After 34 sessions/295 days/42 weeks/9 months we finally finished Carrion Crown. In an epic combat that laste for 19 rounds, my PCs defeated Adivion Adrissant, along with four Daughters of Urgathoa (leveled up to 9th lvl clerics) and two Giant Bone Golems. There were two deahts on their end, although averted with one Breath of Life and one Wish spell (from a Ring of Three Wishes).
Party consisted of:
Istvan Szabo
Jan Jozef Morr
Oneiros
Reneis Kindler
vs.
And it looked like this:
My favorite part of that album is the thousand-yard stare on one of your players. It speaks to the extreme pain brought on by Adivion. Also: congratulations on completing an AP! It takes a lot of dedication and lucky breaks.
Truly it was an epic battle with lots of thousand-yard stares. :D
Also: congratulations on completing an AP! It takes a lot of dedication and lucky breaks.
Thanks, it really was getting really hard to prepare sessions nearing the end. I've been running APs almost without pause since 2008. First Savage Tide, then Legacy of Fire and now Carrion Crown. Finished all of them, and now I'm looking forward to a break... At least for this year. :)
Yes, tell us your favourite parts. I'm assuming you're the DM - which parts did you edit?
Well, let's start at the beginning. My players really surprised me when they wrote fantastic background stories/biographies for their characters, and then also an epilogue short stories. I was really glad, because that meant that they cared enough for their characters to go that extra mile. Some of them are a bit long, but if you have the time, read them! They were a nice read for me. Bear in mind that english isn't our native language (we're from Serbia), so any errors in spelling or grammar is atributed to that.
Jan Jozef Morr, Half-Elf Ranger (Skirmisher) with a boar animal companion:
A note of shock and outrage colored Lorrimors voice as he started, desperately, to explain the error of the priests close minded ways. Jan smiled at Lorrimors infinite patience. In their travels he didn’t miss one chance to eradicate any prejudice, to stem the flow of ignorance and to set things straight. Jan realized with a sudden jolt that he liked the old scholar. When he proposed a few months ago, to tag along with Jan in his hunt and observe his undead killing techniques Jan wondered if it was a smart decision to save the old man from the zombies, but in those few months of playing cat and mouse with the nameless necromancer and his host of ghouls and zombies a friendship was born. And the pay wasn’t bad either, Jan almost snickered.
A sudden breeze entered the cabin rousing Jan from his thoughts, carrying a faint odour of carrion death. The horses whinnied and the coach scrambled to a halt. He could hear the coachmen swear, and then shout in alarm. As if on queue, a skeletal arm, it’s skin gray and rotting stretched tight over the bones, shot trough the curtains and started flailing blindly and menacingly toward the old priests face. With one fluid movement Jan drew his knife from its scabbard, severing the arm at its wrist, inches from the old wizened face of the priest. With another savage thrust of his legs to the cabin door he sent the undead abomination flying back into the cold night. Trough the now open door of the coach it’s passangers could see men and women, their bodies moving jerkily and broken, as if they were hideous puppets dancing to some inaudible tune of their dread puppeteer, a gleam of undeath in their dried up eye sockets. It appeared that their quarry was getting scared, sending it’s undead minions to stop them. Next time it should send more. With a savage grin and a practiced flourish Jan drew his other knife and jumped down from the coach. “Take note professor, this is how you kill something that is already dead”
Oneiros, Dwarf Inquisitor of Groetus (Sin Eater):
I woke up to a world of Grey. Last thing I remember is falling asleep in a bed I've shared with with Iodi for so many years. There a could have been a millenia between then and now for all I knew. That bed was like a dream, one lasting for over 150 years. Iodi felt a figment of the imagination, nothing more, as did the house and our two sons. Did we have a daughter as well? It was all slipping away fast. First, there names became unknown, then their faces, and just as the memory of my mother's proud smile when i showed her the first axe i ever made with my on two hands (no older than 30 was I), made way out of my head, I fell to the ground.
When I summoned the strength to lift my head from the dull gray rock, I decided that the best course of action would be to find out who I was and what this place is. That presented a bigger challenge than expected, for it seemed like there was not a soul to be seen for miles around. "Where are the buildings?" a voice inside me asked, and I wondered what "buildings" were for a moment. "No trees or grass either, maybe it's underground," continued a deep voice that might have been mine but I couldn't tell. I didn't know what it wanted me to do, so I tried looking up.
Immediately, the sight sent me tumbling down, and this time I landed on my back. It was a stream, river, flow, swarm (the words started shouting their names) of glowing... creatures! The description didn't feel right, but no other phrase presented itself. The stream was coming from a very far away and ended on a sharp point of an impossibly long stick... spire. Except for the spire and the river, the sky was was colored many shades of dark gray and looked solid. The image left me flabbergasted. There must have been millions of creatures just floating, some of them screaming, others locked in combat. It kept me occupied for some time, when I realized it is all slowly rotating around me. It was nice to be able to name things.
I started to roam around this place, but found only some gray rock and some slightly darker gray rock. I could not reach the swarm as they were flying by this planet in a distance. I must have walked for hours but i felt no weariness or hunger. For days I stood looking at the captivating image, and it became apparent that this whole planet was coming closer to the spire, inch by inch.The sense that something bad was gonna happen should the two collide overcame me, and the voice that taught me names of things returned and started filling my head with words of loss, death and end times. I measured the passage of time by the growth of my beard and my guess is that this place was my home fr 15 years, give or take. After a while I enjoyed the sense of emptiness in this world, as I did the one in my head. The thought of leaving never crossed my mind, where would I go if I could? This place was the only home I ever knew. So, I waited patiently for The End Times, alone with a gray lump of rocks.
I'm certain that this is where I would meet it her if it weren't for a mysterious stranger that appeared one day out of nowhere, flying at great speed by my planet. When he noticed me, he stopped in his tracks and made a grimace I'm fairly certain is a mix of shocked disbelief and absolute horror. "Oneiros be damned, why did you drag this poor dwarf here? How log have you been here, on Groetus?" An outside sound pierced my ears as the inner parts started moving after such a long time. I tried to speak but produced only a short rasp, 15 years in silence will do that to you. The man seemed to realize this and continued his forced monologue: "This is no place for a living mortal to reside on. You don't even comprehend where you are. It's for the better. Let me right old Dream's mistake and send you back to your home. You should be as good as new as soon as you wake up." He chanted a few words, and then added: "There, off you go now. My name is Professor Lorrimor by the way. I shall see you back in our world, I hope" At that moment i squeezed out a comprehensible sound: "Oneiros?" and I was hurled off my home with immense speed. As I was flying away I could see that my planet had a face with a gaze fixed on the spire below.
As the years passed, Vauntil developed into a city of artisans with a trading port, and the Bellag-Gilsten smithing business was smack in the middle of it. Northal proved to be a great blacksmith, surpassing his father in the art of smacking hot iron with a hammer, and Iodi's father had a knack for economy. When they reached maturity, the children were wed with Torag's and Folgrit's blessing and, in the next decades, the family gained three more members, two sons and a daughter. Even the roaming undead proved no more than a pest that needed to be controlled, and dwarven hands are adept at wielding hammers, be it for creative or destructive purposes. Life was good in Ustalav.
And then Northal went insane. There really is no other way of putting it, one night he put his children to bed and lay with his wife and, the next morning, he was insane. He seemed not to recognize any of his family members, kept repeating the same two words over and over again "Oneiros" and "Groetus" and drew gray circles with a skeletal face in them. His family was, once again, devastated. They took him to sages and clerics, and none of them seemed to know what happened to him. In weeks that followed, he started to talk, but little of it made any sense. He spoke of the End Times, whatever those were, of a figure which sent him here and of the hollow emptiness of everyday existence. One day, he simply disappeared and was never heard of since. The town guard said that they saw a ragged, barefoot dwarf leaving the city and heading for Caliphas.
There, he roamed around the city, trying to explain to people that the problems they face and their own selfish choices in life don't matter in the Big Picture. Too busy and too illusioned by their own sense of purpose and grandeur, people deemed him the crazy one. He was arrested several times for disorderly conduct. There, he was filed as a hobo and, when asked for a name, kept repeating Oneiros, so it was written as such. One night the guards found him saving a local man from two notorious cutpurses. The report said that he picked up a part of the mechanism from an old belltower and bashed them with it until they stopped moving. This seemed to have returned some small part of sanity to Oneiros as he managed to make up even rational sentences after these events. This was not the only incident in which he was involved: he stole food from expensive restaurants, destroyed skeletons roaming through the city after being unburied during the digging of the foundations for the new town villa, killed dogs and cattle on the outskirts of the city, all the while clutching the old bell clapper on a chain his hands. For ten years this went on, and after such a long period of time, he became almost a productive member of society. Mind you, he still slept in the caves under the city, walked barefoot and talked about the purposelessness of one's actions, but normal conversation was also possible. One day, a tired courier found Oneiros and gave him a letter. After reading it he, immediately, his improvised flail in hand, left the city and went northwest. A friend was being buried in 5 days and he had to pay his respects.
None of them ever saw Oneiros again.
At the Professor's grave, the three remaining Haunted found Ravenbeak embedded deep into the gravestone but were unable to pry it out. In the coming weeks there were more than a few occurrences of dreams about a gruff-looking dwarf standing alone on a moon with a face by Ravengro's residents. Although the villagers' recountings differed greatly in details, all of them were certain that that he was keeping an eye on the old wizard's grave and, consequently, declared it and the weapon itself cursed. Some of the most powerful people of Ustalav have tried and failed to dislodge and wield the famous flail, and the rumors soon began to spread that the powerful artifact is waiting for its master's return to the mortal world.
Istvan Szabo, Dhampir Tattooed Sorcerer (Undead Bloodline):
Karolina was born into wealth and nobility, the daughter of the then ruling count of Vieland no less, and even from an early age the role fit her like a glove, a worker’s or smith’s glove, rough and overused. She was a spoiled, selfish dilettante who abused her influence to get what she wanted and what she wanted often went hand in hand with someone's suffering.
She would tease her "friends" with cruel jokes, torture her servants with verbal and physical abuse and torment her suitors who, partly because of her title but mostly because of her reputation, often came of as timid and appeasing.
That all changed when He came.
He rode into town in a deliciously expensive looking chariot, made his way to the count's castle (nobody really knew how he had gotten in), brazenly interrupted the noble's dining, much to the wrath of his daughter, and proclaimed himself the son of a wealthy merchant duke who was looking to relocate his estate and assets. He claimed his father had his eyes on several counties, one of them being Vieland, and could be persuaded to bring his wealth here with enough "hospitality".
As if magic and ghastly charms were necessary, he had the count hooked then and there. The same was true for Karolina. She had never met a man who could deflect her temper so effortlessly and who had later been proven unfazed by her cruelty and her tantrums.
Those, of course, were all lies. That man was no man at all. He was a monster Ustalavian children are taught to fear the most, the bloodsucking dead man that will get you if don't do your chores or if you don't pray to the Lady of Graves enough, he was a vampire.
It didn't take much convincing for the aging Count to effectively hand over his county and his daughter to the man who so thoroughly had him wrapped around his finger and with his unearthly charm he had not only seduced my mother but planted in her the seed of an obsession that would haunt me for a century hence.
I can only speculate as to what were his ultimate goals in Vieland, for, as is usually the case in Ustalav, it was the paranoid peasantry that first got a whiff of something being wrong. Questions were asked about the count's new friend and his unusual comings and goings. Before long the farm tool wielding mobs were riled up and ready to take on the Devil/Monster/Beast that had enthralled their rightful count.
When news of the unrest reached Karolina, confirming suspicions she herself harbored for some time, she hurried to her would be husband's quarters. She begged him to turn her into a vampire too so that she would never leave his side and be his bride for all eternity.
To this day I wonder if what He did next had some yet to be seen purpose, was it just the cruelest of jokes played on my mother or did he do it as an afterthought, to make his departure easier without having to deal with a hysterical teenage noblewoman.
He denied her request, gently but firmly so as to draw no complaints. He then kissed Karolina, embraced her and for the last time made, love to her.
This time was different though. This time he gave unto her his undead seed, and that. That was the the beginning of my long tragic life.
After recovering from her lovemaking stupor and realizing the He was truly gone the enraged and bitter Karolina stormed to the count's bedchamber to confront her father. She blamed her father for Him leaving and accused him of being too soft and lax, allowing the peasants to run amok and chase away her precious love.
Her insults turned to slaps, the slaps turned to blows and by the end of it Karolina was standing over the limp body of the now late count, holding an ornate candelabra soiled in blood and muttering to herself over and over again "Why did you have to make him leave?".
The following year, having blamed the death of the count on the "monster" that had ensorceled him and playing the part of the grieving daughter enough to satisfy the local barons, Karolina cemented her rule with a series of heavy handed decrees and then sequestered herself to her castle to rule from behind bared doors and nurse her growing belly.
By the time I was born the countess Szabo was so thoroughly feared that none dared question her commands and thus an abomination like me, doomed to be skewered on a pike by the superstitious natives of Ustalav in any other circumstance, was allowed to live. And it was a good life for a decade or so.
I wanted for nothing and had pretty much free reign over the castle, I would roam the halls exploring all the nooks and crannies and pull genuinely goodhearted pranks on the servants, only to be met with that look of fear and utter disgust that I so often elicited from the castle serfs. My jests would then take on a more malicious hue. These actions would go on without rebuke of course, for if the servants feared anything more than me than it was the countess's punishment should they displease me.
Despite being the sadist that she was, Karolina was oh so gentle with me. She would smother me in her embrace and shower me with kisses, constantly whispering in my ear what a good boy I was and what a good man i have yet to become. When I was bored she would get me expensive toys and presents. When I was hungry she would feed me herself, the blood and milk of her breast tasting deliciously sweet on my tongue. And when I would get agitated, turn violent or pull one of those legendary Szabo tantrums, she would procure a criminal from the dungeons to do with as I please. As the years wore on I was on good way to becoming the spiting image of my mother, cruel, selfish and arrogant, but fate had something different in store for me.
When I turned fifteen, my mother, having already grown somewhat distant the past few years, simply snapped. Gone were the gifts and the affection, only to be replaced with bitterness and hateful looks. She started avoiding me, seeing me only when I would feed on her and even then she would close her eyes and mutter His name while gallivanting in the ephemeral fields of her own imagination, and it didn't take long for her sadistic streak to rear it's ugly head and cast it's eyes on me. At first I was confused, not understanding what had happened to the mother that had pampered and spoiled me so, but in time I would come to understand the terrible truth of it.
The countess Szabo was not raising me to be her son and heir, she was raising me to be her lover! You see, after He abandoned Karolina and left her with child she figured there was still a way to salvage the twisted fairy tale she had conjured up in her mind. If she couldn't have Him then she would have to make due with me. She vowed she would mould me into a man even better than my father. When the time came she planed to make me "turn" her and take her to bed to live out the rest of eternity in the throes of a passion the likes of which she had felt only with Him. But life rarely goes as planed.
After a decade and a half Karolina had expected me to already be a strapping young lad ready to have his first "taste" of woman flesh. To her dismay the truth was far from so accommodating. Having never been a big admirer of esoteric wisdom, or academics in general for that matter, Karolina never knew the true nature of my being and thus had no way of knowing that I was in fact not a vampire as she had thought and in turn taught me, for vampires are not born. She didn’t realize that instead of getting the immortal husband she coveted, she would get the half living toddler that, even after fifteen years, I still was. I would only later learn that tragic creatures like me, while not being eternal, are extremely long lived and age at a pace much slower than their human counterparts. This did not at all sit well with my mother.
Her dreams shattered, having realized that by the time I came of mounting age she would already be a shriveled old crone, if not dead, Karolina's already cracked mind finally broke. She had no more use for me and thus I was reduced to a status until now reserved only for the countess's servants, a scrambling wretch trying to avoid my mothers bad moods.
She would flog me if I ever dared speak out of turn, and if I made the mistake of calling her "mother", she would throw me in the dungeons for a couple of nights.
As the years wore on, things were only getting worse. I found my already slightly silvered tongue being forged into a shield that had probably been the only thing to keep me alive for those dark years but also for the decades to come. Whereas once I had used it to blackmail servants into playing with me lest I tell the countess of the "horrible things" they had done to me, or to talk my mother into getting me more exotic gifts or "playing (in)mates", now I would have to use it to tiptoe around Karolina, doing my best to deflect or misdirect her rages, or to placate the servants who could now harass me without fear of rebuke.
At about that time I came to realize two things. The first one was that if this continued I would most likely not live to see my third decade. The second one was that I had power in me. A power I could not yet comprehend. A power I mistakenly believed to be my vampiric birthright. A power as yet untapped, but one which I suspected would, with some practice, enable me to accomplish much more than the strength draining touch I had developed so far.
And so I made my decision. I would kill my mother before she could do the same to me.
In those last months I was the picture of obfuscation. I kept to myself, had managed in avoiding most of the castle help and would see my mother only on feeding time, something she could still not let go of, for even with her new found hate for me she still couldn't relinquish that feeling of having your lifeblood drained, a feeling she unequivocally tied to Him.
And that, that was the weakness I chose to exploit.
Every day for the next couple of months I would drain a little of her strength every time she would let me feed on her, and while my magic (cannot be tamed!) was temporary, with a few well placed words it was enough to make her think that she had taken ill and needed to be bedridden. The stage was set.
Having convinced everyone that the countess was very sick and needed to be left to rest, it wasn't hard to sneak in her chambers one night and smother her in her sleep.
I don't know what I expected from that night, perhaps a dramatic sense of catharsis, maybe a moment of reluctance as my eyes teared up and I remembered the kind mother she appeared to be before, or even a violently pleasant feeling of joy at killing my tormentor. I got none of those things. What I got was the sight of a frail woman dieing with a whimper, petty and insignificant, and me, emotionless, almost lifeless, staring at her with blank, empty eyes.
While I had planed my matricide well enough I didn't quite think it through. There was no doubt in my mind that people would think the countess had succumbed to her illness, but what I hadn't considered was that without my mother's "protection" I was likely to find myself being cheerfully burned alive at the stake by the ever so friendly people of Ustalav. So I decided to flee.
I fled to the Ustalavian countryside and was reduced to lurking in dark corners of long abandoned castles, groveling in the filth of ages past and desperately clinging to the life I had worked so hard to save.
It was years after that I came to know the truth, or better yet, the lie about my true nature. After spending countless days cowering in caves or abandoned cellars and countless nights roaming the counties looking for animals to drain or lonely travelers to feast on, I made my first mistake.
One morning I had dallied to long on a particularly tasty wine merchant and could not make it to my shelter before dawn. When the suns rays hit me, the first rays I had seen in more than twenty years, and when the searing pain began in my eyes I thought that that was the end of my unimpressive life... A few minutes later I found myself on the ground, screaming in agony and violently thrashing around the forest floor, only to realize that beside my sore eyes I wasn't in any real pain and I certainly wasn't the pile of ashes I was taught a vampire would become should he hazard the sun's light. Feeling quite silly I picked myself up, found my bearings and proceeded to my shelter, all the while musing as to what in the nine hells just happened.
My preconceptions destroyed I started experimenting and testing my limits. I found that while the light bothered me and even blinded me briefly if too bright, it would not burn me. I found that while I hungered for blood and enjoyed it's taste I did not explicitly need it for sustenance, I could readily sustain myself with normal food instead. It was these realizations, as well as a thirst to know more, that made me throw caution to the wind and decide to try a taste of civilized life, something I had almost forgotten.
I spent the better part of the next century moving from village to village, county to county talking my way into getting room and board (or into bed in the cases of ever so malleable village girls), all the while accumulating what knowledge I could about beings such as I. This was not easy work, mind you. The superstitious peasants of the Immortal Principality rarely dealt in hard facts and would much rather tell you a good old wives tale, but academic failings aside it was their deep seated paranoia that posed the greatest threat to me. It wouldn't be long after I would grace a community with my presence, amicable and sweet talking as I was, that the hardcore nutjobs (and every village had one) would start their litany of fear and hate. "Who is that man who out of the blue came to our village asking strange questions about deadspawned abominations, getting inappropriately chummy with our daughters, and looking as pale as a banshee's cunt?!?".
And so I would move on to the next village, and then the next, and so on and so forth. I had tried living in larger cities a few times but found that while they offered libraries which were much more adequate for my investigative needs, and while it was easier to blend-in in such a densely populated area, the consequences, should I be discovered, would be much more dire, and escape, much more difficult.
Decades passed, I saw the rise and fall of countless counts and barons, I saw public upheaval but also the slow, nigh imperceptible march of progress, I witnessed the founding of The Palatinates but still the truth I sought was almost maliciously elusive. That would change the day I met professor Lorrimore.
The good professor was holding a relatively low-key lecture for the farmers of a rural part of Canterwall. A lecture on the dangers of paranatural farm pests and how to deal with them. It was when he was talking about zombie gophers, and musing on the nature of death and undeath that he caught my attention. I saw in him a potential well of knowledge, and soon after he left I had tracked him down and started a written correspondence. He gave me everything I could hope for.
After more than a century of not knowing who or what I was, I finally had my answers. He told me that I was a dhampir, the not completely natural offspring of a vampire and a mortal. He taught me that I too was mortal but still retained some of the characteristics and abilities of my fathers kind. He also taught me that with some work I could tap into the these abilities and use the power of my bloodline in order to do fantastic things. But most importantly, he taught me that I had worth. Reading his letters, it was the first time in decades I had not felt like a monster to be feared and avoided. For the first time in decades I had felt that I could yet do something with my life, that I still had a future.
It was professor Lorrimore that saved me. It was professor Lorrimar that made me cast off the chains of my own melancholy and self pity and, my unfortunate nature notwithstanding, made me strive to live a life that is more than just survival spent in fear and loathing. For that I shall be forever in his debt.
Post about the campaign could be a long one and I don't have the time right now, so here's something to read, while I do that.
Here's a short summary of the campaign on reddit, written by one of the players.
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As for the AP itself, here are my changes and opinions on chapters:
Haunting of Harrowstone
Both me and my players enjoyed it very much. Maybe it's because first chapters are an entry to lots of new stuff or this was just an exceptionally written chapter. They took their time with investigations and making contact with Ravengro townsfolk. I didn't change anything of importance in this chapter, because we started not long after Carrion Crown was published, so much of the ideas that now exist in Adivion Adrissant topic didn't, at the time. But I totally would have make NPCs from later chapters appear (Daramid, Adivion, Galdana, Kvalca Sain, Rhakis Szadro and a few others). PCs were new to haunts, so they worked *great* on them (and they gave their party a name, The Haunted).
Trial of the Beast
First part of this chapter was my favorite part of the campaign, because the premise is fantastic. Not to mention that there hasn't been a trial in any of the previous APs and it reminds of what Paizo has done with Sixfold Trial. It took us 7 sessions to finish it, mostly due to amount of time spent on gathering clues, connecting them, discussing them etc. Memorable part was battle inside Vorkstag and Grine's factory - when they alerted the mongrelmen inside (although I switched from CR 1 Mongrelmen to CR 2 Morlocks) they retreated outside and went to other part of the factory, thus informing every inhabitant inside of the attack, so when they came back inside they faced 8 more Morlocks, Vorkstag, Grine and two Snapjaw Homunculus. The battle itself was really dynamic with lots of climbing around the rafters and lasted for 27 rounds (longer than battle with Adivion).
During the trial, I introduced Adivion in the AP, who made contact with the players and informed them that he was a former colleague of Lorrimore and offered his assistance (in game terms, he made a few Diplomacy (Gather Information) checks for them and they chatted a bit).
Second part of the chapter I didn't like because of the non-existant hook. Beast goes there (it's not explained why) and asks PCs to come (also not explained why) and then doesn't go with them (also not explained why), but when they're fighting the Aberrant Promethean, somehow he's 1d4 rounds away (also not explained why). That's too many plotholes. And the whole Schloss Caromarc was a tad too long for my taste, so I scrapped most of the Drowned Menagerie. Although every variant flesh golem was awesome, there's no dennying that.
I didn't think of this when I ran it, but my suggestion is to have the authorities of Lepidstadt cut off Beast's hand. The fact that he broke into the University and stole an artifact hasn't been adressed on the trial, and it's a fitting punishment for theft. Once they do that, Beast can go into rampage, kill a few guards and run into the swamps (towards Schloss in order for Caromarc to fix him). Since it doesn't tire, it can run faster than the PCs. Then they'd have to track him through swamps, but also hurry since tracks are getting older and they have to move at half speed and something could attack them while they do that... As written, it doesn't have much sense. Wish I thought of it earlier. But everyone agreed that controling the Beast was a neat idea and the player doing it enjoyed it, so it went well after all.
Also, Auren Vrood was the black necromancer that was mentioned in backstory of Jan Jozef Morr.
Broken Moon
A fantastic chapter. Murder mystery, werewolves, lots of different werewolf clans (all of them were awesome). My players enjoyed it, too. I really put an effort into giving life to NPCs, so they were annoyed by Duristan, suspicous of Estovion, respectful of Delgros Kroitzcer... It worked really well, and they were really into investigation stuff.
Estovion fled the battle on Stairs of the Moon (I replaced his levels of Aristocrat with more levels of Wizard). My players would later find out (through visions of Auren Vrood) that he fled to Feldgrau and begged Auren for help with Lycanthropy. Auren promised that they'll make him all better. More on what happened to him later.
I gave Mathus Mordrinacht a sort of Half-Packlord Template (since he got a bite of Kvalca Sain's heart), giving him a few boosts here and there to impress upon my players that there's real power in a Packlord's heart.
Also, one more thing I wish I had remembered at the time, but sadly didn't, was to make visions gained through the ritual more personal. As written, they just see themselves fighting bosses of remaining chapters. But, it would have been better if each of the PCs saw themselves getting killed by one of the bosses. I recommend future DMs to do so.
I think Ice Titan said that in his campaign, while the players were approaching Feldgrau they could see Adivion flying off on Marrowgarth, but since at the time my PCs were in Feldgrau, I couldn't do that, so I just added as a one more vision of Auren Vrood. I also recounted his history, how he was there went Count Neska rampaged through Furrows and how he was found (in my campaign instead of Yryssa Nine-Eyes or whatever she was called, Socorro found and trained him). In the vision, they also saw Adivion (with his face hidden behind a mask) land in Feldgrau and order Auren Vrood to die in battle with PCs in order to delay them, but in truth he did that because Auren killed Lorrimore (once again, I took this from Ice Titan, whose Adivion also did that). I wanted to portray their relationship as Magneto/Xavier, and like Magneto, Adivion mourned the death of Lorrimore.
Wake of the Watcher
I didn't look forward to DMing this chapter, since it was too unconnected with the rest of the AP, but to my surprise my players loved it. Two of them are fans of Lovecraft, so it worked really well. They grew to hate insanity checks (I think three of them went bonkers, some of them multiple times) and they loved the weird monsters were.
Minor change I added was presence of Adivion here. He used Alter Self/Polymorph to appear as Mayor of Illmarsh (who was dead for some time in the Mi-Go caves) in order to keep tabs on PCs and because he was intrigued by them.
Biggest change I made was to the Raven's Head mace. I wrote about it here (once again thanks to Ice Titan and Nebulous Mistress for their assistance). Here's the correct link to the picture, the other one is outdated. I changed its name to Ravenbeak (it rolls off the tongue more easily) and adjusted its history a bit. In my game, Ravenbeak was wielded by Prince Virholt, who was killed in battle against General Sey'lok (Nightwalker from 6th chapter) on Isle of Terror, who also wielded an intelligent sword called Corpselight (the name was taken from Rule of Fear). After his death, the battle was lost, but another soldier knew of the importance of the weapon and tried to get it back. Even though he reached the ship, it was destroyed by magic and Ravenbeak ended up on the bottom of the Lake Encarthan.
After that, it was found by the Skum of Avalon Bay and given to the Dark Rider in exchange for Seasage Effigy. Dark Rider performed a ritual on Ravenbeak (obtaining the Chronicles of the Raven's Tongue and extracting a bit of its power), but was later caught by the Skum (after he managed to inform Adivion about the knowledge gained from Ravenbeak, via Sending), once the Mi-Go were controlling them, because Mi-Go thought that a spellcaster might have a better chance to hatch a Dark Young once he was infected. My players found that out by simply talking to Ravenbeak, since it's an intelligent weapon. It also speaks in 4 voices at once, and those voices are voices of his original creators.
Ashes at Dawn
I couldn't wait to DM this chapter, but sadly, my players weren't that thrilled. Vampire Underground and vampires themselves didn't impress them that much (or maybe I didn't RP them that good, who knows) and they kinda felt that if Luvick Siervage is that powerful he doesn't need some mid-lvl PCs to do their work for him.
In Haraday Theater, they once again met with Adivion and also were introduced to Galdana. Rhakis Szadro was also present, who was trying to get Palatine Eye to help him to artificially gain Packlord template (by casting a number of Permanent spells on him) so that he could gain control of the clans and end the civil war in Shudderwood, which threatened to spill outside its borders. I did that just so PCs could see what happens in other parts of Ustalav they visited.
Once they activated the Whispering Gargoyle and trap activated - creating a programmed image of 4 liches - in my game those 4 liches were Nalthezzar, Socorro, Urca Namat and Gray Friar. Just a bit of foreshadowing.
At the end, they found out that Adivion was the leader of the Whispering Way (until then, he was mentioned as Lord Deathborn) and the sped off to Renchurch.
Shadows of Gallowspire
Aside from the final encounter itself, my PCs weren't that impressed by this chapter. Not because of quality of writing, but simply because every final chapter in every AP so far is basically the same - PCs storm the boss's stronghold. Since this was our third AP, by now that's getting old.
But, very cool liches helped and those were memorable encounters. Particulary the one with Nalthezzar, where the Sorcerer used Maximized Thanatopic Vampiric Touch (his favorite spell) to hit him and rolled a crit! 96 damage and 96 temporary hit points for him don't happen that often.
Remember I mentioned Estovion? Well, here he was. Whispering Way transformed him into a lich and since he was infected with lycanthropy, he ended up as a Werewolf Lich. I, of course, used the artwork of Lucimar the Lich-Wolf. It made more sense like this, since there's no way the PCs can learn about who Lucimar was and how he became a Lich Wolf.
It felt weird to me that Socorro wasn't mentioned at all in the AP, since he survived Tar-Baphon's fall and was around here somewhere. Since my players expected that he should appear somewhere in the AP, I thought of an idea how to, at least, explain his absence. I mentioned before that in the programmed image of the Whispering Gargoyle PCs saw the four undead leaders of Whispering Way (at least, they were in my game). I named them the Council of Whispered Dead (once again, I'm bad at naming these things, so feel free to use whatever name you can think of).
It was mentioned in Adivion's background that he spent several years seducing leaders of WW to his cause, so in my game, he succeeded with most of the Council of Whispered Dead. He succeeded with all but Socorro. Socorro didn't want no upstart human to disturb the hierarchy of the organization, so he they dueled and Socorro lost. Adivion then put his phylactery in Temporal Stasis and surrounded it with Walls of Force so that Socorro couldn't rejuvenate, but kept it as a trophy (he was arrogant beyond reason).
Rest of the chapter went as written, although I removed some repetitive encounters. I wrote about my version of Adivion and the combat here.
Combat lasted for 20 rounds and 4 hours of real time play. I think there were 7 heal spells used by the party (4 regular, 2 Reach Heals, 1 from a scroll) and even then two of them died - one was brought back to life via Breath of Life and the other via Wish from a Ring of Three Wishes.
In the end, Inquisitor killed Adivion and Ranger killed the Greater Shadow that was left as Adivion/Whispering Tyrant's soul.
Aside from the final encounter itself, my PCs weren't that impressed by this chapter. Not because of quality of writing, but simply because every final chapter in every AP so far is basically the same - PCs storm the boss's stronghold. Since this was our third AP, by now that's getting old.
I've noticed that too. :/ Can't really find much way to change it without heavy reworking in the paizo APs themselves, but for an AP I'm writing I opted to swap around the ending, have the villains storming the PCs' stronghold (with the aid of an undead uprising) for a change. Should be interesting putting the PCs on the defensive for once. And despite being essentially almost the same concept, it'll likely handle vastly differently mechanically.
Nice summary, thanks. With my group the battle inside Vorkstag and Grine's factory was also the longest battle of the entire campaign.
The character sheet for Adivion isn't available anymore, it seems. I'd love to have it reposted ( or PM'ed perhaps? ), because it was a version I intended to use... I am not a fan of using a Magus ( a class I have no experience with at all ) in the final fight and Toadkiller Dogs version of AA seemed very impressive.
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Damn, I forgot about that. I fiddled a bit with my character sheets, so I moved Adivion's somewhere, totally forgot that someone might use it. But, here it is, good sir!
Here's a list of spells he has active on himself (that are counted into his statblock):
8:
Mind Blank (from a scroll)
7:
Arcane Sight, Greater
Deflection
6:
True Seeing
4:
False Life, Greater
Fire Shield
3:
Displacement
Fly
Haste
Magic Fang, Greater
Tongues
2:
Alter Self
Arcane Sight
Defensive Shock
Mirror Image
See Invisibility
1:
Dazzling Blade
Protection from Good
Read Magic
Shield
But, it seems that my math was off on his AC and Reflex Saves (that is, I forgot to take into account Haste, so just add +1 to both).
Also note, that this version of Adivion breaks WBL guidelines a bit. In total, he has around ~550k worth of equipment, whereas a PC of his level should have 410k - 530k. For my group it wasn't a problem, since they're experienced and work well together, but that's just a disclaimer for other people.
And a clarification for my round-by-round tactics, if someone intends to use them - In 6th round, he Dimension Doors away into the Undead Storm, where most PCs won't be able to follow him due to -12 penalty on Fly checks and needing a DC 25 to do it and 'summons' two Bone Golems. Of course, there's no such spell, but I just ruled it flavorwise that he does. They just appear on that round, nothing more. They had Giant and Advanced template on them, but in retrospect, I should have applied that template twice (an easy thing, when you use [url=http://combatmanager.com/Combat Manager[/url]), because they lasted only one round. While he's safely hovering in the undead storm, he casts two spells per round. I also ruled that if he's not using a swift action to cast Dimension Door in order to take advange of his Dimensional Assault line of feats, he (or rather, his soul which was merged with a part of Tar-Baphon's soul) can cast another spell as a swift action, so that's why he casts two spells per round in rounds 7 and 8.
I also removed the rule were Soul Lash backfires on him if he doesn't use it, because if I didn't, over the course of 10 rounds he'd suffer 28d6 points of damage from it.
In 10th round I assumed he'd roll a critical hit (and if he didn't I'd fudge the roll so that he did).
Feel free, of course, I'd be glad if you do! :) Not to mention that lot of my changes weren't mine per-se, but were inspired by other people's suggestions.
Oh, and also I forgot to add one more thing to the 6th chapter (which I will add to my previous post, but here it is again so that you now what I'm talking about). Some of the stuff I had to think up on the spot when my PCs asked me questions for which I didn't have prepared answers, so sometimes it may not have much sense, but here goes:
It felt weird to me that Socorro wasn't mentioned at all in the AP, since he survived Tar-Baphon's fall and was around here somewhere. Since my players expected that he should appear somewhere in the AP, I thought of an idea how to, at least, explain his absence. I mentioned before that in the programmed image of the Whispering Gargoyle PCs saw the four undead leaders of Whispering Way (at least, they were in my game). I named them the Council of Whispered Dead (once again, I'm bad at naming these things, so feel free to use whatever name you can think of).
It was mentioned in Adivion's background that he spent several years seducing leaders of WW to his cause, so in my game, he succeeded with most of the Council of Whispered Dead. He succeeded with all but Socorro. Socorro didn't want no upstart human to disturb the hierarchy of the organization, so he they dueled and Socorro lost. Adivion then put his phylactery in Temporal Stasis and surrounded it with Walls of Force so that Socorro couldn't rejuvenate, but kept it as a trophy (he was arrogant beyond reason).
I provided my players via email with Adivion's full biography after the campaign (which was mostly copied from the chapter with few changes here and there), but here's the part concering the events of usurping the Whispering Way, in case someone wants to present it for their players in similar form:
I don't consider Socorro's reasoning to be very good, but like I said, I had to think of it on the spot, so it had to do for my campaign, but I suggest to everyone to think of something that your players would buy.
Thanks for reposting and updating, Toadkiller! :) I think this version of AA is much more up my alley than the Magus one.
No problem at all! I'm glad I could give something back to the community that was a great help for my campaign! :)
Your round-by-round tactics also got wiped ( unless you mean the ones on the character sheet... in that case, what does "Daughters of Urgathoa" entail exactly? ). Could you restore them?
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Yeah, I meant those on the character sheet. :)
They were just a quick reminder meant for me, so not very detailed, but taht's the general idea.
As for Daughters of Urgathoa - when my party reached the top, Adivion was stil human, waiting for them. He had four priestess of Urgathoa chanting in a circle around him. I used a speech that a fellow DM posted somewhere on these boards (can't remember the name, but credits go to him):
Standing in the center of the pillar is a man, tall and handsome. He wears fine black robes embroidered in gold and silver. In his hands are a staff and a gold chalice. The souls of the dead and the damned rage around you all, their dance of destruction wrapped around the blades of stone that threaten to close in around you.
“They had it all wrong, you know,” the man says conversationally. “Everyone. Only I had the drive, the power to see what they could not. The Whispering Tyrant cannot be released. Those... pitiful mockeries that you call gods have warped all our minds. Not until they’re dead can he be free. But he can be remade."
“He was to be my greatest triumph. And you stole that from me.” Adivion smiles for opportunities past. “He was to be the vessel, a wondrous dark muse to make this world worth living in. He was to house the Tyrant.” He looks at the chalice in his hands and the blood red liquid inside that seems to be trying to climb out on its own. An expression of lust comes across his face as he realizes what he must do. He brings the chalice to his lips and swallows it all.
His eyes are closed and he looks almost orgasmic for a moment before he tenses and he drops chalice and staff. His hands grasp at his throat. He’s brought to his knees, choking. He gives one last pleading look at the PCs as if he expects them to have answers or even help him. He falls, dead.
Adivion is thrown into a sitting position, blood flying from his mouth. His eyelids are open as his eyes burn out of their sockets. It appears as though his entire body is burning, searing from the inside-out by a terrible force. [This is his spirit rejecting his body and searing its way out of its prison.] He’s thrown into the air as the howling storm embraces him, ripping away at his clothing and his skin. The storm spits him back onto the Tower, rejected and Forsaken. But he doesn’t realize it. He lands prone in an ungraceful heap.
He hauls himself upright. His staff flies to him as if called. His beautiful robes are reduced to rags, the handsome visage withered and hatefully dead. What remains of his soul swirls around him in a storm of barely controlled arcane energies. He looks at his hands and laughs to the sky, the laughter of the insane. He levels his undead gaze at the PCs.
“You did this to me,” Adivion says. “You showed me what I must do. Only I can defy the gods. Of course. I am the only worthy vessel. And now...
“Now I will reward you for your service with your DEATH!”
So, when he drank the cup, it released a wave of necromantic energy that killed the priestess and on second round they rose as Daughters of Urgathoa and joined the combat.
Just another distraction and a thing to hinder the PCs and don't allow them to focus fire on Adivion. He had his Deflection spell up and running, so they were a bit reluctant to attack him head on.
Thanks, I appreciate it. I'll see if I can use that speech... although I will have to alter it a bit up for my round, where Kendra is the last descendant of Tar Baphon. ^^
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As of last night, my players finished Carrion Crown.
They fought their way up Gallowspire over the course of two weeks before finally reaching the top yesterday. I also used ANebulousMistress' speech (slightly modified thanks to Neil Spicer's suggestions in the Aidivon Adrissant thread) as they made the climb. One of the players even caught the chalice that held the Carrion Crown elixir (which I used to transmit visual information to party via psychic impression). So when they got up to the top, they found the prone and obviously dead form of the Ustalavn noble. As they prepared to destroy the body, the reaction occured and the looks on their faces when I described what happened really set the group on edge. But the moment Adivion said, 'Now I will reward you for your service with your DEATH!', they snapped out of their shock and hunkered down to do battle.
The fight with Adivion lasted a full round thanks to the number of players as the PCs did not allow themselves to be distracted by the three nightwings and Marrowgarth's presence. One of the rogues triggered the symbol of striking that had been set up previously and that caused some problems for the party. Adivion, to his credit, was brutal as he dropped the dhampir sorceror and nearly did the same with the whip-wielding Chelish nobleman with his dimension door assault. Even with General Sey'lok helping (my version was a Super Genius Games death knight made into a graveknight by Tar-Baphon that actually held up the Ulfen paladin... corruption resistance is an awesome spell!) However, the Ulfen paladin granted his allies the use of his smite evil and that proved to be a deciding factor in our villain's downfall. However, I had one last trick to play: after the last hit landed, the Carrion Crown elixir destroyed Adivion's body in an explosion similar to that of a balor's death throes. When the party realized that his still energized corpse was about to detonate, they set about trying to shield and protect each other from the blast. When it was over, his gear survived (as did Adrissant's soul in the form of a proto-umbral lich and General Sey'lok). Though they were battered and burnt, the group was victorious.
The main campaign was over.
Once they made it back to Caliphas, the group decided to take a month of downtown in-game. After that, The Ulfen paladin wanted to head back home to the Land of the Linnorm Kings for a while. The summoner, as well as one of the rogues, will be accompanying him. Meanwhile the alchemists and the Chelish nobleman will be dealing with planar matters (one of the alchemists is a souldrinker taking orders from Charon but is looking to throw off that master for another). Which leaves the others (the dhampir sorceror, the barbarian, and the other rogue) behind in Caliphas to deal with the Vampire War that I alluded to at the end of the session.
It has been a fun ride. But perhaps more importantly, my players can't wait until next week's session as they've come to love playing these characters and don't want to see their adventures end just yet. That more than anything made me feel really good about how everything turned out.
Kudos to you for finishing an AP!
Although, I'm a bit sad because of the fact that Paladin's broken ability decimated Adivion in one round. :/
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Had the paladin gone after Marrowgarth, the fight would have lasted longer. I was counting on it, in fact. But he didn't take the bait.
Oh and it wasn't Adivion that dropped the dhampir... it was General Sey'lok (the two did tag-team the sorceror as he was the most dangerous threat aside from the paladin). My players have reminded me since my last post that Adivion actually dropped the summoner.
Given their numbers, I wasn't surprised that he went down so quickly. The group smite was something that, in retrospect, could have been handled differently by me. I could have ruled that when the corruption resistance that had been cast by Sey'lok negated the paladin's smite, it also negated what had been given the party as well. I should have... but I didn't.
It's okay. The Ulfen paladin is experiencing undead fatigue and expressed a desire to return home to the Land of the Linnorm Kings. The summoner and one of the rogues is accompanying him on his journey. I plan on running a modified Curse of the Riven Sky (with elements of Against The Giants: The Liberation of Geoff thrown in as well) for those three.
The planar three will be dealing with elements of the Savage Tide (mainly putting together the army that will assault Demogorgan's realm).
And while all that is going on, Malayas will be laying siege to Calaphas with his undead army.
Three different scenarios going simultaneously while in the background the Whispering Way are quietly locating and destroying the lesser seals (the last one will be in the LotLK region of Southmoor to nudge the paladin in making a choice about staying or going back to Caliphas), with Adivion waiting in the wings to avenge his previous defeat at their hands.
After 34 sessions/295 days/42 weeks/9 months ...
34 sessions in 9 months? Ah, I remember those days.
With my current Pathfinder crew, I'm lucky to get 1 session in per month; I expect we'll be finishing Haunting of Harrowstone this Sunday; it'll be our 6th session; the first was on 10/2 :)
Toadkiller Dog - nice pics. What mini is that you are using for Adivion?
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Toadkiller Dog - nice pics. What mini is that you are using for Adivion?
This is the droid you are looking for.
After 34 sessions/295 days/42 weeks/9 months ...34 sessions in 9 months? Ah, I remember those days.
Yeah, we're well aware that someday we won't have that much time for gaming as we do now, so now we play as much as we can. :D College rocks.
This is the droid you are looking for.Toadkiller Dog - nice pics. What mini is that you are using for Adivion?
Cool.
And while we are on the subject, any suggestions (from Toadkiller seing as this is his thread, or other people) as to what minis to use for the bosses in Ashes At Dawn.
Ah, well, I just used that one mini because I like to make main boss fights a bit special if I can. Not to mention that it'd be a bit pricey to buy 5 more minis (which then would have to be painted, of course, and dyes cost, too), so I don't have much suggestions for others. Especially since few of those would be downright impossible to get a mini for (Aberrant Promethean and Dark Young). As for Splatter Man, any skeletal mage would do, as would any vampire for Dublesse Witches.
I'd browse the gallery of Reaper minis or look through Vampire Counts/Tomb Kings section of Games Workshop site.