some bandits.
Don't complain, Zelata finally took a bath. Too bad it was in water that stinks as much as she does :P
The frogs were probably just trying to help her get clean. By licking her.
Just the mental image of a shell shocked Zelata standing in the hot spring covered in frog gore keeps me laughing.
Finally back to the game after weeks and half the players don't show up.
It was the ranger, the pally, the inquisitor and me exploring hexes and it was pretty eventful. First we found a collapsed river structure that housed two Tatzlewyrms (basically snake like proto-dragons) who attacked us on sight. We killed them and collected their heads for a quest and skinned them for their armor quality hides. Then we found the ruins of two buildings inhabited by two frog like humanoids that told us to leave, they looked desperate and so we fed them before moving on. Then we found the lair of the legendary boar Tusk Gutter and managed to slay him without difficulty, completing another quest.
All told it was a lot of activity collected into three hexes, we collected some nice treasure and completed two quests. I also leveled.
I've started a blog to keep track of the Kingmaker game, I find the word cloud makes navigating all of the intricate details that build up over a game.