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And here at last we come to the end of the Dead Warrens. The second half surprisingly didn’t put up as much resistance as the first half, and so we managed to plow through it all in one session. That being said, the players were a bit clever with the Carrion Golem (as you will see), and Vreeg decided to get out while the getting was good instead of staying and massacring the exhausted party (a moment of DM weakness, what can I say).
Oh I also forget to mention Oliver’s new buddy, Travis (complete with new token)! Who, despite the name, was quite obviously female to anyone but Oliver.
So we pick up where the last session left off, with the party standing at the door between the acid hallway and the smashed workshop. The party had knocked on this door before leaving last time, and so knew that there were more derro down here (them shouting out nonsense in answer to the party’s knock was what decided it for them that they should leave and rest). Now that they were back and relatively fresh, they kicked open the door rather than knocking, a task they found surprisingly difficult. This was due to the fact that a workbench had been slid across the door to brace it shut, and there were two zombies in city guardsman uniforms and armor ordered to hold it shut.
They still managed to force the door open eventually though, and started dealing with the two zombies while the two derro shrieked at them and dropped their Sound Bursts to minimal effect. Wearing the armor of city guardsman, and being Alchemical zombies (increased natural armor) meant that the two zombies were pretty tough, and as an additional surprise I had them each activate a Haste-like effect, canceling their Staggered condition and I think giving them an extra longsword attack (the “oh s&~~!” reaction from my players when they turned that on was priceless). The haste was a short-lived effect though, and no matter how many fancy tricks or how much AC they had, zombies are still zombies and two of them aren’t going to hold back a level 4 party for very long. One of the two derro also bought it at this point I think, as Vaz’em managed to get behind it in a flank.
Which is when the last derro, who had been steadily backing away, revealed the next waiting surprise for the party. It pulled on a long rope, yanking open the door that the carrion golem had been locked away in. The players heard a roar from inside that room as the golem noticed the newly opened door and prepared to rush out an attack anyone in the smashed workshop – in this case, the players. My players backed out into the acid hallway again . . . and shut the door. This moment of hilariously unexpected brilliance on my player’s part meant that when the carrion golem came out, it had no immediate targets. I therefore decided to flip a coin to decide whether it went left (into the players after smashing down the door), or right (after the derro). Luck approved of the party’s sensible plan, and the carrion golem chased down the derro. With neither that derro nor the third and final one waiting nearby unable to really do anything to the golem, and the two lightning skeletons that the third derro was with only able to haste and heal the thing (they had planned on sending the skeletons in after the golem engaged the party), I just handwaved that the golem killed the derro and two skeletons with minimal effort. That did draw the attention of Cabbagehead nearby however, and the ogre (my upgrade for him, making him an Advanced Ogre rather than an ogrekin fighter) managed to put the carrion golem down, taking a minor wound in the process. I had considered replacing the carrion golem with its listed variant in the book that had an explosion on death – Rolth does love his explosions – but after dealing with every single thing down here exploding on them I decided to have a little mercy. Good thing too, since it would have been Cabbagehead that ate that explosion damage instead!
As it was, he downed the potion of Cure Moderate wounds I gave him, as the party heard the screams and sounds of battle suddenly stop, and creeped forward to investigate. They found the ogre standing amidst the prisoner pits, which were somewhat less full now that Vreeg had been having the need to make more zombies to try and slow the party down over the past several days. The party got a surprise round on the distracted, injured ogre, allowing Cid to drop a Grease on the thing’s greatclub (doh!), and Vaz’em to get in and try to sneak attack (missed!). Rather than try to pick up his club with the party swarming all over him, Cabbagehead fought back with his fists, which did not hurt nearly as much.
Cid did get a taste of my planned DM bastardry for this encounter though, as Cabbagehead used Awesome Blow (being an advanced ogre gave him enough STR to qualify for the feat I think, or I used DM shenanigans to make it so) to swat the Hellknight up into the air away from him, and then down into one of the prisoner pits (take some falling damage and be stuck in a pit, let’s see you Shocking Grasp your way out of *that!* >< I’m not bitter, no sir). Unfortunately for the ogre, knocking only one enemy down into the pits wasn’t enough and he was swiftly finished off by Vaz’em and Oliver.
The group then fished Cid and the rest of the prisoners out of the pits, and escorted them to the entrance. Hilariously, poor Fishguts Jim was yet again amongst the prisoners that were rescued after getting kidnapped by the derro while he was in the Grey District paying his respects. The experience wasn’t all bad for him this time though, as at least he got to share a pit with the pickpocket Tiora (who the party suspected of being important and evil, based simply on the token that I used for her o_O).
Delving back into the Dead Warrens, the party decided to explore the side rooms they had skipped, finding the body dumping room empty (as they had already killed the otyugh), and they went down into the Vaults through the side exit. Where they found the “Teasure” mark and arrows pointing right at a door with Shaoti writing above it and a bas-relief carving of some Shaoti guy carrying a big shield. This was the tomb of Uthlok the Shieldbearer, and if anybody in the party could speak Shaoti, they would have seen the warning that Uthlok was still ambulatory and rather cranky about it. But they couldn’t, so they went right in.
Beyond the door they found several crumbling sarcophagi, as well as a larger one at the back of the room. And a pissed off Barrow wight standing in front of it – Uthlok. Combat began, with Uthlok charging down from his raised sarcophagus to the doorway, striking Oliver with his longsword and draining a level (Barrow wights could use weapons and still level drain). The party took him rather seriously after that, although it was a little difficult to surround him with the wight blocking the door. Of course, Cid didn’t care, he just needed something to be in melee with him for it to die, and Vaz’em’s Acrobatics was high enough at this point that he could pretty much tumble through enemy squares to get into the room. Uthlok was destroyed without much further fanfare, and the party recovered his namesake shield, a magical Darkwood shield that Oliver was happy to appropriate for the cause.
The party had found the secret passage between the library and the smashed workshop, so they went and explored that next. Vaz’em was in the lead, and as he stepped into the library an ominous ticking filled the room. The sound was coming from a small clock mounted on the wall next to the normal, non-secret door to the east. The clock was clearly counting down to something, but luckily Vaz’em was able to disable it before the alarm went off. Now feeling more safe, the rest of the party entered and explored. They found another secret door to the north, which was hot to the touch – they wisely didn’t open that one, or they would have had the joy of triggering Rolth’s trap anyway.
Rolth really didn’t want anyone messing with his library, so he rigged up a trap – anytime the door was open, the clock would start counting down. After a couple minutes (long enough for the ninja to disable it if he worked quickly), the clock would ring an alarm, the doors would slam shut and lock, and the northern secret door would open, allowing the three burning skeletons inside the closet beyond to emerge. The burning skeletons would then ignite the oil Rolth had spread all over the floor, which would ignite the fuse on the barrel of gunpowder in the back corner, which would blow everything and everyone still inside the room to kingdom come.
Obviously, only Vreeg was allowed in here as only Rolth’s apprentice could be trusted not to accidentally trigger the deathtrap. What can I say, Rolth loves his explosions? Getting an inkling of his plan, the party was *really* starting to hate Rolth. Good, good! The hate is swelling – soon their journey to the Dark Side would be complete! Or something.
Proceeding out through the east door, the party entered the golem room, and freaked out a little bit at the sight of the almost completed flesh golem lying there, Kynndor’s head mounted on it. The two remaining lightning skeletons (of the total four lightning skeletons that had been in here at the start of the dungeon delve) were also in here, but they were little more than an annoyance to the party at this point. Fortunately for the party, despite their concerns the flesh golem did not rise to give them a likely fatal boss fight, nor was Vreeg home (he had decided to get out while the party was dealing with Uthlok, leaving by the other exit into the Vaults).
It was getting late, so I hurried through the party’s exploration of the last rooms, finding Kynndor’s torso and arms in Vreeg’s room. They also found a disturbing mess in Rolth’s room, various costumes lying about including a harlequin outfit (that Vaz’em took as a disguise O_o), and an empty coffin that was filled with severed ropes. That caused them to freak out that there had been a vampire in here, and worse, Rolth had apparently been keeping the thing captive. Gathering up some potions that were on a workbench in Rolth’s room, and Kynndor’s body, the party got out of there. And we ended the session.
There was, of course, no vampire down there that Rolth was keeping captive. It was just Jostilina in a vampire costume, who Vreeg had tied up and stuffed in the coffin to serve as a surprise for Rolth when he eventually got back. Deciding it would be unwise to leave the boss’s girlfriend for the party to find, Vreeg had reluctantly cut her loose – the two didn’t get along - and they fled out through the Vaults. If the party had dealt with Vreeg – which was unlikely in their present condition, thus why I had him flee rather than TPK them – they would have found Jostilina tied up in the coffin.
Which certainly would have freaked them out – hopefully they would have noticed the blanching facepaint before they drove a stake through Jostilina’s heart. It was a bit of a risk leaving an important future enemy at the party’s mercy, but I figured if they didn’t immediately stake her then she would seem harmless enough that they would either turn her loose or hand her over to the city guard (where she could merrily escape/get broken out by Rolth). And if not, well . . . Rolth is a necromancer, and there’s plenty of other women in the city he could drive insane should the party have rendered Jostilina unusable as an undead minion.
Assuming the party could have suppressed its murderous urges, they would have been able to question Jostilina for some cryptic but potentially useful information about Rolth and his plans. Which might in turn have given them some warning that Rolth and Andaisin were about to endanger the entire city in the coming book of the AP, but since Jostilina and Vreeg had escaped, the party had no idea what was coming.
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So the Dead Warrens was finished, with Vreeg & Jostilina escaping, and Venster undiscovered as the party had no desire to go back to that hellhole. I probably could have pushed them via Zellara or something, but eh. The encounter I had prepared for Venster’s re-animated corpse was just a bunch of skeletons and zombies, with basically nothing new from what the party had already dealt with. So I just dropped it and moved on with wrapping up Book One. But there was a problem – with Vreeg having escaped the party, they didn’t have a climatic end chapter boss battle yet! RPG tradition *demands* a final boss battle to close out the disc/chapter/act/story unit of choice! Fortunately I had a plan for this circumstance, and it intersected nicely with my plans for concluding Trinia’s trial (and tying in the final bit of Book One as written in the AP).
As it turned out, while I had everything prepared for the thrilling conclusion of Book One, the considerable number of roleplaying scenes leading up to the end took longer than I had thought they would. Oh well, it wasn’t the first such occurrence nor would it be the last. That being said, it wasn’t like this session was devoid of drama.
First up, the party exited the Dead Warrens and returned Kynndor’s body to Thousand Bones. The old Shaoti was grateful that his grandson’s body could now be burned and his spirt carried away to its resting place by the wind. Kroft was grateful that the Shaoti wouldn’t be burning Korvosa to the ground now, and showed that with a monetary reward. The party was grateful to get paid, and that they no longer had to go into that horrible hellhole that their DM had created for them to endure.
From there, the party rested up to attend the trial’s second (and possibly final) day. It opened with the announcement by Chief Arbiter Zenderholm of the findings the city apocacary made when examining the two poison vials submitted into evidence, one by Kreed and one by Rholand. There was no doubt in Kreed’s mind which would be the correct one. The vial that killed Eodred had been hidden in Ileosa’s room by Venster to implicate her and keep him from suspicion – of course immediately after he hid the vial, Andaisin killed him so it didn’t really do a whole lot of good for Venster in the end. Rholand had nothing, and his lie was about to be exposed for what it was – submitting false evidence and lying under oath. Kreed was looking forward to having the meddlesome cleric jailed so the derro could sneak into the Deathhead Vault through one of their countless ways into the basement beneath Longacre and steal him away for a few months’ vacation of mind-destroying torture.
Zenderholm cleared her throat . . . and announced that the vial *Rholand* had submitted was indeed the legitimate article! Kreed was stunned. This was impossible! He had the real vial! The party followed his eyes up to the balcony where Queen Ileosa sat, who smiled down at the rogue lawyer and mouthed to him “You’re not the only one who can fake evidence.” (Technically the vial itself wasn’t fake, but since pretty much everything else Kreed had been saying was a lie, point goes to Ileosa. PC respect + 1.)
Kreed managed to regain his composure enough to continue with the trial and deflect his own possible charge of submitting false evidence onto the guardsman who brought him the vial (who had slipped and fallen on his own sword during patrol the night after his appearance in court, how unfortunate). But he was starting to realize just how far out into the dark political waters of Korvosa he had swam at Andaisin’s insistence.
The trial continued with Kroft calling Queen Ileosa herself to the stand - an unusual move, but one designed to try and rebuild her public image that had been eroded by Kreed’s insinuations. Primarily, Ileosa’s part was to testify and identify the very large, almost finished painting that Kroft had dragged into the courtroom. It was Trinia’s painting, and since I hadn’t gotten the chance to describe it when the party brought her in, here was my chance to make up for it.
The painting depicted the royal gardens within one of Castle Korvosa’s courtyards, the same one the party had been in during Ileosa’s coronation. Although part of it was unfinished (the blank stretch of otherwise pained canvas apparently was to contain Ileosa – Eodred hadn’t yet figured out how to get her to pose for Trinia without spoiling the surprise), there was enough there to identify the small secluded area in the heart of the hedge maze, and that Eodred was kneeling at the feet of one of the stone benches placed there.
As it was meant to be a surprise gift to Ileosa, she couldn’t be positive about Eodred’s intent behind painting this scene, but she could identify that this seemed to be a reproduction of a conversation between them shortly after their marriage. Ileosa had been upset by Eodred’s flirtatious visit to his unofficial harem earlier that day, and had retreated here to be alone. Eodred had come and found her, and to her shock when he realized what the problem was he dropped to his knees in front of her and vowed that he would never again look at another woman like that again – Ileosa was all that he needed.
After that, one thing led to another, and Ileosa trailed off from her recollection of the event with an embarrassed blush (they had sex :-p ). The painting, therefore, was Eodred’s way of saying that he had not forgotten his promise – Ileosa would forevermore be his one and only. As such, since things were going so well between them Ileosa had no reason to want Eodred dead. There was a bit more argue back and forth between Kreed and Kroft, but that was the gist of it – and pretty much when it came to Kreed questioning the sovereign’s sincerity, he pretty much automatically lost in the eyes of the law. Unfortunately since this was in court and not immediately after brining Trinia in, the party didn’t get to see Ileosa’s emotional breakdown as she saw the painting for the first time and realized how foolish her – Kazavon inspired – murderous jealousy against Trinia had been.
The rest of the trial wrapped up, and Chief Arbiter Zenderholm gave her verdict (no jury trials here – oh no, that was for the chaos-loving Kaer Magans! Here in Korvosa, one person was enough to decide your fate.) While Trinia was innocent of any direct action against Eodred, her part in his death was nonetheless real as without her the poison would not have entered the castle. Thus while she was not guilty of regicide, nonetheless she was an accessory and thus would be imprisoned for a number of years.
The crowd went ballistic. They wanted blood, had been promised blood. And from the masses, Andaisin arose and threw off her cloak, shouting out that this miscarriage of justice was all Ileosa’s doing! Unfortunately, she didn’t get much chance to say anything else, as the courtroom doors boomed open and Lictor Severs “Boneclaw” DeVries, the Order of the Nail Commandant walked in. He revealed that he had been in communication with the Emperor of Cheliax (at the time I thought the Empire of Cheliax was actually, y’know, an empire, not a shattered kingdom surrounded by former vassal states and ruled by a teenaged bratty queen. Whatever.)
As of today, Andaisin’s ambassadorship to Korvosa from the Empire was revoked, and the Emperor wanted to see her personally to explain exactly what it was that she has been doing in the Empire’s name. When Andaisin protested, DeVries pretty much picked her up by the throat and slammed her back into the nearest wall. She *would* be going back to Cheliax, *now*, and DeVries’s Hellknights would personally escort her to a waiting courier ship to take her back to Cheliax – the “Direption”, I believe the ship was named (heeheeheehee). It was Andaisin’s choice whether she would go willingly, or in chains.
After DeVries hauled a suddenly much more cooperative Andaisin out of the courtroom, Ileosa dropped her own bombshell. She overturned the Chief Arbiter’s ruling, and declared that Trinia Sabor was guilty of Regicide, and would be executed several days hence. Grey Maidens, take her away! I had warned the party that Ileosa was going to do this if they didn’t manage to find Venster or someone else that Ileosa could execute for Eodred’s murder, although I could again have played up the sheer rage of the crowd, to the point that if *somebody* didn’t die for this crime, all of Korvosa would burn instead. As it was, the sudden whiplash from wanting to spare Trinia to putting her on the chopping block made the players scratch their heads a bit. Oh well, at least I got to inject this appropriate music from Chrono Trigger into the scene as the Grey Maidens dragged Trinia off.
From there, the queen turned her wrath on Kreed, and ordered the city guard to arrest him for conspiracy with Andaisin against the crown (the party had told her about Kreed’s connection to Andaisin and she was not happy with him). And pretty much, despite his protestations about this, and Chief Arbiter Zenderholm’s annoyance at having her ruling overturned five seconds later, there was pretty much nothing that could be done about it. As Zenderholm explained after the trial to the party, Queen Ileosa was the undisputed sovereign of Korvosa.
While the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom were typically handled by other people, and the sovereign ultimately could be removed by the Council of Nobles, in the end Queen Ileosa was the ruler of Korvosa – she could do whatever the eff she wanted. If she wanted some random commoner on the street murdered because she didn’t like him, well, it was a bad day to be that commoner as the city guard kicked down his front door and dragged him out into the street to be drawn and quartered. That revelation of the queen’s absolute power over their lives hit the party pretty hard, and for a while they were pretty convinced that Ileosa was going to turn on them at any moment and have them all shuffled off to the chopping block.
Thankfully that didn’t happen and future events would settle the party’s concerns about Ileosa doing such, although it has remained in the back of their minds throughout the game. Particularly when she does things that make her seem mentally unstable like immediately overturn a judge’s ruling and sentence someone to death (although they didn’t seem to mind so much seeing Kreed summarily hauled off to the Deathhead Vault). Again, partially I was to blame for that for not making it inescapably plain that Ileosa’s two choices were to sacrifice Trinia or have days of city-wide riots yet again. Although the “Ileosa is farking nuts” excuse did come in handy for the next and final bit in tonight’s session.
Following the trial, the party got a mysterious message that “a friend” wanted to meet with them at the Three Rings tavern. Tonight. Wary but with nothing else to do now, the party showed up at the tavern at the designated time. A few minutes later, a dour-looking female elf came over to join them, introducing herself as Elliana, Queen Ileosa’s handmaiden. Elliana apologized for the secrecy, but that it was absolutely necessary as no one could ever know of what her lady wanted the party to do now.
Queen Ileosa wanted them to storm the execution, rescue Trinia Sabor from the executioner’s axe, and escape from the city with her. She had already made some arrangements to help them (a sewer grate conveniently left open near to the palace the day of the execution and the like). Nonetheless, the queen thought that it would be best if the party disguised themselves so that the blame for this escape could be placed on someone else – Blackjack was a convenient do-gooder that they could impersonate, as something like this was right up his alley.
Smearing the name of the obnoxious public hero by rescuing a condemned felon was right up the party’s alley, although to really convince them Elliana had to offer them something really good – an expensive gift from the castle’s treasury to each of them. Essentially, one fairly high end (for their level) magic item to each of them, which would boost their wealth by level through the roof (basically doubling it from level four to close to level six). But hey, it was the end of the book, they were really sticking their necks out, and sometimes giving your players a huge treasure horde is fun so why not? Ultimately, the party agreed to the job (after Cid told Elliana to stop frowning so much and smile a little). And thus the stage was set for the final session of Book One.
There is no such handmaiden in Queen Ileosa’s court, of course. “Elliana” was really Queen Ileosa herself in disguise, using the Alter Self power of the crown (an ability that she was actually familiar with due to being a Bard) to assume the form of an elf underling. I had plans for “Elliana” to become a regular traveling companion with the party throughout the coming Book Two, but alas, it never materialized as Queen Ileosa was much too busy fending off a city-wide plague to slip out of the castle and pretend to be someone else for a while. A pity, as the look on the party’s faces when they would have discovered Elliana’s true identity would have been priceless.
And so, Ileosa's fall towards damnation begins, and yet for now, she retains some redeeming qualities! So much more interesting to see it in progress, rather than already done!
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Indeed! This was more of an attempt by Ileosa to make a shrewd political move by giving the masses the bloodshed that they wanted, while still sparing Trinia. Afterall, if she escaped rather than was pardoned, well, that wasn’t the government’s fault now was it? Besides being incompetent, but the city guard had taken plenty of flank for that lately anyway. And Kazavon was satisfied because he could later manipulate the queen into using this situation as an excuse to tighten the government’s control on the city into a sort of de-facto martial law. Win-win for everyone, except DeVries who was going to be pissed about this, as he had taken a personal interest in punishing those responsible for Eodred’s death, in particular Trinia since she was the only one still alive that he knew about (Lamm dead, Venster dead, Andaisin on a boat probably about to be slowly and painfully made dead by the Emperor).
It was also, admittedly, a little crazy, and while the party didn’t like their chances of being able to pull this off, they did sort of admire the gutsiness of it. So Ileosa didn’t go to being a villain quite yet in their minds (but as you note UnArcaneElection, Kazavon’s seeds were starting to take root in Ileosa’s psyche). It also made a pretty good ending for Book One, and gave the party a more active role in Trinia’s execution rather than just watching Blackjack save the day. Since they already met Blackjack several times, him suddenly appearing to save the day yet again would likely have pissed them off. So of course I had the real Blackjack show up as well, as written in the AP. :p
So, the party was unsure of how they were supposed to pull this off, particularly how to do so and not be recognized. Cid was particularly anxious about that, as DeVries was a special kind of LE bastard and would likely order him executed in Trinia’s place for treason if he was seen. As it turned out, he could have only excommunicated Cid from the order as he was only an armiger as yet – once he became a full-blooded Hellknight, then execution became the “we’re kicking you out of the order” punishment (or so I made up the rules for how the Order of the Nail punished wayward members). As Cid discovered, DeVries was a special kind of bastard, who was content to bide his time on the matter, but Cid didn’t know that at the time.
The execution itself was to take place within the gardens of Castle Korvosa – same place as Ileosa’s coronation (yay reusing maps!), and while not open to the public would have a large number of nobles and well-to-do upper crust of society types there. That would let the party have a reason to be there, since they were up and coming and pretty much building a reputation as the queen’s hatchmen. That still left the problem of how to get Trinia out and being recognized.
The queen had hidden several potions of Levitate (or maybe it was Fly) within the hedge maze, under one of the benches, that the party could use to make their escape. So now they only had to worry about being recognized. That was hard for Oliver in his signature plate mail, and Cid who was a Hellknight.
Ultimately, the plan came down to Cid would wait at the sewer entrance, Oliver would stand around in his plate mail and try to look like an official guardsman, and then helpfully get in their way once the rescue started. Rholand would play the role of giving Trinia last rites, which would let him get close to her, and Vaz’em being able to disappear at-will and actually having a disguise skill worth a damn, would play the part of Blackjack.
The day of the execution arrives, there’s a huge crowd both outside the castle and within the gardens similar to Ileosa’s coronation. Basically another excuse for the city’s worthless elite to party (pretty much with the exception of Zenderholm and Endrin who had actual jobs within the city’s government as Chief Arbiter and Commander of the Sable Marines, I made all of the nobles the party met self-centered, cowardly, and useless. Ileosa, the plague, and other future events would be thinning out their ranks soon enough though).
Ileosa is present, this time seated at the opposite end of the courtyard from the small stage that had been set up for Trinia’s execution. She is surrounded by her Grey Maidens, along with Sabrina and DeVries. As the execution began, Ileosa stood and made a speech that was similar to the one given in the AP, about Trinia’s blood being a balm for the wound in Korvosa’s heart. Although of course, she meant that ironically, as she was rather disgusted with the city for pushing her to this course of action (and of course if the party was successful, their desire to see Trinia dead was about to be foiled anyway). Trinia was brought out, Rholand got close to give her last rites, and as she was forced to kneel before the chopping block, Ileosa began to mutter something under her breath (Major Image spell). A moment later, there was a cry from the crowd. “Look! It’s Blackjack!”
A half dozen Blackjacks, in fact, illusions created by Ileosa to keep the guards up on the wall busy while Vaz’em moved in for the rescue. Except instead of all of them staying on the wall, one of them suddenly jumped down into the courtyard . . . that wasn’t part of Ileosa’s illusion. The *real* Blackjack had also decided to take an interest in saving Trinia, only he wasn’t aware that Ileosa had contracted the party to do it, so he thought he was foiling a real execution. As such, he was a little pissed at Ileosa for trying to execute Trinia in the first place. So he said something along the lines of “Is this what you call justice!? Then Queen Ileosa, you have failed this city!”
At which point Blackjack pulled out his handcrossbow and fired a shot off at Queen Ileosa, the bolt hitting the back of her chair a few inches from her head (he had deliberately missed). A moment later, the smokestick embedded in the arrow burst open, obscuring the throne from view, along with Sabrina, the Grey Maidens, and DeVries.
The party took this as their cue to spring into action as well, and Rholand, Oliver, and Vaz’em dealt with the couple guards by the stage, knocking them out, while Blackjack dueled with the executioner. Blackjack shoved the man off of the stage, and then turned to the party who pointed him and Trinia towards the hedge maze. He thanked them and then took off with Trinia in tow. As he got to the top of the wall, however, DeVries came storming out of the cloud of smoke by the throne, and he was *pissed*.
I had considered having him target Trinia with a spell as a dickish “No one escapes justice! NO ONE!” but decided that didn’t fit the script for my final boss battle of the book, so DeVries blasted Blackjack instead (the girl would have been easy enough to retrieve once her rescuers was dead anyway). DeVries blasted Blackjack with a disintegrate spell. Fortunately, he made his saving throw, and thus DeVries “only” did something like 60 damage to him – so I didn’t even have to fudge Blackjack’s survival! A moment later, he and Trinia dropped down out of sight over the wall.
But DeVries wasn’t quite done with them yet. Pulling a black stone of his cloak, DeVries crushed it into ash and sprinkled it on the ground, as the ash burst into flame and formed into the shape of a tall, lanky bearded devil. This was Zarzagug the Huntsman, a bearded devil with one level in cavalier (Houndmaster) who would be standing in for Vreeg as the final boss of Book One. DeVries ordered his huntsman to find Trinia and Blackjack, kill Blackjack and bring Trinia back so that the execution could continue. Zarzagug nodded his obedience and then blinked out of existence, teleporting to the top of the wall, and then again down out of sight, chasing after the two.
Zarzagug’s Theme – Night of the Hunter by 30 Seconds to Mars
A bit concerned at this development, the party left the gardens to meet up with Cid, and as it turned out, Blackjack had noticed the open sewer grate and had decided to escape that way too. So now that they were all together, the party, Blackjack, and Trinia ran through the sewers, emerging some distance away from the castle in the middle of a street. Unfortunately they weren’t able to outrun a creature with teleport at-will, and a minute later they saw Zarzagug approaching them, with a Hellhound at his side (his hound animal companion). Seeing them, Zarzagug called forth his “hunting party”, a six-pack of Lemures. The two parties squared off, it was pretty clear that it was going to be a fight, and initiatives were rolled for the final battle of Book One.
Unfortunately, while the party had a brief moment of alarm after Zarzagug teleported behind them to catch them in between him and his minions, the fight was not overly difficult for them. The Lemures were fairly useless, although that was to be expected with their meager +4 To-Hit bonus. They had a lot of fun swarming around Trinia after the party ignored them though, ripping and tearing at the poor girl and nearly dropping her before Rholand healed her up . . . and finally realized he could have just put Protection from Evil on her since these were all summoned devils. The hellhound managed to breathe once but then was swiftly taken out by Vaz’em and Oliver. Zarzagug flew into a rage at the death of his pet (effects identical to the Rage spell), but ultimately it helped him little.
I had an interesting cavalier order for Zarzagug, I think it was the Order of the Flame or something – basically every time he dropped a challenged foe, he could switch the challenge to a new foe, and gain an additional +2 damage at the cost of 1 AC. The idea was that he would throw the party around like ragdolls, his damage rapidly scaling beyond the ability of Rholand to channel away, but his AC would plummet throughout the fight, going from respectable to almost an automatic hit.
Sadly, I don’t think Zarzagug managed to drop a single party member, as Cid got his attention (devils really don’t like Hellknights, and those Shocking Grasps were really starting to hurt by this level). And Cid had that damn f&!*ing Mirror Image spell up. Cast it several times during the fight I think, which tanked Zarzagug’s pretty respectable damage to almost nothing. To add additional insult to injury, at one point Cid cast Grease on his wounding glaive, and Zarzagug had to resort to clawing at people. He still manage to do some damage to the party, but in the end it was not a skin-of-your-teeth affair like I had hoped.
Which is probably why I made damn sure when the party fought Andaisin at the end of the next book, she smeared them into the walls (I may have overdone it a bit on upgrading her fight). But that’s a story for, oh . . . twenty-one sessions from now. :p
After the last devil fell, Blackjack said that he knew a place where Trinia would be safe. The party let him take her there, and after a couple days, got their reward from the queen discretely sent to them. Oliver got a +1 Keen Cutlass, Rholand got gobblegut’s skin made into a “Cloak of the Crocodile” (Cloak of the Manta Ray only as a crocodile shapeshift instead) along with 800 GP, Vaz’em got a +2 Cloak of Resistance and belt of +2 Dex, and Cid got a 2nd level Pearl of Power and 2,000 GP. So basically 8,000 GP for each of them – literally doubling their WBL at this point. So they did pretty well for themselves for a single day’s work. Unfortunately for them, Book Two was about to start, and it would be full of my favorite thing in the whole world . . . lots and lots of undead.
Keep it coming!
{. . .} Emperor of Cheliax (at the time I thought the Empire of Cheliax was actually, y’know, an empire, not a shattered kingdom surrounded by former vassal states and ruled by a teenaged bratty queen. {. . .}
That's okay, I'm sure Queen Abrogail II would be delighted at your optimism about her future title. :-)
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Edit: Actually did a brief search for Hellknight Magus on these boards (yes, I haven't forgotten about this), and this thread was the closest thing I found. It shared some ideas that I posted earlier in this thread, but didn't get significantly further with them. So I went straight to Google to search for Hellknight Magus archetype, and the same thread was still the closest thing I found.
So, at some point when I can get back home from work at a decent hour, I need to get to work on cooking up a Hellknight Magus archetype, or maybe try to think of a good way to get the messageboards to give their input into it.
Too late to edit my above post, but Thread necromancy initiated.
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That was another thing – Hell’s Rebels is coming up, and while I don’t know if I’d ever run that, nor was I even aware of it at the time of the whole “Emperor” thing . . . I really hope Abrogail doesn’t turn out to be Ileosa 2.0. Anything to distance the two of them (like a fancier title) would be nice I imagine.
Alright, I suppose I can put together one more session write-up, the first one for Book Two.
So, we had already done Ileosa’s intro to Book Two essentially, with her earlier confrontation with Andaisin. To make the opening of Book Two a bit bigger of a deal, I gave each person their own personal intro section. This was several weeks after Trinia was rescued, if I remember correctly. On the evening of a holiday within Korvosa, I believe. I think I made it Saint Alika’s birthday, but it may have been something else. Basically as I explained it “The Chelish celebrate Saint Alika, the Varisians celebrate the anniversary of their freedom from captivity in their forgotten homeland, and the Shaoti can go f+++ themselves.”
Vaz’em: (Intro Theme – Kaijit Like to Sneak by Miracle of Sound (What? He’s a catfolk ninja! :p )
Vaz’em got word through his contacts that someone was looking for him to perform a job for them. In fact, it was something that Vaz’em knew – Vencarlo Orsini. Having taken a shine to the fencing master thanks to his frequent trolling of Kroft, Vaz’em went right over to his residence and was prepared to offer him the friends and family discount for his services in putting someone in the ground.
As it turned out, that was not exactly what Vencarlo had in mind. Shortly after he allowed Vaz’em inside his residence, the reason for Vencarlo’s summons became clear. An attractive but oddly familiar redheaded woman stepped out into the hallway to meet them. Vencarlo introduced her as his cousin –
“Natiri Brosa!”
The woman proudly decried, as Vencarlo facepalmed hard enough for it to be heard all the way in Cheliax. It was indeed Trinia Sabor, and her choice of new name for herself (an anagram of her old one in the event you didn’t notice ;) ) was simply proof that a master of disguise Trinia was not. In short, Vencarlo needed help getting her out of the city.
Their mutual friend Blackjack had dropped her off shortly after her scheduled execution (Vaz’em never seemed to question this or suspect, heeheehee), and Vencarlo had been sheltering her ever since. Unfortunately, the Hellknights had been most persistent in their sweeps of the city, looking for both her and Blackjack, and it seemed to be only a matter of time before someone got very curious about Vencarlo’s strange cousin who had been staying to visit him for nearly a month now.
So Vencarlo needed her to leave the city, beyond the focus of the Hellknight’s search – he had already made arrangements for the girl in Harse, a small town a short distance outside of Korvosa. But that required getting Trinia out of Korvosa, and for that Vencarlo needed a specialist – namely Vaz’em.
Helping people slip out unnoticed was not Vaz’em’s specialty – making them bodies without being noticed was. As such, Vaz’em wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about this job, but Vencarlo eventually talked him into it. For 500 gold, and while Vencarlo made noise about a gentleman helping a lady in need, Vaz’em largely found it hilarious that Vencarlo thought of him as a gentleman. So 500 gold it was.
There were multiple routes that Vaz’em could have taken to get Trinia out of the city. Ultimately, he chose to go by water, having a trusted source row them both across the Jeggare River to the relatively unguarded far side. He even knew exactly the right man for this job, indeed there was only one man who could help him and Trinia now. His name was Fishguts Jim.
Vaz’em eventually tracked Fishguts down, to discover that things were looking up for the fisherman. He was now engaged to Tiora, and the two of them had gone into business together. They had bought out All the World’s Meat, which between the rioting and its association amongst the locals for cannibal guards butchering the populace was quite affordable, even for a lowly fisherman and a retired pickpocket. They even had gone shopping for the group, as a means to say thanks, and thinking about a group of adventurers would like, they got a (partially charged) Wand of Cure Moderate Wounds (as was written in the AP as a gift from Tiora).
So Vaz’em got a wand of cure moderate wounds, 500 gold, and Fishguts didn’t ask too many questions about rowing him and a friend over to the other side of the boat. Fortunately FIshguts didn’t recognize Trinia, and she didn’t know that Fishguts had contemplated lynching her, and so the boat ride across the river in Fishgut’s small rowboat was not especially awkward. Fishguts asked Vaz’em if he needed to wait for him to come back, but since Vaz’em could just walk back in through the front gate without Trinia on his arm, he waived the friendly fisherman’s offer.
Vaz’em got Trinia to Vencarlo’s contacts in Harse without incident, and everything seemed to be going pretty well as Vaz’em walked back to Korvosa that night. Unfortunately, things were about to get a little more complicated, as his intro ended with him seeing part of the city burning upon his return – specifically, the section of city just outside the walls on his side of the river!
Rholand: (Intro Theme – Trauma Center OST)
Rholand was roused from his slumber one morning (after he had spent most of the night treating the city’s less fortunate at his personal clinic) by a knock on his door. It was Sergeant Grau, who had been re-instated into the city guard following the mess at Longacre, which revealed Rastin was Lamm’s mole and not him. Unfortunately the guardsman did not seem happy, as he immediately launched into a spiel after Rholand answered the door. His sister-in-law’s kid was sick, and he trusted Rholand a lot more than the Abadarian quack that she was certain to waste her savings on.
Ever happy to help, Rholand gathered up his things as quick as he could and followed the guardsman out of the city to Trail’s End, a primarily Varisian community on the far side of the Jeggare River and outside the protection of the city’s walls. Grau escorted him to a small decently cared-for house near the middle of the community. They found Tayce Saldado, Grau’s sister-in-law, and her two sons in the small downstairs room. Along with Ishani Dharti, who was brewing a small pot of herbal tea in the fireplace. Grau was not happy to see the Abadarian cleric, and he and Tayce went outside to have a heated argument over it while Rholand got the mission briefing from Ishani.
Apparently Tayce’s daughter Brienna had fallen quite ill recently – Ishani didn’t know what to make of it. It seemed somewhat similar to several other illnesses the Abadarian healer had encountered in his travels, but the differences had prevented him from making a positive diagnosis. Worse, the Saldados could not afford to pay him for a Remove Disease to simply make the problem go away, nor did he have such a spell available even if they did as several of his own brother clerics had fallen gravely ill recently – and they had the same thing as the girl now did.
With that information in mind, Rholand went upstairs to see Brienna and make his own analysis. Since Rholand was only a fourth level oracle at this point, there was little he could actually do to cure the girl. Nonetheless, I turned the examination into a bit of a mini-game where he made various skill checks to gather what information he could on this strange new disease. He got that it seemed to be a disease spread by bodily contact rather than airborne, and I think maybe that it was an odd fungal infection rather than a virus (following an excellent point made on these forums that Vorel’s Phage was a fungus, and thus Blood Veil would also be fungal in nature).
In the end, at this point the only thing Rholand could do was clean the girl’s sores, and help Ishani give her the herbal medicine, while instructing Tayce on how to care for her child and keep her going. His Heal check managed to boost Brienna’s save enough that she made her save versus the disease the following day, and since Rholand promised that he would come back until the girl was cured (although we never got the chance to play that bit out as the party had bigger worries shortly), I handwaved that Brienna eventually made a full recovery. However, as a compromise to the dire outcome promised in the AP if Brienna was left uncured, I had Tayce catch Blood Veil off-screen, and eventually be shuffled off to the Shrine of the Blessed Maiden where she was taken below and studied by Ramoska.
As Rholand was leaving the Saldado residence, it was late at night, and suddenly there were cries of alarm from the docks on the Trail’s End side of the river, and plumes of smoke began to billow up into the sky. Rholand naturally ran to investigate.
Cid: Wake the White Wolf by Miracle of Sound
Cid’s intro began with him having a fairly boring guard duty atop one of the city’s watchtowers along the Jeggare River. Instead of being allowed to participate in the day’s festivities, DeVries had assigned him guard duty as part of the Hellknights’ begrudging assistance to the city guard. The two guardsmen Cid was standing watch with weren’t bad folks, but they did little to soothe his sour mood. Fortunately, getting this s!#+ job seemed more a result of DeVries just not liking Cid (and vice versa), and Cid being a lowly armiger (an unproven member of the Order) rather than DeVries actually suspecting Cid of being part of Trinia’s escape. If he had believed Cid was part of that, Cid would likely be dead right now (or so he thought at the time).
The monotony of the watch was broken up by the arrival of the flying Hellknight officer – Mistress of Blades Maidrayne Vox, second-in-command of the Order. Vox was out meeting with the various Hellknights to see that they weren’t getting into any more trouble than was proper. She was also at least nominally responsible for ensuring that armigers developed the skills that they needed to become proper Helknights. She hadn’t had the opportunity before now to meet with Cid, so now was his chance to ask any questions. One of which basically boiled down to “Why is DeVries such an a@!+&&#?”
Vox found that amusing, and explained that while yes, he could be an a&**&~%, he usually had a reason for it. Cid likely just hadn’t gotten enough experience yet to see the upsides to DeVries’ behavior. They chatted for a few more minutes, and then the guards interrupted with a cry of alarm. Two boats were entering the mouth of the river, and were not listening to the nearest tower’s calls to identify themselves.
As the cried out challenges became angry commands became dire threats, the boats continued on into the river, where they could then proceed further into the docks of the city and become lost amongst all of the other boats docked on either side of the river. The protocol for this situation was clear – a barrage of ballista bolts into the ships to sink them before they could get out of range or the ballistas no longer had a clear shot due to all of the other boats in the harbor. There was just one problem with that – a magical bank of fog suddenly billowed out from the ships, obscuring them from view.
Cursing at this sudden display of magic from the invaders, Vox cast Fly on Cid commanded him to get down there, and once aboard, smash this globe onto the deck. It would activate a dispel magic effect that should remove the boats’ magical defenses and allow the ballistae to do their job. Of course, Cid would need to get out of there then as the globe would also dispel the Fly spell Vox had just placed on him, and the only place those boats would be going was the bottom of the river. Vox meanwhile would go and gather the other Hellknights to put together air support in the event the ballistae were not sufficient.
Without hesitation Cid leapt into the air and flew into the thick bank of fog, dodging the few blind ballistae shots that the guards were firing. He landed on the lead boat – a courier ship called the “Direption” . . . hey . . . why does that name sound familiar. He ordered the handful of people on-board to surrender, and when they didn’t he easily cut them down (they were just commoner sailors, basically. No threat to him.) He then smashed the globe onto the deck as ordered, and the magic was dispelled.
The ballistae tore into the two ships, focusing on the larger cargo freighter that was behind the Direption. Blasted full of holes, that vessel eventually sank beneath the waves in the deepest part of the river. The Direption meanwhile, took a hit to the rudder, knocking it off-course from somewhere towards the docks in Korvosa’s Midpoint to across the river . . . Trail’s End. The last thing Cid remembers seeing was the ship approaching the docks there at full speed ahead, and then a thunderous crash as the flaming, battered ship crashed into the docks.
Oliver: Oliver’s Intro Theme – Come with Me Now by the Kongos
Oliver’s day began with him hanging out with his burgeoning gang in the house he had bought during the middle of Book One. There was a knock at the door, and Oliver’s gang of thugs scattered, as they all suddenly had things to do, when it turned out to be Field Marshall Kroft herself. Surprisingly, Kroft hadn’t come here on business, nor to arrest anybody – instead, she had come to invite Oliver to dinner.
Although it wasn’t really a romantic dinner, Kroft was quite to nervously explain, as much as a favor. Every year as was tradition, Kroft would go home and visit her mother and have dinner. And if she didn’t show up with a date for Mother to coo over, the old woman would spend the entire rest of the evening harping on how she needed to find a man. There was not a whole lot of men Kroft either trusted enough to expose them to her mother, nor were willing to endure the old woman’s endless barrage of questions. She had taken Vencarlo one year, but that had ended in complete and total disaster, and with the rioting and all, she hadn’t had time to make other arrangements. So Oliver was her last and only hope of avoiding an entire evening being badgered by her mother – could he please do this favor for her?
Considering Oliver had been flirting with the idea of getting in Kroft’s pants (a dangerous proposition when you had aspirations of replacing Gaedren Lamm as the Napolean of Crime in the city), this was probably as close as he was going to get to having a date with the normally unflappable field marshall. So he said yes, and then set up trying to figure out how to make himself presentable for the dinner. He went to the local bordello for advice and grooming.
As the sun began to set, Oliver went to Kroft’s apartment in Midpoint. Knocking at the door, he heard Kroft call out “just a minute”, and then a minute later as promised someone answered the door. It was Kroft, but she looked like a completely different person, with her hair neatly done up and dressed in a frilly dress rather than her customary full plate mail. (I even swapped out the token that I normally used for Kroft for one made with her picture from Book Six). She looked dazzling, and Oliver didn’t look half-bad himself, and together the two went arm-in-arm to go see Kroft’s mother. Who lived in Trail’s End on the far side of the river (starting to get the common thread between all of the intros here?)
Rosalina Kroft was the consummate withered old gypsy, and unabashed gossip. She bombarded Oliver with questions from the minute he walked in the door, and also let slip a few details about her daughter that had Kroft burying her face in her hands. There was one other, unexpected guest who arrived a little later though, to make the evening even more awkward. Silas Kroft – Cressida’s older brother, who unlike his sister had gotten involved in the other, darker side of the law.
There was a lot of tension between the two siblings, and well-deserved as Kroft had arrested Silas a number of years ago, which got him locked up in Longacre. He managed to land on his feet though, as he got out and left the city, rumored to have gotten involved with the Scarnetti crime family, a dangerous group of Varisians criminals who had a network throughout Varisia – with the notable exception of Korvosa itself. To be fair though, apparently Silas had tried to drown Cressida when they were kids, so both of them had reason to dislike the other.
Finally though, the dinner ended, and the two of them walked off into the night. Hearing music from along the docks, Kroft guided Oliver that way. A small group of musicians had started up, and a crowd of locals had gathered and started dancing as was Varisian custom. Kroft asked Oliver if he’d mind joining in, something that Oliver wasn’t particularly thrilled in as he wasn’t much of a dancer. But he gave it a shot nonetheless, even if his perform roll ended up being rather terrible. Kroft’s wasn’t much better, so at least the two of them had something in common to laugh about.
Or at least, could have shared a laugh about on their way back to Midpoint, where it not for the ballistas along the river suddenly firing at two dark ships coming up the river. One of which suddenly veered off-course and began to head straight for them. Oliver managed to catch a glimpse of the flag flying from the mast – a variance of the skull and crossbones, with a black background and a white skeletal hand, middle finger upraised (Rolth’s little joke), before the boat crashed into the docks.
There was chaos everywhere – the boat had been set alight by several of the ballistae bolts, which had spread onto the docks, people were injured by flying debris, etc. etc. But then from a hole that had been torn in the beached vessel’s side from its impact with the docks came a loud, inhuman snarling. And gaunt corpse-like figures came dashing out through the hole, swarming out onto the docks. Zombies. (Yes, I turned the Blood Veil plague into your stereotypical zombie plague outbreak, more or less. Don’t judge me. :p )
And we ended the session there, as those four intros had literally taken up our entire night. Ooops.
Now you've done it -- after looking up the background behind the origins of Wake the White Wolf, I want a Witcher (Warlock?) archetype of Bloodrager.
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By the way, what do the players' builds look like? (Maybe post when you get closer to caught up with the campaign in progress?)
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Also, I think you've already ensured that -- barring a cosmic coincidence that would be grounds for suspicion of an information leak between realities :-) -- Abrogail II won't be a 2.0 version of Ileosa. At least not in your campaign world.
Actually, doing some more reading up on Bloodragers, including this guide, now I'm thinking that a Bloodrager archetype might be what you want for your variety of self-buffing combat monster Hellknight. Hellknight Bloodrager archetype here.
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Whew, been a while! Past couple weeks have been hectic. Still trucking along having sessions though – next one will be sixty-three (and not nearly the end of Book Three :( ). So we’re about a third of the way through getting caught up on this crazy train now.
As for the Witcher, from what I can remember from the gams they’re not warlocks. Instead they are mutant superhumans, created by witches for protection and companionship (hence the name? >> ). That was how they got started, by the game’s timeline they’re basically wandering monster hunters (since they have superhuman agility and stamina they’re pretty good at it). Their skills range from pretty goods swordsmanship to a knowledge of alchemy to monster lore to a few simple magical tricks.
As such, I almost think that something like an investigator might make a better fit – you’d get the passable swordsmanship, alchemy use, and knowledge skills to make a pretty decent monster hunter. I *think* you can get rogue talents as part of your investigator talent things as well, which would let you take the arcane adept talent to pick up a couple first level spells to mimic the Witcher’s very basic study of magic.
Anyway, onward to the next session!
So the party’s various trials and revelries during the Feast of St. Alika ended in a beaching of the Direption on the docks at Trail’s End. As the reveling Varisians started to scatter, growls and snarls echoed from a long gash torn in the side of the ship. A few moments later, a dozen gaunt humans with ashen skin emerged from the ship – zombies.
But these were not just any zombies, oh no. These were Blood Veil zombies, also known as Those Damn Zombies, a homebrew splice of the Apocalypse zombie with the Alchemical zombie templates. This meant that they were fast (two attacks, no staggered), had a decent AC of 16, infected Blood Veil on a hit (Fort DC 16), explode upon death for another infection attempt (no damage, just another Fort save), moved at 40’, had a climb speed, I gave them d12 for HD as that was what undead had in 3.5 (I’m aware of the changes PF made to the undead type, but since it’s my favorite monster type, I buffed them back up), *and* on a whim I gave them a unique “tackle” combat maneuver, where they would make a Trip attempt, provoking an AoO (they’re zombies, they don’t care about AoOs), and if they succeeded on knocking the target prone, would get a free slam attack on that target. In short, these were some seriously juiced up CR2 zombies. My players deserved it. :-p
Fortunately for Oliver, only six of them exited either side of the boat, they were a bit far away from him and Kroft at the start of the fight, and more interested in tearing apart the much closer varisian party-goers. This gave him time to draw his sword (if I remember correctly he was in a chain shirt rather than his normal plate since he wanted to look nice), and for Kroft to down a potion of Mage Armor, grab hold of her cloak and say the command word to turn it into a light shield, and draw a short sword from a thigh sheath underneath her dress (what, she’s the Captain of the City Guard. Of *course* she’s always going to be ready for trouble!)
They moved in on the swarm of zombies, pulling two of them out of the crowd of six and started dueling them while the other four feasted on the varisians they had brought down (whose bodies horrifically started to quiver and shake as they began to transform into more Blood Veil Zombies). Even with only an AC of 16, the zombies could take a ridiculous amount of punishment (each having somewhere between 30-45 HP thanks to four or five D12 HD).
The next round, Cid crawled out of the river and onto the docks next to the boat, on the far side from Oliver, having been momentarily stunned after he was thrown off the ship by its impact against the docks. Rather than run towards the safety of Oliver and Kroft, he decided to be a badass and pick a fight with the six zombies on his side of the boat. The zombie he attacked was happy to oblige, demonstrating its Tackle ability to hilarious effect as it toppled down on top of the unlucky Hellknight. Seeing him prone and without any of his defensive spells up, I merrily decided a second zombie came over to join the party and stomp on Cid’s face, while I had the opportunity to do so.
Fortunately for Cid, one of the onlookers in the crowd on his side of the boat was a young Shaoti warrior, and rather than flee like the rest of the cowardly Korvosans he chose to stand and fight, hacking into one of the abominations with his greataxe. Well, one of the other zombies *not* currently doing a tap dance on Cid’s chest, but still – three of them tied up attacking people that could fight back, instead of one-shotting the commoners to turn into even moar Blood Veil Zombies! I think you can begin to see how quickly out of control my version of Blood Veil was going to spiral. At this point I think Kroft and Oliver finally managed to drop one of their zombies, revealing their last unpleasant surprise of exploding into a fine infectious mist of Blood Veil spores on death.
Third round, Rholand arrived on the scene, and went to go help Cid – by Channeling Energy into the entire swarm of six zombies. All six creatures shrieked with rage as the holy fire burned them (but not especially badly as most made their Will saves) . . . and turned their *full* attention on the man who had just called down that fire. Rholand got mobbed on the zombies’ turn, dragged to the ground and mercilessly curbstomped, although due to poor rolls it wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds. It also gave Cid a chance to get back up onto his feet without getting pounded with AoOs, and hurriedly cast some defensive spells while crying for his mommy (okay, that last part was a bit of an exaggeration. But spending his first round of combat getting ingloriously spear-tackled to the ground and gnawed on by a couple not-so-shambling corpses did terrify him a little).
Kroft and Oliver continued to do reasonably well holding their own alone on their side, although the damage that these zombies were doing was starting to add up. Worse, with no more helpless Varisians around to gnaw on, the lot of them were starting to close in on Oliver and Kroft. And between their lowered ACs due to not wearing full-plate (an argument for glamered armor if I ever heard it), and with Kroft not being able to power-attack with the light short sword very well, they weren’t making fast enough headway against their zombies.
Vaz’em appeared the next round, abandoning Oliver and Kroft to their fate as he tried to save Rholand by skewering one of the zombies with his claws. It survived both of Vaz’em’s claws tearing through its back, a rare accomplishment thus far in the game, and the party started to get a *real* inkling of just how badly screwed they were. Fortunately, Vaz’em’s attack pulled some of the zombies off of Rholand, returning the favor that he did for Cid. I think he got spear tackled to the ground as well, which would become a recurring theme for most of the zombie fights to come (they loved their Catfood!)
Rholand eventually got back up to his feet safely, continuing to pump channel energy into the crowd and I think finally dropped the one that Vaz’em gored. Cid got in on the headstomping action as well with a Shocking Grasp spellstrike which probably dropped another one. The Shaoti warrior took his last swing as well, before getting double-striked in the face and going down for good. A couple Sable Marines also showed up at this point, unleashing a fusillade of crossbow bolts that struck several of the zombies, doing minimal damage but every little bit helped.
Slowly, the zombies finally started to drop, but the party was taking a real beating from trying to engage all of the zombies at once (I had figured they would tackle one side at a time, and leave the ones that were content to eat killed people alone – nope, not my players. It kept the zombies from running amok in the city, chasing down fleeing commoners and making the problem worse, but it also meant that they took the brutal brunt of the super zombies’ attention).
Finally, Kroft went down from one of the last zombies still standing on her side, and I broke into a cold sweat as I pondered how to get her out of this particular situation since, being Apocalypse zombies hybrids, they all had Brain Eating as well, which meant after dropping a foe they would spend the next turn Coup-De-Gracing the unfortunate person as they cracked open their skull and slurped out their brains.
Fortunately for Kroft, along with the Sable Marines making another strafing run, Vox and two Hellknights finally showed up, delivering a magic missile barrage that felled the last zombie on Oliver’s side before it could finish Kroft off. On the far side, Vaz’em, Cid, and Rholand managed to wipe out the last of the zombies. I ruled that any that died from a Channel Energy’s positive energy blast did not do their infectious explosion, as the holy energy destroyed the blood veil spores entirely – this saved them from a few explosions, although with the ridiculous amount of fort saves each person had to make between the double slam attacks and the explosions, pretty much everyone present had the beginnings of Blood Veil in them.
I had planned on having some of the people that the Blood Veil zombies killed rise as Blood Veil zombies themselves during the fight, but after seeing the party was standing on its last legs after dealing with twelve of the bastards, I decided to show a little mercy and say that they were able to behead the bodies before they could fully turn. Likewise, I held off on the other occupant of the Direption’s hold revealing himself at this point in time.
So yeah – twelve b+$++~** CR2 monsters against an APL 4 party is a really rough time for said party if they just wade into the middle of them without any more AoE than Channel Energy. Who knew? I’ll TPK them yet, although this wasn’t the last time thus far that I came within a hairsbreadth of pulling it off. :-p
After that mess though the party quickly realized that they had probably just saved the city a lot of grief, as if the Direption had docked at Midpoint as was its original destination, the zombies likely would have rampaged throughout the even larger crowds on that side of the river, spreading Blood Veil through a significant portion of the populace and risking this turning into the Walking Dead, D&D Edition. That still left them with questions over what to do now, and how to make sure they weren’t infected either (meta gaming bastards, one and all!)
The first question was solved by Zellara, who through her connection to Vaz’em had him ask the group to head over to her house. She provided them with a Harrow draw to try to provide answers on the origins of this plague, and I managed to once again ad-lib a fairly good reading, heavy on the apocalyptic and hopeless (aided by pulling The Avalanche, The Liar, and the Demon’s Lantern – along with the Foreign Trader again, heehee).
Grumbling about the city being doomed, the party headed to the Church of Abadar to try and get some Remove Disease cast on themselves. On the way, I rolled a random encounter, which actually come up as an actual random encounter this time instead of nothing. So, I had screams come from a nearby building, followed by two more Blood Veil zombies bursting out onto the street, chasing a few people – evidentially the plague wasn’t so easily stopped despite the party’s heroics at the docks.
Only two zombies the party handled pretty easily, and then they moved on to the church of Abadar. Rholand didn’t hide his holy symbol and thus got mobbed by the crowds surrounding the building, but as usual he managed to fast talk his way out of it, stating that he was going to go in there and convince the Abadarians to come out and heal everyone (Ishani wasn’t so happy with him about that). Inside, they learned from Ishani that the place was a mess, and that the church of Abadar was already fighting the plague within their own ranks, and it was spreading quickly despite their best efforts to contain it.
Ishani knew that the city needed to be quarantined immediately, or this could spread across all of Varisia. So he needed to convince the queen of the necessity for Korvosa to close its gates immediately, and mobilize every available resource towards combating this rapidly-forming, mysterious plague. Given the crowd outside, he was hoping that the party could escort him to the palace so that he could speak with the queen directly.
The party agreed, and their reward was a few castings from one of the Church’s now-precious Wand of Remove Disease. Several commoners undoubtedly died as a result of the party not sucking it up and trying to get better naturally, but that was what commoners did for fun (get murdered) anyway, so whatever.
At that point we ended the session, with the party leveling up to Level 5. I’ll try to post what I can remember of their builds with the next session update.
Great, keep them coming!
Whew, been a while! Past couple weeks have been hectic. {. . .}
I know what you mean -- my job has been doing that for the last few weeks (not so much this week fortunately, but still, the effects persist) . . .
As for the Witcher, from what I can remember from the gams they’re not warlocks. Instead they are mutant superhumans, created by witches for protection and companionship (hence the name? >> ). That was how they got started, by the game’s timeline they’re basically wandering monster hunters (since they have superhuman agility and stamina they’re pretty good at it). Their skills range from pretty goods swordsmanship to a knowledge of alchemy to monster lore to a few simple magical tricks.
The superhuman stamina thing with a few magical tricks does sound sort of up Bloodrager's alley, although agility doesn't match so well.
As such, I almost think that something like an investigator might make a better fit – you’d get the passable swordsmanship, alchemy use, and knowledge skills to make a pretty decent monster hunter. I *think* you can get rogue talents as part of your investigator talent things as well, which would let you take the arcane adept talent to pick up a couple first level spells to mimic the Witcher’s very basic study of magic.
{. . .}
You've got the Investigator about right, although from your description, Witchers sound more martial. Maybe an Investigator archetype that gains some martial weapon proficiency would be the way to go. Or maybe just use a build that first dips into some martial class (Ranger?).
I still like the idea of Hellknight Bloodrager and/or Magus archetypes, though. Bloodrager (without any archetype) even eventually gets a mechanic that enables casting a self-targeted spell (usually some kind of self-buff) in the course of activating Bloodrage, although you have to wait all the way to level 11 for it to start coming online (with Greater Bloodrage).
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Heeheehee, and now to introduce the opponent I held back during the zombie fight, for fear of killing the party. As it turned out, that was the correct impression as it was nearly a TPK with a fully rested party against this guy! Sort of intended given that I wanted this guy’s arrival throughout Book Two to herald that s#&%, as they say, was about to get real.
So, party builds!
Rholand - Human Oracle of Life 4/Dreamspun Sorceror 1
Healing, buffing, social face of the party due to personality of player and character. He pretty much healed used Channel Energy or buffed someone with Bull STR/Enlarge Person.
Vaz'em - Catfolk Ninja 5
Since he was a catfolk, he used his natural weapon claws pretty much exclusively except for when he needed to fight at range (then he pulled out an old shortbow). Apparently the player has his full build planned out, as now that we're in Book Three he's used armblades instead now that he can get multiple attacks with them from BAB iteratives.
Cid - Human Magus 5
Cid uses a falcata for the x3 crit, boosts it to Keen using Arcana Pool, and either casts Shield, Mirror Image, or Shocking Grasp. The Chill Touch during this fight was probably one of the biggest changes from his normal tactics in some time.
Oliver - Human Fighter 3/Cavalier 2 (or something like that)
Oliver is a sword and board fighter using a keen cutlass. He does what he can to basically be the party tank, although his AC is starting to noticeably drop against level-appropriate foes now in Book Three, and at the end of Book Two. While he had Travis, he took the feat that lets the first four levels of non-cavalier count for the purpose of boosting Travis. Which means that Travis was now a 5th level animal companion essentially, and he would prove to be an invaluable asset as a secondary tank for the party throughout Book Two.
So the session began with the party escorting Ishani back out through the crowd to the royal palace. I can’t recall how they got back out through the crowd, but I’m pretty sure it was with Rholand diplomancing the crowd yet again. Leaving out a side entrance and being a bit more circumspect with identifying themselves as having a divine character and member of the Abadarian church may have also done the trick, although with the exception of Vaz’em subtlety tends to not be the group’s strong suit.
Eventually the group manages to get to the castle after passing evidence of several more zombie uprisings that the city guard, grey maidens, and Hellknights managed to put down, although not without casualties (these Blood Veil zombies were really ridiculous, I loved them). The Grey Maidens weren’t thrilled to see them, although that may be due to the fact that there was a small crowd of people around the gates demanding to speak to the queen and for her to do something about this zombie-making sickness. Unlike the bleating commoner filth, however, the party was recognized by Sabrina Merrin when she came out to investigate what all the shouting was about. Her face still covered by the metal mask, her expression was unreadable as she commanded the grey maidens to let the party in, and to disperse the crowd that was now on the verge of a panic-induced riot.
The party and Ishani were quickly ushered into the throne room where Ileosa awaited. She had heard of the chaos rapidly engulfing the city, even that it seemed to be some sort of issue with zombies, although she was skeptical of Ishani’s claims that they needed to quarantine the entire city, *now*, or lose the entire continent of Varisia. Having seen this sickness first-hand and nearly gotten their faces jointly clawed off by it, the party was pretty insistent that Ileosa take this outbreak as gravely serious as Ishani was claiming.
Ileosa countered by raising the point that did the party have any idea what the economic impact of closing the city entirely would be? She needed to be certain that a full quarantine was necessary because the city’s merchants would be howling for her head, and justifiably so – and given the city was just coming out of the anarchy following Eodred’s death, Korvosa’s economy was already on shaky ground.
The party was adamant that this quarantine was necessary to save the lives of Korvosa’s citizens, even if it didn’t turn out to be the disaster that Ishani feared. And since Ileosa still hadn’t completed her transformation into queen b!%!& of the universe just yet, she did still care about the safety of her subjects. So she sighed, and gave in to the demands of the party and Ishani. Once she made up her mind, she began barking out orders.
She first called in her personal physician, Dr. Davaulus, whom the party had briefly met a few sessions ago. She gave him the job of coordinating the quarantine and researching this plague – what was causing it, how it was spread, and how to best combat it. He mentioned that he might know some people (heeheeheehee) who would be able to help him in his work, and serve as his eyes and ears.
As a result, Ileosa assigned Sabrina to organize the Grey Maidens into a bodyguard force for Davaulus’s men. People were scared and it was not inconceivable that they would lash out – to say nothing of the infected turning into extremely dangerous zombies when they died.
Ileosa also apologized to Ishani, but due to his status as a cleric of Abadar, it was necessary for the Crimson Throne to appear neutral, and making a cleric the head of the plague-fighting efforts would be seen by some as favoritism. Nonetheless, she hoped Ishani would be able to work with Davaulus and convince his fellow Abadarians to cooperate with finding a cure and *not* charge people for it! The throne would pick up the tab, if necessary.
No one else was here for the queen to boss around at the moment, but she informed the party that she would be organizing a full council of war between all of the leaders of the city (Hellknights, Churchs, etc.) as soon as possible to ensure that everyone was on the same page within the quarantine (no slaughtering anyone that dared so much as cough, DeVries, you a%~$!*~!) That would likely take a bit of time to arrange, however, and so the party was dismissed while Ileosa went and made the arrangements. The meeting ended up being scheduled for the next evening, and so the party had some time to kill.
Although not a lot, as it turned out, as later that day Grau came to them once more in a panic. The grey maidens were rounding up everyone from Trail’s End, forcing them into the city. This shouldn’t have been much of a surprise given that they had *just* gotten done convinced Ileosa of the necessity of getting everyone into the city and under quarantine, *now*, before the countryside was full of roaming swarms of super Blood Veil zombies. But the party put on their grumpy pants anyway and went down to investigate.
Sure enough, they found a group of grey maidens, directed by a vaguely sinister man in a bird-shaped plague doctor’s mask, rounding up Varisians within Trail’s End, including Tayce and the still-sick Brienna and the two boys. Thankfully no one really raised any eyebrows about how quickly the Grey Maidens and Plague Doctors had gotten together to organize a response (only a few hours – may have been the next day in-game, can’t quite remember) and they’re already setting up the quarantine? They did, however, give the plague doctor s+$& about moving all of these people. Into the city. So that everyone was inside and nobody outside the city could go and spread the infection (hopefully) anywhere else. Like they had all talked about with the queen and Ishani just five minutes in real-time ago. Player logic. ><
Anyway, the plague doctor didn’t have time for these busybody heroes, although he did try to explain that they were moving everyone inside the city, even if it did rip them away from their homes and dump them onto the city streets, so that the plague could be contained. Before things could start getting too hostile between the doctor and Rholand (with the rest of the party backing him up), there was a series of screams from a nearby alley. Followed by a large (although not Large size) suit of plate mail armor, sans helmet, stomping into view. It was pretty clear he was the source of the screams as the Grey Maidens and plague doctor all got hit with his fear aura and ran away screaming, leaving just the party (now level 5 and thus immune to the frightened part, just the shaken, which Oliver I believe failed) to face it.
The suit of armor was . . . overjoyed(?) to see them all again, and announced that Andaisin wanted them dead and he was only too happy to make her wish come true. Combat started pretty much immediately after that, with the Dullahan (a ridiculously supped-up Dullahan with maximum hit points – so 160 HP - when a Dullahan is already CR7 vs. a level 5 party) drawing a pair of sawtooth sabers that each ignited with a cold blue flame. (whee, duel wielding slashing weapons so he can get his free keen & frost properties on both of them!)
The Dullahan knew each of them by name, and called them out as they found, giving special attention to Oliver, whose heart momentarily froze as the monstrosity promised to cut his head off. (Ability to Stagger Oliver and make every crit auto-confirm, sadly he passed the Will save even with the -2 from the Dullahan knowing his name). The only person that the Dullahan didn’t seem to know was Cid, who simply referred to him as the “Hellknight” and largely ignored Cid while the monster laid waste to the rest of the party (well, both the grudge and the fact that Cid put up Mirror Image at the start of the fight).
While the characters remained oblivious, OOC of the players suddenly had a flash of insight and started excitedly yelling the name of their adversary to each other, which I confirmed for them. Gaedren Lamm had come back from the dead for his first attempt at avenging his own death! And he was back with a new theme song from the same band (love when I can use multiple songs to create a sort of “theme band” for a character).
I don’t think Gaedren managed to actually crit once with his keen sabers, but that’s probably a very good thing because with his Improved Two-Weapon fighting and high strength, he absolutely laid waste to the party (minus Cid). Generally he hated everyone equally, so he was only too happy to spread the pain around, twirling his blades about as he pirouetted and slashed as the party came at him from all directions (they kept trying to flank him, he’d 5’ step out of it on his turn and lay out the hurt on whoever was close-by, minus Cid who he just taunted with promises of killing him after everyone else was dead).
Even with 160 HP, AC 21, and Fast Healing 5 (and SR 14), Gaedren’s health dropped like a rock as the party hammered him. He also got lucky, as Cid cast Chill Touch early on the in the fight and tried to make him run like a b!&@* (I really hate that it can just scare any undead away, no matter the HD). First one got absorbed by spell resistance, and on the second one he made his Will save (barely). So he managed to stay and fight, and if the fight had gone on too much longer I think we would have had a TPK. Well, Cid probably would have finished the job since he was untouched, but Rholand and Oliver were both on fumes, and Vaz’em was down. Actually, he would have been cold-stone dead, but when we did the math we discovered that Gaedren’s first hit that turn actually dropped him. So instead Gaedren redirected his second strike that hit Vaz’em to hit Rholand instead, as he was more interested in dropping PCs and sowing terror than outright killing them.
His health hitting that magical number below 50 HP (I had decided ahead of time he would run after taking 100 HP of damage), Gaedren decided that now would be a good time to flee. So ignobly turning tail, he ran back down the alleyway, to the edge of the river where he promptly threw himself into, rapidly sinking into the depths of the Jeggare River with promises that he would see them all again soon. Cid was not impressed at his exit, but then Cid hadn’t felt the bite of the monster’s sawtooth sabers either, nor nearly died from them like poor Vaz’em. Despite the near half-TPK, this actually was a pretty good boss fight for the party as Gaedren held his own instead of getting CC’d or swarmed under like most single foes tend to do in PF. Having a truly ridiculous number of HP and all of the Dullahan’s incredible array of b!#&**%$ probably helped. :-p
And on that grim but victorious note, we ended the session.
So, I knew way back during Book On that I was going to bring Gaedren Lamm back, possibly several times – once as Andaisin’s lackey, and then again in Scarwall at the very least. I had figured Rolth would simply re-animate him, but the party cutting off his head put a crimp in that plan. Until I saw the Dullahan, and I knew that it would be the perfectly ironic monster to use as the base template.
I had considered giving Gaedren 2.0 a ranseur or whatever the exotic slashing high-crit polearm is, to reflect his earlier proficiency with the boarding pike, but I decided to just go for overwhelming power instead so I made him a dual-wielding saber crit-fisher (even though he never managed a crit). Plus, my original draft for Lamm had him dual-wielding a hook and a flensing knife, but I couldn’t find any feats or abilities that would let him hook someone, and then hold them still for sneak attack while he shanked them with the knife. So dual-wielding it was!
As a Dullahan, he was reanimated by Andaisin to serve as her bodyguard and attack dog. Technically by the book she would have had to be some obscene level like 17 to raise Lamm as a Dullahan, but between his evil and the taint of Scarwall on him I figured she managed it as a discounted level. Or bought a really high level scroll of Create Undead. Or something. Whatever. :-p
{. . .}
So, party builds!Rholand - Human Oracle of Life 4/Dreamspun Sorceror 1
Healing, buffing, social face of the party due to personality of player and character. He pretty much healed used Channel Energy or buffed someone with Bull STR/Enlarge Person.
What's the level of Dreamspun Sorcerer for -- going for Mystic Theurge, or just to get the Bloodline Arcana?
Vaz'em - Catfolk Ninja 5
Since he was a catfolk, he used his natural weapon claws pretty much exclusively except for when he needed to fight at range (then he pulled out an old shortbow). Apparently the player has his full build planned out, as now that we're in Book Three he's used armblades instead now that he can get multiple attacks with them from BAB iteratives.
What are the armblades? I can't find these in the d20pfsrd.com Weapons page or the Paizo PRD, or even on Archives of Nethys.
Cid - Human Magus 5
Cid uses a falcata for the x3 crit, boosts it to Keen using Arcana Pool, and either casts Shield, Mirror Image, or Shocking Grasp. The Chill Touch during this fight was probably one of the biggest changes from his normal tactics in some time.
Certainly a good way to go to boost DPR. Although I wonder if the other Hellknights look at him askance for using a Taldan weapon? The lower-ranked Hellknights might not know what a falcata is unless somebody told them, but the pointy-haired boss might know, and they would all recognize it as not their Order's favored weapon.
Oliver - Human Fighter 3/Cavalier 2 (or something like that)
Oliver is a sword and board fighter using a keen cutlass. He does what he can to basically be the party tank, although his AC is starting to noticeably drop against level-appropriate foes now in Book Three, and at the end of Book Two. While he had Travis, he took the feat that lets the first four levels of non-cavalier count for the purpose of boosting Travis. Which means that Travis was now a 5th level animal companion essentially, and he would prove to be an invaluable asset as a secondary tank for the party throughout Book Two.
Is he the Huntmaster Cavalier (has dog and/or bird instead of horse)? Boon Companion is the feat you're looking for for a Cavalier that trades out Expert Trainer. For a Cavalier that DOESN'T trade out Expert Trainer, when you get to level 4, you qualify for the far more awesome Horse Master feat, which lets you count all your levels as your Cavalier level, but then your Animal Companion has to be a mount.
Session Twenty-Four {. . .}
Awesome as before. Really interesting to see the totally different take on the Korvosan government compared to a standard Curse of the Crimson Throne -- actually allied with much of it, instead of the Queen and Hellknights being automatically enemies.
The Dullahan {. . .}
Fauchard (exotic two-handed weapon on the d20pfsrd Weapons page linked above) gives you Reach and Trip, and 18-20/x2 with 1d10 base damage. Actually would also be good for an AoO+Crit-fishing+Trip Magus(*) if an archetype existed that worked well with two-handed weapons.
(*)Or Eldritch Knight, if the recent SLA FAQ nerf hadn't hosed all Eldritch Knight builds that do not include being an Orc Scarred Witch Doctor (or Half-Orc, but not as good).
Yeah, Rholand's original plan was to go Mystic Theurge - he eventually realized shortly thereafter that pushing back his oracle spells even more wasn't worth it. So he trained out of it to get another level of oracle instead, shortly after actually taking the first level or two of Sorceror. And just when I was starting to line up some nice nightmares for him to suffer (I originally thought it was DreamSCAR, not DreamSPUN sorcerer, heeheehehee).
I mean Claw Blades for Vaz'em, a catfolk racial weapon. Sorry - really wish there was some sort of goofy impractical armblade weapon though.
And yes, Cid using a falcata is probably just one of the many reasons why DeVries hates his guts. :-p Although DeVries is one to talk, given that I've got plans to make him a brawler-type, in that he grapples people and then beats them to death with his bare hands (hence the "Boneclaw" nickname that he's been given). I'm unfortunately rather doubtful that he'll live up to the hype, given that I've had rumors circulating that he at some point beat a Pit Fiend to death with his bare hands in the Hellknight arena. Not sure if that was for his official "have to beat a devil in a cage match" to become a Hell knight, or simply for fun, or whatever.
Yes, Oliver is a Huntmaster cavalier - that's how he had Trevor, and in Book Two, Travis. Boon Companion was the feat he took, which caused Travis to go from being a fairly minor annoyance to almost a fifth party member between his damage and AC.
And yeah, Fauchard was the weapon I was looking at. I ultimately decided just to go with the higher dpr build of a dual-wielder, which seemed to pay off given that Gaedren fileted the party pretty good the first fight. Although his luck ultimately didn't hold out beyond that first fight. ><
And yeah, where as the first book was mostly just introducing all of the elements and getting the party noticed by the queen, Book Two was meant to be all about the party becoming the queen's friends. As such I put in a lot more interaction with Ileosa herself, and tried to make her likeable if a bit headstrong and, well, crazy. It took a while, but I eventually managed to overcome the party's paranoia that she was just going to wake up one day and declare "Y'know, I really hate these guys. Off with their heads!"
Pretty much just in time for the party to go back to fearing and wanting to remove her from power in Book Three as she hit the sharp drop-off of her slide into Evil. That being said, it's not like the party ever gave up on the idea of removing her, just that they wanted to do it because she was clearly unstable and the stress of ruling a city that was falling apart probably wasn't the healthiest thing for her. Rather than, y'know, "Evil queen is Evil, we must get rid of her!"
Yeah, Rholand's original plan was to go Mystic Theurge - he eventually realized shortly thereafter that pushing back his oracle spells even more wasn't worth it. So he trained out of it to get another level of oracle instead, shortly after actually taking the first level or two of Sorceror. And just when I was starting to line up some nice nightmares for him to suffer (I originally thought it was DreamSCAR, not DreamSPUN sorcerer, heeheehehee).
I mean Claw Blades for Vaz'em, a catfolk racial weapon. Sorry - really wish there was some sort of goofy impractical armblade weapon though.
Is this the Catfolk natural attack (Cat's Claws) alternate racial trait (that replaces Natural Hunter), or some manufactured weapon that Catfolk who DON'T have this alternate racial trait use to compensate for not having it?
And yes, Cid using a falcata is probably just one of the many reasons why DeVries hates his guts. :-p Although DeVries is one to talk, given that I've got plans to make him a brawler-type, in that he grapples people and then beats them to death with his bare hands (hence the "Boneclaw" nickname that he's been given). I'm unfortunately rather doubtful that he'll live up to the hype, given that I've had rumors circulating that he at some point beat a Pit Fiend to death with his bare hands in the Hellknight arena. Not sure if that was for his official "have to beat a devil in a cage match" to become a Hell knight, or simply for fun, or whatever.
A Pit Fiend would be awfully high level for a Hellknight's initiation rite. Speaking of which, finding a CR-appropriate Devil for a Hellknight's initiation rite isn't so easy for a character seeking initiation at the earliest possible time (6th level) -- I found Magaav, but most non-3rd-party Devils are either too few HD (has to be more than your own HD) or several HD too high, and even the ones that are close can Teleport/Greater Teleport away unless your Hellknight Order is nice enough to let you borrow an Phase-Locking weapon (fortunately, they don't get to save against this, but I think their Spell Resistance still applies, and it isn't in the list of Magus Arcane Pool weapon enhancements), or you manage to cast Dimensional Anchor on them (same problem, but you also have to avoid missing, and it isn't on the Magus spell list). Best to try to find a slightly advanced version of one of the lesser Devils and/or trick one into sticking around and fighting you to the death.
Yes, Oliver is a Huntmaster cavalier - that's how he had Trevor, and in Book Two, Travis. Boon Companion was the feat he took, which caused Travis to go from being a fairly minor annoyance to almost a fifth party member between his damage and AC.
The Curse of the Crimson Throne PbP (which is also pretty good, but seems more conventional) that I have been following (although I am currently way behind due to work) also had a Huntmaster Cavalier in it for a while, although that one didn't multiclass, and yes, in there too, having a big dog was really nice. Unfortunately, the campaign lost that player (and 2 others) all within a short time. :-( (Got 2 replacements last time I checked, but still definitely down in party strength.)
Also remembered that you can get an Animal Companion without levels in an Animal Companion class or archetype/Bloodline, but the feat tax is really steep (probably only viable for a pure or nearly pure Fighter): Nature Soul, Animal Ally, Boon Companion (the last being not technically required, but if you don't get it, your Animal Companion is 3 levels behind, unless you gain enough levels in an Animal Companion class, which defeats the purpose of taking this feat chain).
Hey Inspectre,
Loving your journal btw. Anyways, just a minor note about Maidrayne Vox: as written, she is a centaur.
The Order is pretty well detailed in THIS Pathfinder Society Scenario (which I've incorporated into my CotCT campaign pretty easily). The scenario outlines the architecture of their fortress, gives an overview of the overall rank structure, and detail several notable members. Well worth the $4.00 IMO.
UnArcaneElection:
Vaz'em started with using his natural claws that he gets from the alternate racial trait. That gave him two attacks on a full attack (one for each hand as per natural weapons). Now that his BAB is up to +6, he's gone and found the manufactured version of Cat's Claws, which I guess is basically a catfolk racial weapon in the same way a dwarven waraxe is a racial weapon for dwarves. I presume he will be swapping his feats over from the ones that boosted his natural weapons over to ones that support using a pair of the manufactured cat's claws (TWF, etc.)
As for the devil vs. Hellknight cage fight, what usually happens is the Hellknight goes into a gladiator pit. Devil is summoned in, they fight to the death/de-summoning through 0 HP. Generally the pit has some items (silver-spiked pits, traps) that a clever Hellknight can use to their advantage, as the Order wants its members to fight smart as well as skillfully. Since the devil is usually summoned, it has to obey orders which are basically "get down in the pit and fight". If they run away, it counts as a victory for the Hellknight, so teleporting out of the arena (some devils might use it to reposition within the arena though) is not a worry. Unless they had to Gate in something big like a Pit Fiend, in which case it probably goes "ha ha, no" and then leaves to go on a rampage if the Hellknights don't offer it a reward worth its time and the risk of being killed "for real".
Cesare:
Thanks! And y'know, I had heard that about Maidrayne Vox and I was really confused because I was certain that she was human. So I went and checked the back cover of the Guide to Korvosa, which lists the various important people in Korvosa, including Vox.
Here's the entry for her:
Mistress of Blades Maidrayne Vox (LE female human fighter 12), field commander of Order of the Nail.
Apparently she visited some strange land in between when the Guide was published and the PFS Scenario, and got her race changed (human -> centaur) and alignment done as well (LE -> LG). Or someone done goofed in one book or the other. :/
So I had thrown that out, but y'know, thinking about it again . . . maybe I will try to fit in some Reincarnate-gone-wrong hijinks in the campaign somewhere. And given what Cid's discovered about my Order of the Nail, an alignment shift may be in order as well. (Vox tends to be more affably Evil anyway, compared to DeVries "I will effing kill ANYONE who steps out of line."
Also, if anyone can suggest some other modules/scenarios that they think would work good in CotCT (basically anything set in or around Korvosa/Kaer Maga/The Cinderlands), I'd be happy to take a look at them! I havent' added any actual modules yet but I've been looking at The Harrowing, Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale, and Acadamae of Secrets, and will likely mine them for ideas at the very least. On top of all the ridiculous homebrew stuff I've been increasing wedging into the AP. >>
I'm looking forward to expounding on Book Three when the recap finally gets there - it's been a complete mess thus far . . . but an interesting mess if I do say so myself!
UnArcaneElection:
{. . .}
As for the devil vs. Hellknight cage fight, what usually happens is the Hellknight goes into a gladiator pit. Devil is summoned in, they fight to the death/de-summoning through 0 HP. {. . .}
Summoning throws a twist in it:
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A summoned monster cannot summon or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities. Creatures cannot be summoned into an environment that cannot support them. Creatures summoned using this spell cannot use spells or spell-like abilities that duplicate spells with expensive material components (such as wish). {. . .}
So unless the Hellknights in charge of the gladiatorial match used the feat or archetype feature or Bloodline power (I can't remember which, nor where to find it, nor what text to use to search for it) that lets the summoning character override this limitation for the first generation of summoned monsters, the summoned Devil can neither teleport away (even for repositioning) nor summon reinforcements. (Unless something similar was buried somewhere in the horribly organized AD&D 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, 1st Edition AD&D didn't have this limitation.)
A mechanically unrelated but circumstantially related twist is that since this is gladiatorial combat, the Hellknights in Cheliax and similar areas could rake in quite a bit of money with this, and might even be against having many Hellknight initiations out in the wild(*), due to loss of potential revenue.
(*)Probably good to have a FEW, for publicity purposes.
Cesare:
Thanks! And y'know, I had heard that about Maidrayne Vox and I was really confused because I was certain that she was human. {. . .}
Mistress of Blades Maidrayne Vox (LE female human fighter 12), field commander of Order of the Nail.
So I had thrown that out, but y'know, thinking about it again . . . maybe I will try to fit in some Reincarnate-gone-wrong hijinks in the campaign somewhere. And given what Cid's discovered about my Order of the Nail, an alignment shift may be in order as well. {. . .}
Ooo! I like this hook! With or without the alignment shift, Reincarnate-gone-wrong could certainly make an interesting story. Likewise, with or without the reincarnate gone wrong, an alignment shift could make an interesting story.
Also, if anyone can suggest some other modules/scenarios that they think would work good in CotCT (basically anything set in or around Korvosa/Kaer Maga/The Cinderlands), {. . .}
Unfortunately I can't help much with the other modules, but -- even though it's a bit of a stretch geographically -- some foreshadowing of Second Darkness might be in order in the later stages of the Campaign (not the early books).
Meanwhile, looks like the homebrew stuff is working out fine.
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Thanks! And y'know, I had heard that about Maidrayne Vox and I was really confused because I was certain that she was human. So I went and checked the back cover of the Guide to Korvosa, which lists the various important people in Korvosa, including Vox.
Here's the entry for her:
Mistress of Blades Maidrayne Vox (LE female human fighter 12), field commander of Order of the Nail.
Maybe I will try to fit in some Reincarnate-gone-wrong hijinks in the campaign somewhere. And given what Cid's discovered about my Order of the Nail, an alignment shift may be in order as well. (Vox tends to be more affably Evil anyway, compared to DeVries "I will effing kill ANYONE who steps out of line.")
Also, if anyone can suggest some other modules/scenarios that they think would work good in CotCT (basically anything set in or around Korvosa/Kaer Maga/The Cinderlands), I'd be happy to take a look at them! I havent' added any actual modules yet but I've been looking at The Harrowing, Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale, and Acadamae of Secrets.
I'm looking forward to expounding on Book Three when the recap finally gets there - it's been a complete mess thus far . . . but an interesting mess if I do say so myself!
There actually is a picture of Maidrayne Vox on page 30 of the Castles of the Inner Sea campaign setting, which is shown on her wiki as well. She looks very centaury, I'm afraid.
I've used several other modules to complement my campaign:
I do regret that The House on Hook Street will only appear in October, as I'll be starting Escape from Old Korvosa shortly and this scenario might make a nice addition to that adventure ... but I can't put my campaign on hold for five months waiting for the module. Too bad ...
{. . .}
The Sixfold Trial which was more of an inspiration than anything else for my opera interlude;
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Speaking of which, I would LOVE to see Inspectre's take on Council of Thieves . . . .
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Nope! In 1st edition that was the typical tactic of devils/demons – see party, teleport away, come back in 5 minutes with every devil/demon in the world (as there was no limit to the number they could summon - and summoned devils/demons could use their own summon power in an endless chain summon. So 1 would become two would become four and so on). And yes, in Cheliax some of the Hellknight initiations were probably public spectacles. I tend to hand-wave the teleport restriction, or at least I did inadvertently since Zarzagug was summoned and could still teleport. Oh well!
Apparently they changed Vox to a centaur at a later date when they actually fleshed out the Order of the Nail (given their criminally little use in CotCT), I guess because “weird is interesting”, right? Oh well, at least DeVries didn’t get rewritten into a half-dwarf half-dragon. ><
I’ll take a look at some of these suggestions, although I probably won’t use volumes from other APs (as who knows, maybe my players will be enough gluttons for punishment that they want to do another one after CotCT).
Speaking of CoT instead of CotCT though, I think that what I would probably do with it now is merge it into a super double AP with Hell’s Rebels. Make the titular Council of Thieves a sort of erstawhile ally against Thrune at the start, until things inevitably come to blows as the revolution starts to take off. Possibly quietly write out Kintargo entirely in favor of keeping everything in Westcrown, or moving the cities so that they’re relatively close sister cities so you can jump back and forth between the two APs. But since I don’t own CoT (yet), and Hell’s Rebels isn’t out at all yet, this may or may not be possible. Then again, rewriting Golarion while cackling maniacally hasn’t bothered me thus far . . .
Following the party’s victory over Gaedren 2.0, the group decided to go get some rest rather than trying to track down the grey maidens to harass them further in their efforts to put the city under quarantine. The next morning, everyone did their own thing pretty much (I think a couple people were late to the session for some reason, so we did individual stuff for Cid & Rholand whose players were present at the game start).
Cid went in and reported to the Hellknights at the guard tower they had taken over within the city to serve as their forward base in Korvosa (their main base being Citadel Vraath a number of miles to the east of Korvosa). Mistress of Blades Vox was there in the tower, and Cid reported in, telling Vox of the queen’s plan to hold a council of war that night amongst all of the city’s leadership.
Vox reciprocated the information with some of her own on what the Hellknights found on the Direption – not much that could point them at where Andaisin was hiding but it was clear the plan had been for both ships to dock in Midpoint. The other ship (I think I called it the Thrune’s Breath or something) that had sunk into the river was a heavy cargo ship – most likely packed full of Blood Veil zombies. Which meant that now the zombies were loose in the river presumably, but that was still much more manageable than if they had swarmed into the festival goers packed along the Midpoint docks. Cid and the others had saved a lot of people the other night, and Vox gave him her compliments for that.
Rholand meanwhile, decided that the middle of a plague was the perfect time to investigate the disappearance of Seneschal Neolandus. No, seriously, he went to speak with Commander Marcus Endrin, who had been conducting a search for the seneschal. Also to talk about the council that Ileosa had called for that evening, but primarily to ask how the search for Neolandus was going. Apparently my players felt that Ileosa was unstable and they needed to remove her from power right away? Consequences of their lingering opinion of her suitability to lead from Trinia’s trial I guess.
Anyway, Marcus confessed that he had done his best, but had basically hit a brick wall in his investigation. He knew that the seneschal had been kidnapped from his rooms in the castle, as there were signs of a brief struggle there, but no body. Shortly thereafter on the night of Eodred’s death and the seneschal’s disappearance, a witness saw a man in a strange insectoid mask lowering what looked like a body into a small rowboat and setting off for Old Korvosa. The only real lead that Marcus had left to follow at this point was to try and find someone in Old Korvosa who had seen where this boat had docked on the island. He thought he had found someone (I believed I just called him Bill as it was just some random a%!+*$~ NPC), but that person had disappeared somewhere in Eel’s End. And that was pretty much all Marcus could offer, as he was now busy fighting the plague (and zombies) and had no time to try and continue his search. So Rholand offered to continue the search in his stead.
And so Rholand went down to Eel’s End. By himself. And he headed straight for Devargo, figuring that he could cash in on the alliance the party had with him previously against Lamm. The alliance that they spat on after throwing Devargo out just before confronting Lamm. Player logic.
Still, they had given Devargo Lamm’s head, and had sold him all of Lamm’s Shiver making equipment, so that was something. In the end, it was enough to get Rholand in the door, although Devargo wasn’t happy. Although Rholand nor the party never learned about Devargo’s secret, his newest problem was that Chittersnap had eaten somebody infected with Blood Veil, and now the ettercap was feeling quite under the weather as a result. So Devargo was looking for a cure for his – well, Devargo didn’t really have friends, but Chittersnap was probably the closest thing he did have to one – keep that in mind for this conversation. It also very nearly resulted in Rholand being beaten and kidnapped since he was a healer *but* fortunately for him I didn’t want to deal with that.
So Rholand wanted to know if Devargo knew about this Bill fellow – and Devargo did. He had owed Devargo some debts, couldn’t pay, and now was floating at the bottom of the Jeggare River for it. But . . . he had heard Bill rambling about seeing some suspicious people, so maybe Devargo could still help him - for a price. Rholand was willing to see what he could do, and Devargo explained that he wanted a potion that could cure the plague (i.e. a potion of Remove Disease). No doubt he thought that Devargo was looking to sell it during the plague for a nice profit (instead of giving it to Chittersnap), but he decided that he was going to start being evasive in his answers about whether or not he could get it. I think he was planning on trying to give Devargo the recipe for chicken soup or something . . . right after Devargo told him that he had just dumped a body in the river. Anyway, to make a long story short, Devargo made his Sense Motive check, and I decided that Rholand had been given enough rope at this point.
Devargo pointed at one of his lackeys and said “You. Punch him.” The thug apologized and then promptly slugged Rholand in the stomach. After which Devargo repeated himself in very plain English that he wanted a potion of Remove Disease from one of the churches in the city. Did Rholand understand now, or did his men need to do some more “explaining”? Rholand got the hint, took his slug in the stomach, and left with an agreement to return.
Surprisingly, he didn’t just pee in a vial and come back, but instead he did go to the Church of Abadar, talk to Ishani, and purchased a potion of Remove Disease from him. Ishani mentioned that supplies were running low now, and so he hoped that the other cities would be able to send some relief or at least aid in the form of more Remove Disease supplies. Yeah yeah yeah, commoner problems Ishani.
Also a fun scene that occurred as Rholand was leaving – Ornher Reed, head of the Asmodean Church in Korvosa, arrived with several acolytes and a half dozen plague zombies in tow with a cry of “Asmodeus calling!” (like Avon calling :-p ) Rholand flipped out for a moment, as he thought that the Asmodeans were here to attack the church – but no, instead Reed was here to deliver these Command Undead controlled zombies to the Abadarians for study. Rholand did not approve of this as he thought the zombies were dangerous and should all be destroyed, and the two had a brief but lively debate on what should be done to save the city. Reed was pretty much all for using any and all means to save the city (and of course he was secretly keeping a few zombies for his own private studies on the plague), including deliberately infecting new people to learn more about the plague, while Rholand was, to put it lightly, not. LE vs. CG, the eternal debate continues.
After Rholand paid for the potion (I think I just used regular prices for it), he went straight back to Devargo. In a pleasant mood now that he had gotten what he wanted, Devargo explained that Bill had told him what he had seen – men unloading the seneschal from that rowboat on the night of Eodred’s death. What’s more, the people who had taken the seneschal were known to Devargo – they were members of the Cerulean Society, the thieves guild that Vaz’em belonged to and that was run by Boule (whose son the party had rescued from Lamm). That was all Devargo knew though, and so with that, he dismissed Rholand, and *didn’t* have him beaten and left for dead in an alley (which would have happened if Rholand had run his mouth just a little more).
Following this, the party met back up and went to the plague council. Present was the party, Ileosa, Sabrina, Vox & DeVries representing the Hellknights, the head of each church, Marcus Endrin representing the Sable Marines, and Cressida Kroft representing the City Guard.
Noticeably absent was any representative from the Acadamae, and the Church of Pharasma, which was one of the topics of discussion – apparently the Acadamae was on full lockdown and had sealed its doors, not letting anyone in or out. Likewise with the Grey District. Given the Acadamae’s legendary defenses, this was a fairly serious issue as it had been a hope of Ileosa that the mages could do something about this plague and its zombies. The Hellknights offered to blast their way inside, but while they probably would eventually be successful their way of handling the stand-off would likely result in a lot of people becoming dead. Hammers and eggs to make an omelet and all that. The loss of Pharasma’s undead-hunters was also a terrible loss right now, although since the only time the Grey District went on lock-down was when there was an undead uprising apparently the Church of Pharasma already had its hands full.
Vox got the chance to display her skills as a deadpan snarker, as she spent most of the meeting giving flippant answers that the players found amusing although perhaps not the characters so much. This included a comment to Ileosa’s news that while Magnimar had promised aid, Kaer Maga had only insults to offer. That they would not offer aid to “a queen that spread her legs while squatting upon the Crimson Throne” (a reference to her moniker as “Whore Queen”). Vox’s reply? “Well if the throne fits . . .” Ileosa spent the rest of the meeting staring daggers into Vox.
There was various back and forth argument over several other topics, but largely this was when I presented the group with a huge variety of quests in an attempt to make solving the plague a bit of a sandbox. Unfortunately, this ultimately proved to be a mistake, as it left the rest of Book Two feeling disjointed according to my players in my post-Book Two survey. Oh well. I gave them the following options to investigate.
Investigate where the dead bodies are going with the Grey District closed.
Investigate the fake cure sellers.
Investigate the sunken ship.
Investigate the plague rats.
Question Brienna/look into what caused her to get sick.
Investigate the Grey District itself and why it’s on lock-down mode
Find a way into the Acadamae
Figure out why the Cerulean Society kidnapped the seneschal
Investigate Andaisin’s old apartment (that Vaz’em followed her to)
They were interested in the Grey District, but ultimately the one that got everyone’s votes was to investigate why Vaz’em’s boss helped kidnap the seneschal. Sigh, the one quest that wasn’t involved with the plague and was destined to end in a dead-end given that it couldn’t be resolved until Book Three (and over the Arkona’s dead bodies). Player logic.
Nope! {. . .}
Speaking of CoT instead of CotCT though, I think that what I would probably do with it now is merge it into a super double AP with Hell’s Rebels. Make the titular Council of Thieves a sort of erstawhile ally against Thrune at the start, until things inevitably come to blows as the revolution starts to take off. Possibly quietly write out Kintargo entirely in favor of keeping everything in Westcrown, or moving the cities so that they’re relatively close sister cities so you can jump back and forth between the two APs. But since I don’t own CoT (yet), and Hell’s Rebels isn’t out at all yet, this may or may not be possible. Then again, rewriting Golarion while cackling maniacally hasn’t bothered me thus far . . .
{. . .}
Ooo! I like this! But no need to change the map, when you can have Permanent Teleportation Circles linked between the two cities. Twist: House Thrune, other noble houses, and the Hellknight Order of the Gate control the circles (each has its own set). The PCs have to Bluff or otherwise sneak their way into using these to fulfill tasks that require them to go between cities rapidly, and may need to disable the ones that are of most use to their opponents (although that isn't easy, these things are EXPENSIVE to replace). Since Teleportation Circle is a 9th level spell, it is going to be a LONG time before the PCs can make their own -- but that should be one of their technical objectives. Meanwhile, the most powerful rebels -- including but not limited to the Council of Thieves -- turn out to be people you really DON'T want to be allied with . . . .
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So, before I continue on to the next session, I feel like now would be a good time to talk a little bit about my version of the BBEG.
So I’ve developed this idea by degrees, but I’m going to lay out my full current version of Kazavon here.
Near the beginning of the world, Rovagug came to Golarion and did battle with the gods, including Sarenrae, Asmodeus, and Zon-Kuthon. These three gods are of particular import as they were the ones who sealed Rovagug away – Asmodeus creating the vault, Sarenrae driving It into the prison, and Zon-Kuthon sealing the prison and anchoring it in place. These anchor points that kept the prison sealed within the earth were known as the Star Towers, and they needed to be protected as Rovagug’s malign influence was not gone.
Kazavon was an ancient blue dragon chosen by Zon-Kuthon to serve as one of these custodians, effectively a warden of Rovagug. He served in his position faithfully though he certainly was as cruel and twisted as his dark master. But the prison of the Rough Beast was not perfect – a tiny, imperceptible crack existed, and eventually that crack was pushed open, just enough to send something through.
I had intended for this to be the Tarrasque, but looking at the Pathfinder wiki it seems that the Tarrasque was a relatively recent Spawn of Rovagug. So I guess it was an unknown and unrecorded Spawn, the very first (we can assume that since this was back in time immemorial it was never recorded) and it was similar to the Tarrasque in its fabled inability to die. This spawn went straight for Kazavon’s Star Tower, and the two titans met in a horrifying and brutal struggle that eventually saw the Spawn dead and Kazavon gravely injured. But some of the Spawn’s blood seeped into Kazavon’s wounds, and its power merged into Kazavon’s flesh. And then Kazavon learned that he was now unable to die . . . and he came to crave . . . more.
Kazavon went down deep into the depths beneath the fortress of Scarwall (the original Scarwall) that had been erected around the Star Tower, to the tower’s very base where it connected to the roof of Rovagug’s prison. Even his mighty claws were unable to do more than scratch the surface of Rovagug’s prison, but it was enough to sigil his new devotion. Dark liquid bubbled up from the depths of the prison to create a pool (and eventually the lake at the base of the Star Tower in Book Five where Serithial is), and Kazavon drank deeply, growing even more in power and evil. But unlike the Spawn of Rovagug, Kazavon was not compelled to attempt to free the Rough Beast. His new devotion was not to Zon-Kuthon, or Rovagug, but himself. No longer would he serve, instead he would rule as a conqueror and master of all.
Thus began Kazavon’s reign of terror over the world as the nascent god of Fear, Suffering, and Despair. It would turn out to be a relatively brief reign, as Zon-Kuthon was rather intolerant of his servants running off with delusions of their own godhood. Most of the other gods didn’t like a powerful upstart trying to force his way amongst them, and certainly not trying to establish his dominion over them as well.
An alliance of Zon-Kuthon, Sarenrae, and Pharasma (she didn’t like Kazavon for his inability to die) ultimately came together against Kazavon, or the Eternal Horror which he now used as an alias. A powerful mortal servant of Sarenrae, wielding a powerful sword created from a small shard of Pharasma’s scythe, cut down Kazavon. Using the sword, the servant cut Kazavon’s heart from his body and burned the rest to ash with holy fire. The heart was locked away in Zon-Kuthon’s vault, never to be seen again. Well, almost all of the body was burned – Kazavon was clever as he was cruel, and had foreseen the possibility of his defeat.
So he had broken off several of his fangs, and had them spirited away to be hidden in a deep, dark recess of the world (likely being carried into Golarion’s version of the Underdark from the Star Tower’s basement). Even the gods were unaware of this action, and for a long time all believed that he was dead and gone. The world moved on, and forgot.
Then during the Empire of Thassilon, before Xin’s death and the fall of his advisors into the Runelords of Sin, one of Karzoug’s apprentices was cast out, and went looking for sources of power that could elevate him above his former master. The Fangs of Kazavon called out to him. Possession of the Fangs gave this apprentice the power that he sought, but at a terrible cost. The essence of Kazavon stored in the Fangs consumed the apprentice, corrupting him from the inside-out until he was reborn as the dragon-god.
This time Kazavon was a little more careful, and rather than announce himself as returned he took on a new alias – the Bleeding Eye. Conflict between “the Bleeding Eye’s” followers and the Empire of Thassilon followed shortly thereafter, and Kazavon Reborn was likely the most challenging opponent that Thassilon ever faced (apart from maybe Starfall, but that was less an opponent and more disaster-movie). Ultimately Kazavon was again defeated after Sorshen recovered the blade that was used to kill him the first time.
But there was a problem with this artifact weapon – it bound the soul of its wielder into itself, using that soul to power and shape its nature. This allowed the blade to cause even the invulnerable Kazavon to bleed, but if used to slay Him the wielder would be killed as well. For Sorshen, this wasn’t a big problem thanks to her innumerable clones that her soul went and possessed after her “real” body died upon killing Kazavon, but others in the future would not be so fortunate.
Even though she avoided having to make this ultimate sacrifice though, the experience still changed Sorshen. It was undoubtedly only one of the many contributing factors that led to her fall into becoming the Runelord of Lust, as even though Kazavon failed to conquer Thassilon, perhaps he did manage to start its corruption and fall into evil. The fact that Sorshen and Karzoug (and the other Runelords) carved up Kazavon’s body for study, allowing his whispers to continually seep into their subconscious minds through constant exposure no doubt was a help to this.
As Kazavon’s slayer, Sorshen took much of his body away for her own personal study. She didn’t manage to get all of it though – intrigued by his apprentice’s discovery, the Fangs were stolen by Karzoug and locked away in the mountains that would ultimately become the lands known as the Holds of Belkzen and Ustulav. Sorshen took Kazavon’s bones and made a throne for herself out of them. Likewise she fashioned a staff of authority from the dragon’s spine. Finally she made herself a cloak from his wings. The rest she utterly disintegrated, for the dragon’s power lived on through even the tiniest part of his body, and Sorshen wanted to keep as much of that power for herself.
She studied the artifacts she had created and keep them locked away in vaults, and Karzoug did the same with the Fangs. One or another of the Runelords may have also stolen one of the artifacts from Sorshen, spreading Kazavon’s corrupting influence across the Empire even after his second death. Eventually Starfall came, the Runelords slept, and the world forgot.
Thousands of years later, the ruling noble of the province of Tamrivena in Ustulav had a serious problem. Now that the Whispering Tyrant was a few hundred years dead, the orcs from Belkzen were overcoming their fear, and were coming back into Ustulav for their revenge against the people who still lived there, descendants of the orcs’ fellow slaves under Tar Baphon the Whispering Tyrant. The orcs had pushed their way through the province right up to the gates of the city of Tamrivena itself, and a terrible siege was about to begin that could only end one way.
Desperate for salvation, the noble went looking down into the old Thassilon ruins, looking for a weapon that he could use, some great magic that would give him the power to save his people. And the Fangs called out to him.
The noble managed to fight his way past the traps, wards, and guardians that were left in the Thassilon ruins after so many millennia. He found the Fangs, and empowered by them, nearly single-handedly drove the orcs back from Tamrivena’s gates. But there was a price to this power, as always, and ultimately Kazavon was reborn for the third time, taking the desperate nobleman’s body as his own. Again Kazavon, the Eternal Horror, the Bleeding Eye, the Razer of Continents, and the Doom of Nations (insert additional aliases here as I think of them) spread his influence across the land.
He enslaved the orcs and other fierce creatures living in the Holds of Belkzen, and twisted them toward his end of world domination. The people of Tamrivena were once again suffering under a terrible tyrant, and soon enough they were joined by other peoples from the nearby nations of the region. But eventually, Kazavon failed once again. An alliance of every nation on Varisia at the time came together, along with an expedition from Cheliax, to strike down the conqueror before he could grow any more powerful.
They managed to recover the ancient artifact used by Sarenrae’s nameless champion, and then by Sorshen, to put down Kazavon the last two times (likely from another Thassilon vault, although Sorshen may have just left the pieces of the weapon where they fell from her original body’s lifeless hand). Through it was a horrifically bloody battle, ultimately Kazavon was defeated once more, through treachery from his own servant Kleestad (possibly the seneschal of the noble who had started all this) as well as brave and noble sacrifice.
But this time Kazavon’s enemies were not quite so powerful. They could not vaporize his body as his last two opponents had managed. So the heroes still alive settled for what they could manage, before the assembled might of Kazavon’s remaining armies fell upon them. They chopped off his head and foreclaws, leaving the headless crippled corpse behind them as they fled from Scarwall. The skull they separated a second time, breaking it into horns and the skull itself, lest someone manage to reattach it back onto the still-twitching body. And the Fangs, they took the Fangs of Kazavon with them as well.
The Shaoti took the Fangs, hiding them away in the Great Mastaba, a Thassilon ruin – they had learned that the Fangs had been stored in a similar Thassilon ruin before the noble of Tamrivena disturbed them. Perhaps the Great Mastaba would allow the Fangs’ evil to be sealed away yet again. The skull, horns, and claws were sent in different directions across the world, although in time the Brotherhood of Bones would reclaim the horns and the claws to store in their vaults, the supporters of Kazavon secreted amongst the Zon-Kuthonite sect biding their time to return the pieces to the body of their shattered master in Scarwall. They needed all three to finish the resurrection, however, and so for now they simply waited.
Eventually, Tamrivena was forgotten, marked down as a lost city within a country of lost and haunted cities, and New Tamrivena was built on the opposite side of the province. Time moved on, and the world forgot.
Until one day, a conspiracy to take over the city so carefully built up around the Great Mastaba by certain interested parties (*cough* Lorthract *cough* ) came to fruition, resulting in the death of its king. And his young queen, stricken with grief and terrified at the thought of having to rule a city that hated her for no real good reason, desperately struggled to find a way to manage, and discover what the meaning of her husband’s last words were. And the Fangs called out to her.
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So as discussed at the previous session, the group decided to go hunting for the seneschal rather than dealing with the plague. They knew from Rholand’s dealings with Devargo that the next people to participate in Neolandus’s kidnapping were members of the Cerulean Society, so it was up to Vaz’em to get them to Boule. Being a member that was no longer in danger of being murdered due to letting Boule’s son get kidnapped, Vaz’em was able to direct the party right to where to find Boule – at the Azure Den in Old Korvosa.
This turned out to be an illegal gambling den near the heart of the island’s west side, fairly close to the massive Ironworks and where many workers came to lose their pittance wages. Oliver nearly got involved in a game himself while Vaz’em was invited over to meet with Boule in a back room. Vaz’em was fairly direct in his questioning, but to the group’s surprise, rather than getting nervous about it or try to kill them, Boule pretty much folded. While he didn’t confess while breaking out in sobs, he *did* tell Vaz’em that h should take a walk on the Old Korvosa streets a little later today, and should be at this particular street at this particular time. It wasn’t safe to talk about this in the Azure Den.
On their way to this rendezvous point, they found several children playing in the almost descerted streets. They sang a children’s song as they played, like some sort of nonsense children’s rhyme, although this on was grim and chilled the party’s bones.
“City shall burn,
and City shall rot,
Abandon whatever hope you have got!
City shall crumble,
and City shall groan,
Under the weight of its Crimson Throne!
Hell itself shall come,
and shall finish thy doom,
city built atop Evil's tomb!
When the Throne sits empty,
then the darkness has won,
and Eternal Horror shall descend upon everyone!
So barer of Fangs, <------supposed to be bear but the kids don't know
deliver suffering, despair, and fear,
and destroy all that we hold dear!”
This was of course, the first mention effectively of Kazavon in my game, and I included with this rhyme (written by one of the poets influenced like Salvator Scream by Kazavon’s whispers) Kazavon’s theme song. The children ran off shortly thereafter, there foreshadowing delivered.
Arriving there, once again the group is not ambushed or attacked, as only Boule himself reveals himself. The guildmaster then takes them for a walk, down towards the docks on the eastern side of Old Korvosa, explaining himself. Boule was, in fact, personally there the night of the seneschal’s kidnapping. Bound and beaten, Boule and several of his men had hauled the seneschal into a carriage from the docks after the Red Mantis dropped him off. It should have been a simple job to deliver the seneschal to Boule’s boss, who he did leave nameless for fear that if he said who had ordered him to help kidnap the seneschal he was dead, his son was dead, and the party would be dead soon thereafter. Surprisingly, the party wisely took Boule at his word and didn’t press further for the name (which, of course, would reveal Glorio Arkona, who would indeed have killed everyone at this point if he thought they knew what he had done).
Unfortunately, Boule’s simple job turned complicated when their carriage was stopped by a routine patrol of city guardsmen that had not been on Boule’s timetables (wrong street at the wrong time). The guards stopped the carriage, and Boule had to do some fast talking. While this was going on, despite his condition Seneschal Neolandus managed to open one of the doors of the carriage, roll out, and start crawling away. Nearly, an old sewer grate had rusted away and had been pried off of its moorings, and desperate to escape Neolandus decided to take his chances and crawled through the grate and down into the sewers even though he was almost certainly a dead man in his condition.
During this, Boule and his men were busy with the guards, and then a rioting crowd which thankfully pulled the guards away from them. Sadly, by the time they turned around and got back to the carriage, they discovered Neolandus was gone, with a thin blood trail leading down into the sewer grate. They got a lantern and peered down inside, but Neolandus was already gone – something had taken him that quickly.
Boule showed the party the broken grate, which still had a few splotchy blood stains in place (that may or may not have been Neolandus’s blood given this was nearly a month later), and lamented on his poor luck that they just happened to be stopped by this grate that allowed for Neolandus to escape, only to be undoubtedly eaten by some sewer beast like an otyugh. The seneschal was most certainly dead now, and unless the party felt like plumbing the depths of the sewers to avenge him, there was nothing to be done. Trail had gone cold.
A bit dejected at this arguably predictable outcome (given that the seneschal had been missing for about an entire month at this point), the party dismissed Boule and went on their way back to Midpoint. On the way back, they came across a patrol of Grey Maidens escorting a dozen obviously sick people to one of the areas Davaulus has set up to quarantine and “treat” them (and store them for later use, I mean, put them down when they eventually turned into Blood Veil zombie). This meeting would have been relatively benign and pointless, save for the fact that suddenly, the workers nearby shoved the wagon they had been standing beside into the middle of the street, splitting the group and separating many of the infected people from their escorts! Simaltaneously, rats poured out of nearby sewer grates, swarming over the remaining grey maidens while a man shoved open another such grate nearby open, brandishing a crossbow and commanding the infected people to come forward and climb down into the sewers.
And the party . . . just watched. In what had to be one of, if not the most, utterly baffling to me moments of the campaign, they simply watched these wererats assault two grey maidens and kidnap a dozen people for only the gods knew what reason. I thought it would be obvious that they should go investigate this, and even had the kidnapping play out slower than usual with the infected climbing down into the sewers in an orderly fashion so that they had more opportunities to decide to stop this, but they didn’t.
Instead, they chatting up the wererat while the two grey maidens fought for their lives against hundreds of angry, biting rats. They learned that the wererats belonged to the Brotherhood Below, an alliance of creatures that lived beneath the streets and were now declaring war against their above-ground oppressors. And, rather than acknowledging this and that these wererats were probably unreasonable, they decided that maybe they could negotiate with these people. And, since they lived down in the sewers, maybe they would be willing to help the party find the seneschal? I guess that was the reasoning. Player. Logic. Meanwhile, the wererats didn’t care, so they said “sure, we’ll send word to our leader that you would like to negotiate, please be at this location later tonight.” (Wererat tries to hold back laughter).
So the wererats leave, the grey maidens finish off killing the rat swarms and getting around the cart, and they were clearly not happy that the party had just let a dozen citizens be kidnapped right in front of them without doing anything about it. The party was largely indifferent, and more or less called the grey maidens idiots when they both descended down into the sewers in an attempt to rescue the citizens. (Which might not actually be an incorrect sentiment, given the grey maiden’s chances). The queen would hear of this, the grey maidens promised as they descended down into the sewers, while the third and last grey maiden ventured back to the castle to report what had just happened.
Meanwhile, the party waited for nightfall, went to the designated rendezvous place, and to no one’s surprise except the party’s, immediately got ambushed by a death squad. In addition to the several wererats present, there was also a pair of derro (able to be outside now that it was nighttime), which the party did remark that they thought they had killed them all. To which the derro cheerfully replied “There are always more derro!”
And, after the fight started, the wererats called for “Patrick”, and the ground behind the party swelled up as an otyugh burst forth! Surrounded and attacked from all sides, the party had a few tense moments, although the tension didn’t last long as they clearly outclassed their enemies. Other than their sound bursts and darkness (which also blinded the wererats’ low-light vision to the derro’s frustration), the derro couldn’t contribute anything. And the wererats, despite relatively decent attack bonuses, did not roll well enough to land many hits. And Cid, the unofficial Otyugh Slayer of the group, pretty much fried Patrick the Otyugh with a single well-placed Shocking Grasp hit.
As the party continued to deal with the wererats, the derro decided that this fight wasn’t going well and it was time to leave. The last wererat standing also shared that sentiment, but now that the Brotherhood had tried to kill them the party was a little less willing to live and let live. So they chased him down in an impromptu Chase that I made up as I went along through the darkened streets of Korvosa. Eventually they caught him, and the wererat surrendered. He gave them a bit of information about the Brotherhood Below, that it was an alliance between wererats, derro, and otyughs, for the purpose of banding together and waging war on the city.
The wererats’ leader, Girrigz (or however that’s spelt) was completely insane and driven only by his hatred of humans. That hatred had reached this boiling point as a number of the wererats had fallen sick from the plague that the humans had introduced into the sewers, infecting a number of rats in the sewers which in turn had begun to infect the wererats themselves (yes, as a fungus Blood Veil could infect almost any living thing). Then the derro had arrived, saying that they had sick too (a lie, they were working for Vreeg->Rolth->Andaisin) and that all the underworld’s creatures needed to work together to destroy the humans before it was too late.
Not thrilled at the idea of fighting wererat Blood Veil zombies, the party asked the wererat to go back and ask this Girrigz to come forward one last time and discuss peace with them. Perhaps their sick could be helped if he was willing to lay aside war.
The wererat was insistent that Girrgiz would not listen and would in fact kill him for delivering such a message, but the party was insistent so the wererat finally agreed, and we ended the session. And I realized that I might need to paint “Girrigz is unreasonable and insane” in 50 foot letters, instead of 25 foot letters.
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So, I think I forgot to mention that two sessions previous, just before the party encountered Gaedren Lamm 2.0, a projection of Andaisin appeared in the streets – in fact at numerous locations around the city (plague doctors set it up beforehand), the party just “happened” to be near one when they all activated to display Andaisin’s message to the city.
Andaisin was fairly blunt. She stated that she had murdered everyone who was listening to this message – not with a knife or magic, but something far more sinister, something that they couldn’t feel, or sense, until it was much too late – Blood Veil. One by one, your neighbors would turn against you as the disease ate you from the inside out, leaving you nothing more than a broken husk that would carry the disease onward. Andaisin, however, had a cure for the disease, and a simple demand if those listening wished to survive – drag Ileosa from her castle and depose her. It was a lie, of course – even if she had a cure Andaisin wanted this city to die. But it certainly whipped the crowds up into a panic, and the day following the party’s first conflict with the Brotherhood Below that panic finally broke wide open.
On their way to the castle after getting summoned by the queen (she had learned of the party’s inaction and was NOT happy about it), the party discovered a line of grey maidens cordoning off the street leading to the castle. And gathered around that line of maidens was a swirling crowd of angry, desperate people. Before the situation could explode into violence (or I dunno, the party made it worse somehow), several wererats revealed themselves from within the crowd. With shouts of “For the Brotherhood Below” and “Die, surfacers!” the wererats began firing crossbow bolts into the people packed together all around them. Crossbow bolts that were laced with the infected blood of the poor people that the wererats had kidnaped yesterday, and exsanguinated for this exact purpose.
As people from the crowd with down with bolts in their necks, they immediately began to change into full-blown Blood Veil zombies as the fungus spiraled out of control. (Don’t ask me how the plague took days to kill someone to turn them into a zombie, but if an infected person died they instantly became a zombie. Some soul-related necromancy thing – it’s common zombie logic, just go with it!) The crowd exploded in panic, all thoughts of removing Ileosa from power gone as the wererats turned more and more of them into zombies, and the first ones completed their 1d4 rounds of transformation into full-blown Blood Veil zombies.
Here, the party *finally* decided that they couldn’t abide by this anymore (or maybe they were pissed at the insane and unreasonable terrorists who had just tried to kill them last night), and moved in on the wererats. And the blood veil zombies that were getting up in a couple rounds – it made for a frantic, but interesting game as the party rushed in to surround a fallen commoner as the body began to change into a zombie, and pummel it back into a corpse before it could fight back. Of course, the wererats just shot more fleeing people in the back – fortunately none of them had automatic crossbows or this would have gotten really ugly. The Grey Maidens, meanwhile, continued to hold the line as several of the nearest zombies attacked them instead of the party.
And then, once the crowd of screening zombies started to thin out, the wererats scattered, so that they could go find some other large concentration of people to spray diseased crossbow bolts into. Ultimately, the party managed to drop one of the wererats while the other two escaped, and dropped eight Blood Veil zombies personally. This obviously couldn’t be allowed to continue, and the party began making plans to go down into the sewers after the wererats if their leader didn’t come that night to speak with them (I believe they had gotten a message that Girrigz had agreed to meet them, but if they did the wererats had already proven to be liars).
This combat was followed by a brief meeting with the queen, who demanded an explanation for what the hell they were thinking, letting the wererats kidnap people in the first place. They didn’t have a very good explanation, although Rholand did try to float the idea that the party was trying to establish a peace with the wererats rather than outright war. Ileosa was willing to buy the idea that this was another plot by Andaisin to tear this city apart, much like the “depose Ileosa and I will let you all live” projections. But that still didn’t excuse the party’s behavior and she was *very* unhappy with them (as she should be!)
Night came, and the party had arranged to meet the wererats at Zellara’s house, their ongoing base of operations as a party, pretty much. Not sure if this was a prearranged meeting or not, the wererats may have just found them, I’m not quite sure. Either way, at midnight the party heard a loud voice shouting angrily outside that it was time for them to come out and die. Exiting the building, the party found a war party of about a dozen wererats set up all around Zellara’s House (including a couple snipers hidden up on the rooftops), led by one very large and angry looking wererat wielding an Earthbreaker – Girrigz. Also with them was the wererat they had sent back to set up this meeting, badly beaten and bound. This unfortunate wererat was made to kneel in front of Girrigz as he declared his hatred for the surface world, that as it had cut down his father and his father before that, and had spread plague through the underworld of the wererats, war was already declared, and it would only end when every surfacer was dead. He then lifted his Earthbreaker high and splattered the wererat’s head like an egg, because a raging barbarian with power attack, vital strike, and an earthbreaker doesn’t give a damn about your DR 10 when he’s making a Coup-De-Grace attempt.
Basically, I had just seen Guardians of the Galaxy, and Girrigz was basically Ronan with whiskers – physically powerful and completely and unreasonably hostile to the idea of any sort of peaceful co-existance. But Girrigz wasn’t alone – he had brought a dozen or so of his followers with him, and before he could command his rat pack to attack, Rholand stepped forward.
He argued that peace could still be viable, that it was the plague that they should be pooling their efforts to fight, not each other. There was a bunch more, but it was basically the classic debate of unflinching hatred vs. logical reason. And Rholand got a very high Diplomacy check to back up his side – but Girrigz had fear of having your head smashed open with a vital strike power attack on his side, so the wererats remained where they were for now, although the uncertainty in the air was palpable.
Rather than trying to counter Rholand’s logic with more hatred, Girrigz simply sneered dismissively and stated that the rats would decide his fate as he lifted a hand. At his command, hundreds of rats poured up out of the sewers and advanced toward Rholand to devour him. Although it was perhaps not entirely legal, I allowed Rholand to attempt a Handle Animal check to diplomacy the rats, and convince them not to strip the bones from his flesh as they surged toward him as a swarm. And Rholand Nat 20’d the check.
Suddenly the swarm of rats slowed, and formed up in front of Rholand in a semi-circle, none of them moving closer to them than a few feet away. The wererats gasped in surprise, while all of my players laughed and gave digital high-fives to Rholand’s player. Girrigz was now simply angry, and froth spewing out of his mouth he leapt forward towards Rholand with an bestial cry of fury.
Getting Vital Striked by a raging barbarian with power attack HURT, but Rholand staggered instead of going down. Everyone immediately rushed forward to his defense, while all of the wererats present simply watched silently, aiding neither side. Girrigz generally spent the rest of the fight blindly flailing at the party, generally hitting whoever got in his way to get at Rholand again. Fortunately, despite his high base attack bonus (+8 due to being an 8th level barbarian), Girrigz could only land one vital striked Earthbreaker blow a round, and once or twice I’m pretty sure he missed his target. And the party had brought silver weapons with them (although Vaz’em still just used his claws I believe, and most of Cid’s damage was Shocking Grasp) so Girrigz’s DR didn’t really help him. Pretty sure he also wasted a turn healing himself with that Barbarian Rage power that heals a truly pathetic amount of HP (at least if you’re level 8 it heals an embarrassing amount). But it’s better than Girrigz turning a PC into a bloody paste with every single hit as I was initially concerned about (and probably would have if he had crit on a Vital Strike O_O ).
Eventually, Girrigz went down, and the party made sure he stayed down. Still, the wererats watched on silently, until finally one of their number stepped forward with a remark along the lines of “so, about that peace treaty . . .”
Forced to make up a name for this guy on the spot, I came up with what I thought was a hilarious name for a wererat (after about four hours of playing Pathfinder and being a bit delirious with needing to end the session and sleep) – Wilhelm Ratface. Wilhelm explained that the wererats were in a bit of a jam at the moment – derro and otyughs had both moved into their home as part of Girrigz’s vision of the Brotherhood Below. Of course, that whole Brotherhood thing wasn’t really Girrigz’s idea, but the derro leader Vreeg.
Vreeg claimed that his people were also suffering from the plague (liar liar pants on fire), despite never revealing a sick derro, and that the surfacers were to blame for this plague (with no proof but Girrigz’s hatred). If the wererats didn’t continue to go along with the plan now that they were all living together, Vreeg and his otyugh allies would probably kill all of the wererat women and children, after killing all of them. So Wilhelm had a simple proposal for them – he would be happy to make a deal with the party and by extension the queen, if only the party would come down and help them expel the rest of the Brotherhood. Or in Wilhelm’s words (which would become a catchphrase for him) “You go kill the Hell out of them.”
Never liking derro, and with promises that the wererats would aid them as best they could, the party agreed to go down into the sewers and deal with Vreeg. But if this was yet another ambush, everyone down there was going to die, horribly. And with that sort of alliance forged over the cooling body of the insane but dead Girrigz, we ended the session.
So, before I continue on to the next session, I feel like now would be a good time to talk a little bit about my version of the BBEG.
** spoiler omitted **...
Now you've done it -- I have to see your take on Rise of the Runelords.
And awesome stuff you set up for the next 2 sessions after that, even if the players did some really weird things with it (although I have a feeling they may have accidentally given their half-baked excuse real credibility in the last one).
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Not sure how I would do Rise of the Runelords. I suspect that I would play that one fairly straight, since
Although I would be sorely tempted to do what I saw some people talking about doing, which was to have *all* the Runelords come back, which would require a fair bit of work stating up the Runelords that haven't been introduced yet. Also probably nerfing Sorshen because level 20/mythic 10 would probably stomp most end of the AP parties without even noticing them.
Something that I think I would play up though:
[spoiler=Rise of the Runelords]
I think I would make a slight tweak to the Runelords in that more or less, during Xin's reign they were basically good (or neutral ;) ) people. Thassilon was a paradise under Xin's benevolent reign.
But then he got sick, his heart giving out in a way that not even any of the magic the Runelords knew could fix. With Xin out of the picture, the Runelords by degrees fell into Sin and began to make mistakes, losing their way. They forgot why they gathered this power in the first place, and saw themselves as masters rather than protectors.
Likewise, that would be a significant reoccurring theme throughout the AP - basically good or at least decent people losing their way in Sin and by degrees becoming horrible monsters.
Nualia - Sweet, innocent girl who got completely screwed over by Sandpoint, and in her anger was corrupted by Lamashtu into a weapon.
Aldern - Getting corrupted into a monster is pretty much his whole character arc to begin with.
Xanesha/Lucretia - Perhaps originally normal people who were corrupted into Lamias, or were some other kind of fey creature maybe? Not sure.
Mommy Grual - Was originally quite pretty, but got turned into an ogrekin somehow, likely after she offended the wrong fey/wizard.
etc. etc, all the way up to Karzoug at least even if I didn't go for all the Runelords coming back.
Likely Karzoug would have been someone who wanted to gather wealth so that he could build great and awe-inspiring things (like Xin-Shalast), until he became consumed by Greed and only wanted wealth for wealth's sake.
The wererats’ leader, Girrigz (or however that’s spelt) was completely insane and driven only by his hatred of humans.
Lol, for once you spell a name correctly and then you doubt yourself ... Okay, I'm exaggerating slightly, but - yes - Girrigz is the way to write his name.
I'm still having fun reading, keep it coming.
Not sure how I would do Rise of the Runelords. I suspect that I would play that one fairly straight, since
Rise of the Runelords:
{. . .}
I think I would make a slight tweak to the Runelords in that more or less, during Xin's reign they were basically good (or neutral ;) ) people. Thassilon was a paradise under Xin's benevolent reign.
{. . .}
I like the ideas you present in there overall, though. But I think that at least one other Runelord than Sorshen is also Mythic: Xanderghul. Interesting that the 2 Runelords who specialize in mind-affecting magic(*) are the most epic, and also the only 2 original ones.
(*)Ignoring the Fear spells, which for some weird reason are in Necromancy instead of Enchantment.
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The session began with the party beginning its assault on the base of the Brotherhood Below – i.e. the wererat’s home down in the sewers. Wilhelm had spread word discretely amongst his people that the party were allies, so they didn’t need to worry about any wererats. That just left the derro lairing in the caverns to the north part of the complex, and the otyughs in the cavern to the south across the sewer tunnel itself.
The otyughs were led by Broodmaster Pestilience, a gigantic otyugh that had been mutated by Blood Veil into an intelligent (for an otyugh) divine spellcaster (oracle of Bones). Basically, at this point he was just an otyugh with four levels or so in oracle (and I made him Huge because what the hell), although a better fit may have been a Plaguebearer variant otyugh . . . but at CR7, adding oracle levels on top of that would have been too much . . . maybe. With Cid the Otyugh Slayer in the party, who knows.
Nonetheless, the party decided they wanted nothing to do with the otyughs for now, and left them for the wererats to deal with (which was why no wererats accompanied them to deal with the derro because they went to fight the otyughs instead – plus derro are crazy and scary if you’re not an adventurer).
So the party weaved its way through the wererat warren, into a larger chamber that the derro were using as a nest. With giddy shrieks of alarm, no less than five derro came pouring out of a small side room at the party. Meanwhile, in another chamber down a short tunnel off to the east, Vreeg heard the sounds of battle and started buffing like crazy.
I’d like to say that the derro themselves were scary, but despite being CR 3 derro are quite fragile once you get up in their face. Not even a barrage of Sound Bursts was really able to do more than annoy the party for a couple rounds while everyone stood around Dazed. Then Oliver and Trevor started ripping them down, Vaz’em flanked and tore one of them apart in one round, and Cid punctuated the derro’s uselessness with getting a crit on one with a Shocking Grasp spell, doing over 100 damage and basically vaporizing the poor bastard from full HP.
An impressive showing, one that has yet to be repeated from what I can remember surprisingly . . . although I think that was also a signal to the player that maybe he should tone it down a little as Cid started to branch out into other spells (also he realized that with the one “Magus can spend arcane pool to recall ANY arcane spell”, he could go and record ALL the spells into his spellbook for free. Which it wasn’t worth arguing over so long as the player didn’t try to abuse it by selling a spellbook every week or something obnoxious to break WBL).
This was pretty much the point at which Vreeg made himself known, as his personal bodyguard of four Blood Veil zombies and two(!) Carrion golems flooded into the tunnel connecting the two chambers. As a wizard focused around Necromancy Vreeg didn’t have a whole lot of offensive spells, but I gave him a whole slew of fun Necromancy CC ones. Unfortunately, his Spectral Hand got cut down by a lucky hit from Oliver’s Keen Cutlass early on in the fight, so that was that for making touch attacks. :(
Vreeg Theme – Soul to Bleed by Carfax Abbey
It took the party a little while to realize that with all of the undead and carrion golems clustered up right next to each other, they were highly vulnerable to AoE. Specifically, the AoE damage that the carrion golems did when they exploded. Vreeg shrieked at his minions to back up and spread out too late, as Oliver cut down one carrion golem, damaging the other one, but not quite managing to get the chain reaction off. The other one went down shortly after the first one though, and Vreeg took a bit of damage I believe from at least one of the explosions, and the last couple of zombies also got pretty badly shredded by both golems going up right next to them. Of course, being zombies, they didn’t care about their “minor” flesh wounds and continued to fight until they were finally cut down.
Fortunately Vreeg’s ability to fly was severely curtailed by the low ceilings in the wererat warrens, and so he had to stay down within melee range for the most part. As I mentioned above though, he still had plenty of CC to spam through (Howling Agony – spend a move action each round screaming or suffer from debilitating pain & limp Lash – take increasing penalties to all physical stats until you hit 1 and are paralyzed from the neck down, moving beyond the spell’s range or sundering the magical whip is the only way to escape, Blindness – be permanently blind). Vaz’em had “fun” spending part of his round screaming his lungs out, while Oliver nearly got paralyzed by the whip (I think he sundered it or grappled out of it or something) and then nearly Blinded (missed the Fort save by one, until we realized that Rholand had randomly cast Guidance on him pre-fight and Oliver hadn’t used it yet).
Rholand by far was the most savaged target of Vreeg’s though, as the wizard recognized the oracle as a healer early on while the party was still dealing with his bodyguards. So he hammered the oracle, first with a scorching ray, then another arcane recalled scorching ray that nearly critted and dropped Rholand nonetheless (if it had crit he’d be dead). Rholand was lying on the ground for a whole round or two until we realized, OH YEAH, he still had that special aegis pendant thing that Zenderholm had bequeathed to the party back in Book One. So Rholand retroactively healed 2d8+3 HP, the pendant burned away (heheheh, goodbye bonus +2 to saves against nasty things like diseases!), and he got to stand back up. At which point Vreeg blasted him with magic missiles, nearly dropping him yet again.
Out of everything but a couple 1st level touch spells by the end of the fight – and the three scrolls of Scorching Ray I had him craft during his own downtime between Book One and Book Two, Vreeg was just starting to dig in his pack for those scrolls when the party finally finished him off. Their reward was the derro’s spellbook, journal, a +1 ring of protection, and the aforementioned scrolls of Scorching Ray. Which Rholand was really excited over since he could at least try to use them as a level 1 Sorceror. And with Cid getting the little s@+*’s spellbook (which had Scorching Ray in it), he was happy to let the healer have a toy.
The party quickly pursued the derro’s journal, which while filled with insane ramblings, they were able to piece together enough that Andaisin was indeed behind it all. Vreeg served a necromancer named Rolth that Andaisin had hired to help create the Blood Veil plague, and Vreeg had been sent down here with his derro to make an alliance with the wererats and push them up to attack the city. Likewise, Vreeg had discovered the otyugh infected with Blood Veil, which had perversely gifted it with intelligence and spellcasting – Andaisin had been happy to give it some rudimentary teaching in the ways of Urgathoa.
The party *really* wasn’t looking forward to fighting the Broodmaster now, which I suppose means it was fortunate that Wilhelm came running in a minute later to report that the Broodmaster had escaped, although the wererats had driven off or killed the rest of the otyughs. Their home was their own again, and the Brotherhood was effectively dead. The party promised to convinced Ileosa to draft up a peace treaty with the wererats, which they would be expected to follow – else the party would be down here again. Wilhelm was only too happy to agree to anything at this point, so long as it kept the adventurers from “Killing the Hell out of him” the way they had done to anyone else that dared oppose them.
The party also got a bit more information on the seneschal’s whereabouts, as Wilhelm took them to see Girrigz’s last victim, Eries Yelloweyes. The wererats had found Neolandus and had taken him prisoner – Girrigz saw him as an invader and potential hostage to use against the city. Eries helped him escape back out into the sewers, and as punishment for this crime Girrigz had beaten her savagely, including pulverizing her legs with his earthbreaker. She was in a great amount of pain as a result, and asked the party to put her out of her misery (thus always to one-off NPCs!)
Rholand did what he could to heal her wounds, which took away some of the pain although it did not restore her ability to walk. Wilhelm also managed to talk her out of wanting to die, as while Eries was crippled, she could still be of use to the colony as an adviser and voice of reason. She eventually agreed, and so this little part of the story had a happy ending – although since the party only ever dealt with Wilhelm from then on, who knows? And no one cares, because that’s what happens when you have one-off NPCs. :p
And that was pretty much the end of the session, with the addition of a “trailer” for the following week as I wanted to check and see if the party wanted to do this side-quest that I came up with. As a break from the whole plague thing (even though we had just scratched the surface of it really with the whole wererat thing), the next session the queen was going to offer them the chance to go to Palin’s Cove, a small town outside of Korvosa’s walls, to meet the representative from Magnimar that was carrying all of that city’s aid to Korvosa. Apparently he had run into a bit of trouble, as said trailer involved the party fighting off a bunch of ogres, one of which got its head cut off by Oliver (with the way he tended to crit-kill all of the bad guys, I figured statistically it was likely to happen. :-p ). Eager for something else than swarms of disease-carrying undead, the party enthusiastically promised to accept the queen’s offer next week.
And that session would prove to be a very fun one, as I got to introduce two important NPCs to the plot going forward. One part of the AP as written (minus the part about being a courier from Magnimar I suppose), and one of my own design that I was very pleased with. Who were these NPCs? Well, you'll just have to wait to read the next session write-up, won't you? Yes, I am a tease! :p
I am teased! Cliffhanger . . . .
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And now, the thrilling conclusion - to the cliff-hanger trailer from last session.
After establishing a promise of alliance from Wilhelm and the other wererats (admittedly on pain of them coming back down here and “Killing the Hell out of them too” as Wilhelm liked to put it), the party went to the castle to get the queen’s own buy-in. She was not thrilled at the idea of officially establishing a peace treaty with a bunch of scum wererats living beneath her city. Both due to casual racism but more especially due to said wererats, under indirect orders from Andaisin, kidnapped a number of her subjects and mashed them into a bloody paste to put on arrows, so that they could infect more people with Blood Veil in an attempt to kill all surfacers. But the party was rather insistent on it, and the queen had come to trust their judgement (despite what the Crown of Fangs was whispering), so she eventually agreed to a trial period. But if the wererats broke the treaty then the queen would send the party, or the Grey Maidens if they refused, down there to kill the hell out of them all.
Weary after fighting Vreeg, the party retired and came back to the castle the next day to see how the peace treaty was going and to just check up on things. At which point Ileosa launched into her spiel from the “trailer” last week – the courier from Magnimar was unfamiliar with Korvosa, so he teleported to the nearest point to the city that he was familiar with – the coastal town of Palin’s Cove, a few days’ travel outside the city.
Unfortunately, said courier had apparently gotten into some sort of trouble, as he had sent a magical Sending saying as much, and that the town of Palin’s Cove was under attack. Andaisin’s work again, although really she didn’t have to do much more than alert every local band of brigands and bandits for a hundred miles of the courier’s existence. Said courier was carrying wands, scrolls, and potions of Remove Disease and Lesser Restoration, and any other curatives that might be helpful in a plague. In total Magnimar’s aid was nearly a hundred thousand gold pieces worth of magical gear and consumables, which might be worth even more to a city in the desperate grips of a plague. Apparently one such group had gotten lucky, or had some sort of inside edge that led them to be at the right place at the right time (for them) to catch the courier.
Presumably said courier was not going to be able to get away with the thousands of gold of magical gear, and the bandits were more than the admittedly decent defenses of Palin’s Cove could handle. Otherwise the courier probably wouldn’t have contacted Ileosa asking for help (although given who the courier was maybe he wouldn’t need help after all – but then the PCs wouldn’t get to be big damn heroes so whatever :-p ) Likewise, presumably this was not a situation where the courier could wait several days for help in escaping the would-be thieves, which meant that help needed to get there now. Sadly, the Acadamae was still sealed off (as the party hadn’t dealt with that side quest), and Ileosa *really* didn’t like the idea of asking the Hellknights to go and make it all better – presumably by going into Palin’s Cove and killing everyone that was *not* the courier, bandits and citizenry alike.
Fortunately . . . Ileosa had a plan that could work but carried with it a not insignificant amount of risk. She had found a scroll of Teleport down in the Royal Treasury, and she managed to locate a mage not locked up in the Acadamae (a drop-out/fired instructor) who had been to Palin’s Cove – now the new “royal magician”. The only problem was that said mage was not high-enough level to cast Teleport normally, and he was not intimately familiar with Palin’s Cove, so it was entirely possible things could go horribly (or is that hilariously?) wrong.
The mage was clearly not happy about his new role as the “royal magician” (actually, Oliver had met this guy a few sessions ago when he had his plate mail enchanted – on a whim I made the mage who nearly soiled himself after Oliver coerced him into enchanting his armor on the side, and this poor Teleport guinea pig one and the same). But when Queen Ileosa asked you to do something for the good of Korvosa, you did it. And since they were interested in this “breath of fresh air” sidequest, and knew how badly Korvosa needed this foreign aid, they agreed to the risk as well. I rolled it out in the open – no mishaps, landed right on target (not sure what I would have done if it had been a “Horrible” mishap result –something like a 4% chance – but I would have rolled with it somehow. Maybe just had them pop out of teleport in front of the final boss or something >> )
Of course, landing on target in this case did mean “land in the middle of a street in Palin’s Cove as it burned, surrounded by three ogres”. But since they literally appeared OUT OF THIN AIR, the party got a surprise round on the ogres, who were debating what to do with the boy that they had just caught. The ogres didn’t last very long as they were your pretty bog standard CR 3 ogres, mostly just there to whet the party’s appetite for humanoid destruction.
While they were still pretty smug with themselves over dispatching this group of “land pirates” so easily, I delivered my kick to the crotch of their confidence by having a red dragon fly overhead. A HUGE-sized Red Dragon. They were *just* high enough level not to become Panicked for the next 5d6 minutes, but quite a few of them got to enjoy a Shaken penalty for the next fight (maybe even the final one too for that matter). Gregory, the new royal magician, promptly soiled himself, and the party agreed with him that maybe it was better to let Palin Cove burn so long as they got the courier and his aid out safely.
Speaking of the courier, the boy they had rescued happened to know what inn the courier had been staying out before this attack, so the party followed the boy as he led them through the shortcut of a firing range for newly assembled catapults (siege weapons being an important export of Palin’s Cove). As they entered the testing range, a hill giant and two more ogres came lumbering in from the far side of the field.
The group smashed the ogres, while Cid Blinded the giant with Glitterdust. Vaz’em followed my planned script for the fight by firing a couple of the catapults at the hill giant, which since he was blind, he didn’t even get a chance to make a reflex save (which he would also have sucked at, stupid giants) to catch the catapults’ boulders. Ah well – the giant still got to make a power attack or two before he went down, and even managed to land a punishing blow on Oliver. Still, the group hadn’t take too much damage as yet . . . which was probably good given the final boss battle that was awaiting them.
As they were leaving the testing field, however, a large group of half a dozen ogres came running onto the field after them. Before battle could be joined, the courier made his appearance, flashing into view in the sky above the cluster of ogres. With a cry of “taste my lightning, half-bred freaks!” or something equally . . . lame, the mage blasted all six ogres apart with a Chain Lightning. Hanging in the sky above them, the mage hailed the party as they got their first good look at him. The man was built like a sumo wrestler, big-boned and fat, and his strange staff was shaped like a spinal column.
The mage introduced himself as Togomor, the courier from Magnimar (and yes, the future seneschal of Korvosa ;) ) who had stopped here briefly to rest before the entire city got jumped by a band of bandits calling themselves “Zareem’s Land Pirates” – mostly they were a sizable force of ogres and hill giants, hence how they had managed to overpower the town’s normally-sufficient defenses. No doubt they were here for the aid package, which sadly was likely with Togomor’s apprentice – the two had gotten separated during the hostilities.
So, Togomor had a simple request for our heroes – they would go try to find his apprentice, and Togomor would go deal with the big-ass dragon flying around over town. The party was happy to let him have it, because a well-prepared wizard that was powerful enough to cast Chain Lightning (and Projected Image) was definitely going to have a whole lot better luck against it than they were!
The party and Togomor then parted ways, with the party heading down to the inn where Togomor and his apprentice had been staying before the attack, and where they had parted company. Surprise, surprise, heading in that direction they soon found a tall, handsome man with long fiery red hair – Captain Zareem himself - dragging a beautiful woman with flowing green hair with her hands manacled behind her – Togomor’s apprentice Gwen- over to a cart heaped with supplies labeled with Magnimar heraldry, and now hooked up to an ogre to serve as its draft animal. The party pursued, and easily caught up to the group as ogres made for poor draft animals, and Zareem had his hands full trying to get the young woman into the back of the cart as his last bit of booty.
Noticing the party, Zareem smiled as he climbed down from the cart and drew a rapier, introducing himself and promising that he would give the party a quick death, blah blah blah. Standard villain pre-fight boasting. Although Zareem almost managed to back it up, as he was strong, and had a high-enough BAB to power attack for -3/+6 damage. He also had a pretty potent fire breath weapon?
After a round or two of dueling with the party, Zareem got annoyed that they were making him bleed his own blood, and transformed! His body rippled and grew, expanding and growing scales and wings to reveal a Large-sized red dragon! In typical draconic arrogance, now revealed Zareem spread his attacks out across the entire party rather than focusing them all on one person – which may have been the only thing that prevented a death or two as he beat the hell out of the party. CR 8 dragons are not a fun game when you’re only level 5! Still, the party managed to get Zareem down to about half-health which was pretty good but definitely not good enough. People were going to stay kissing the ground in another round or two, and Zarrem’s breath weapon was almost recharged.
While this has been going on, Gwen had been struggling in the back of the cart, and in an impressive display of strength, managed to rip off the iron manacles locked around her wrists (I think I lowballed the STR DC required a little, saying it required a 20 rather than a 25 or something, but whatever). Now free, she turned around and punched the ogre in the back of the head, which surprised the heck out of the ogre almost as much as the party. After Zareem transformed and announced himself as a dragon, and thus far beyond any of them, the following round Gwen smiled and chuckled.
“That’s funny – SO AM I!”
She declared as she also transformed into an immense green dragon, right on the border between Large and Huge and thus nearly twice Zareem’s size. The wagon creaked dangerously under the sudden weight as Gwen transformed into Gwen’Vor’Stila, and Zareem and the ogre both had a moment to look over their respective shoulders in stunned awe before Gwen’s turn came up and she gave Zareem the beating of a lifetime. All of her attacks hit, and dropped Zareem from roughly half health into the negatives. As Captain Zareem collapsed, the ogre surrendered, and the *other* red dragon that had been flying around overhead crash landed a short distance away, wounded but more pissed off than anything. Seeing the fallen Zareem, the huge dragon cried out “Brother!” and demanded that the party heal Zareem . . . on pain of getting breath weaponed. Which probably would have killed most of the party, as this was a serious breath weapon (something like 10d8) – even Gwen’vor’stila wasn’t particularly looking forward to fighting this one.
The party didn’t want to have to fight two dragons, and had a brief debate with the still standing elder sibling. Apparently they were both part of the infamous ancient red dragon Glarataxus, Scourge of Korvosa, and the older dragon (whose name was Tygarin) was here looking for Zareem who had run off without permission. If Tygarin came back empty-handed, Galarataxus was going to take a piece out of his hide, so Tygarin was very motivated to see his brother healed and alive. At the same time, he was not interested in anything else except Zareem, and would see to it that his younger sibling behaved himself. Rholand reluctantly healed the young dragon, and upon waking Zareem was not happy despite being alive instead of having his head cut off and his body harvested for alchemical components. Zareem pointed out that there was thousands of gold worth of magical items in that cart, all they had to do was take it together, and for a brief moment Tygarin considered going back on his word. But then Togomor’s projected image appeared, hand crackling with more lightning, and Tygarin growled that they were leaving, snatching Zareem up in his jaws like a mother cat picking up a kitten, and flew off into the sunset. So much for Zareem’s Land Pirates.
Now that the danger had passed, Gwen’Vor’Stila’s focus changed to the fact that in shifting into her dragon form, she had burst apart the nice dress she had been wearing, and concerned herself with asking the party if they had anything she could wear when she turned back into a human. Togomor put a nix to that anyway, as they had wasted enough time here and it was time to move on to Korvosa. A task that required Gwen to still be in dragon form, as she would be carrying the cart of aid with her into the city.
Grateful for their help with Zareem (even if she probably didn’t need it once she got properly pissed off), Gwen offered the party a ride on her back as well. Which, since they didn’t have any faster (or more badass) way back home, the party happily agreed to be flown back to the city. Fortunately for Palin’s Cove, the defenders seemed to be rallying and pushing the rest of Zareem’s assembled cadre of giantkin out, so their work here was done. And so the party rode off into the sunset on the back of Togomor’s green dragon apprentice, the archmage flying along under his own power alongside them.
As a reward for delivering Magnimar’s aid to Korvosa (although that actual scene had to wait for next session), the party leveled up to Level Six. No real surprises here – Oliver took more levels of figher, Cid took more levels of magus, Vaz’em took another level in ninja, and I believe Rholand took his next and last level in dreamspun sorcerer (as either he realized this whole mystic theurge thing wasn’t going to work softly thereafter this, or the nightmare I sent his way following this session soured him on the idea of being cursed with an endless tide of horrific dreams (remember, I thought it was Dreamscar, not Dreamspun at first :-p ).
And speaking of that horrific dream Rholand had, this is what he got upon next sleeping in Korvosa after delivering Magnimar’s aid (basically I sent this to him in-between this session and the next.) It involves torture so you may want to skip reading it if you’re easily disturbed, although most of the descriptions are not especially graphic. Nonetheless, it’s rather unpleasant, which is the sort of dream you might expect to be given when your brain was on Kazavon.
Basically due to his dreamspun schtick, Rholand had hijacked into Queen Ileosa’s dream that she had every single night since putting on the Crown of Fangs. The only difference was that instead of being tortured by Eodred or Andaisin, now Rholand was joining in on the “fun”.
The first week following Rholand discovering his connection to the world of dreams:
Tonight, you have the dream again, the same one you’ve had off and on for the past week since developing this strange connection to the land of dreams. It had taken these several repeats to piece the entire sequence together from the fragments that your horrified mind could remember upon waking, but now that you could recall the whole thing you almost wish you couldn’t.
It begins with you walking down a winding stone staircase down into the earth. A dungeon, perhaps? You aren’t entirely sure, having only seen the one chamber at the bottom of this staircase in your nightmare. But it is dark, and dank, and a place of despair given the sound of feminine crying that drifts up to your ears as you descend the stairs.
Arriving at the chamber at the bottom, you find it as dismal and spartan as the stone staircase you used to arrive, with the only thing of note within the room a large iron chair. Strapped down helplessly into that chair is Andaisin, who shrinks back and cowers as you approach, tears still streaming down her face. Next to the chair is a stand holding an impressive variety of torture implements, which you pick up and examine one by one before settling on a long-handled scalpel.
Seeing you handling the scalpel and guessing your intent, Andaisin starts crying again, pleading with you, begging you not to do this. The sight of it fills you with hatred and disgust, and you realize that you aren’t interested in showing her mercy. Nor, for that matter, are you even interested in interrogating her. The only thing you are interested in is the infliction of pain, and with the tools and knowledge at your disposal, you are very good at the infliction of pain as you cut, rend, and sever.
Andaisin screams, and screams, and screams, until you get tired of her bleating. It’s only the work of a moment to pull out her tongue with a set of pliers, and then the work of another to slash it free. Reduced to garbled mewling, Andaisin is thus denied even the ability to give voice to her pain as you continue to methodically reduce her to an unrecognizable piece of bleeding meat. Finally you step back in satisfaction to regard your completed work, and only then do you realize that something is wrong.
Although the destroyed face was completely unrecognizable now, the long strands of scarlet hair and the jagged iron and bone crown now perched on your victim’s head were unmistakable. The fact that this was not what remained of Andaisin, but Ileosa, was confirmed a moment later as Andaisin appeared beside you, grinning as she looked down at your work.
“Thanks for doing my job for me, Rholand.”
Andaisin replies, selecting a gorecaked scalpel from the pile of used implements.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better servant!”
Andaisin crows an instant before she turns and drives the point of the scalpel into your own eye. In the instant between the pain of that starting to register and the scalpel going beyond into your brain, you snap awake, heart pounding in your chest. But worst of all, the dream leaves you with a lingering sense of pleasure at a job well done, before your conscious mind realizes what you had been pleased with and recoils in horror. And then the horror turns to shame at the thought that you could ever feel pleasure at inflicting such torture upon another sentient being, any sentient being.
Was it a manifestation from some deranged piece of your sub-consciousness? A metaphor for your part in the struggle between Andaisin and Ileosa over the city’s fate? A warning of some kind? You don’t know. What you are sure of, however, is that this recurring dream frightens you in a way that none of the horrors you have witnessed thus far have. And a troubling certainty that if you can’t interpret the reason behind this recurring nightmare, and soon, that doom shall swiftly follow.
Now THAT'S a worthy nightmare . . . Now Dreamscarred has got to make its way into Pathfinder somehow, if not as a Sorcerer/Bloodrager Bloodline(*), maybe as something like an Oracle's Curse.
(*)If it was going to be a Bloodline, probably even better as a Bloodrager Bloodline . . . perfect PTSD for the Special Forces veteran. Although it would be actually not bad(**) for a Sorcerer whose powers were awakened by torture . . . .
(**)Thematically, that is. For mental health, it is very bad.
Of course, after that post, I realized that a Dreamscarred class should really be psionic . . . .
Bump -- campaign still on?
Oh yes, we’re still going here! Tomorrow will be session sixty-seven, where-in I will be forcing the party to make some unpleasant decisions with even less pleasant consequences to determine who the most important people to them are and who they will stand beside. Real-life has simply been straight up kicking my ass, and I just haven’t had the energy to write up anything, session re-caps or otherwise.
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Alright, let’s see if I can squeeze something out here, comparisons to a used up tube of toothpaste notwithstanding (these past couple weeks have just plain sucked).
So we opened the session with the party returning to the city of Korvosa as big damn heroes, having saved the hundred thousand gold plus aid that Magnimar had sent with Togomor the Archmage and his green dragon apprentice Gwen (or Gwen’vor’stila if you want her full name).
Understandably, with a really big dragon (I’ve waffled between putting Gwen at Young and Juvenile, which would make her either Large or Huge respectively) coming in over the city, the guard was rather alarmed at first. But having Togomor flying alongside Gwen helped to diffuse the situation peacefully, and the party didn’t have to worry about falling to their deaths after Gwen was shot out of the sky.
Ileosa was pleased that the party was successful, and showed her appreciation with a sizable donation to their coffers (something like 2,000 GP for each of them, which is a fairly good haul – not quite as good as a hundred thousand gold worth of medical supplies, but then they didn’t have to fight a dragon and an archmage for it, either). Ileosa and Togomor shared a moment when they first met, sizing each other up, and Togomor graciously accepted Ileosa’s offer to remain in the castle as a guest for at least the next few days. At this point that was about the limit of contact that the party had with Togomor and his apprentice in Book Two, although they did make the occasional appearance before the end of the book, just so the party didn’t wipe them from their collective memory.
From there the party considered its next move from the list of possible quests, and they decided that perhaps investigating the sunken Thrune’s Breath merchant ship that was sunk the first night of the plague might give some answers. Also, by now it should hopefully be deserted as any zombies held down in the hold were crushed when the ship sank, or escaped into the river by now. Not exactly a pleasant thought given that Blood Veil seemed capable of infecting anything, from people to rats, but there wasn’t much the party could do about an entire contaminated river. Finding Andaisin and killing the hell out of her, though, that the party *could* do.
I can’t quite recall how the party got their hands on the Water Breathing potions, whether they just bought some with their windfall from the queen, got them as a “please don’t kill us” gift from the wererats, or if Vox dipped into the Hellknight fund to help them investigate. Regardless, they all soon found themselves at the bottom of the Jeggare River, swimming along trying to find this shipwreck. Thankfully it wasn’t too hard to find, as it had only been a few days thus far so the river hadn’t had a chance to dump too much sediment onto it.
The fat merchant vessel had cracked completely in two when it went down beneath the waves to land at the bottom of the river, although it had split apart along bulkheads so that the party couldn’t just swim into either half where the ship had split apart (that would have been too easy – gotta have those chokepoints!) They decided to check out the larger, forward half to two-thirds of the ship first, and swam over to where a large hole had been blasted in the ship’s side by one of the explosive ballista bolts. Expecting trouble, Vaz’em cautiously went up to check out the hole, and finding that it appeared to be clear, swam inside for further investigation.
Which is when the Snare trap that he had missed detecting activated. A thick band of seaweed wrapped around one of his paws and then pulled, dragging the ninja into the hold of the ship and pinning himself against the far bulkhead by his one now-trapped arm. In the darkness of the hold, something moved, and Vaz’em came face to face with an old enemy – that damn shark that had been following him and Oliver around the first night of the campaign! The party’s recurring nemesis grinned in that same way that sharks are always grinning, as the party advanced rapidly into the hold to back up their friend.
And here, of course, Skinshear the shark proved that even as an animal companion to a decently leveled druid (Yvicca was something like Druid 6), a shark is still just a shark, and at this point no match for a full team of PCs. Vaz’em freed himself from the trap by slashing apart the seaweed with his other claw, and then he helped filet the shark into some sharkfin soup. Which is when Yvicca the sea hag emerged from the quarters at the forward most section of the ship, having spent those couple rounds Skinshear bought her buffing up, and then the real fight began.
Since the party just killed her animal companion, Yvicca was in no mood to negotiate with these troublemaking adventurers (she just wanted to be left alone, I swear!). So she opened the fight up with an AoE crowd-control spell called “Hydrophobia”. The spell does pretty much what it says on the tin – you become deathly afraid of water for the rounds/level duration, and take non-lethal damage each round if you happen to be near water. Like, say, swimming at the bottom of a river.
Oliver and Vaz’em both fail their saves, and immediately turn around and start swimming back to shore – which is a pretty good bit away – as fast as they can. Leaving Rholand and Cid to deal with the still-pissed off sea hag. Now, Cid is a badass but Yvicca as-written alone is one of *those* fights in the AP, that can kill PCs if not the entire party. And as usual when I converted her to Pathfinder, I optimized her a little, like say, giving her Hydrophobia as one of her level 3 spells (they’re lucky she wasn’t a 7th level druid or I’d have had her using the 4th spell level version of Dispel Magic druids get to remove their Water Breathing Potions). So, to make a long fight short, while Cid did some damage and held his own (especially since unlike in 3.5, you can cast as much Electricity-based magic as you like without electrocuting yourself, much to my disappointment) Yvicca was a Power-Attacking nightmare. While most of her attacks got eaten up by Cid’s mirror images, those ones that did get through to hit the real Cid hurt. A LOT!
And Rholand being Rholand, instead of healing Cid to keep her alive, he chased after Oliver and Vaz’em to make sure they didn’t get eaten by something else in their panic. Which I suppose was just as well, as since he was already somewhat damaged by the trap and Skinshear’s ambush, Vaz’em succumbed to the non-lethal damage and felt unconscious. If he hadn’t been using a Water Breathing potion this would have been a serious issue for him, but as it was it was more of a non-event and Rholand eventually got a cure spell on him to wake him up. At which point he started freaking out again because he was UNDERWATER AND HE WAS SCARED OF IT!
Eventually the Hydrophobia wore off six rounds later, just as Oliver and the others were getting to shore. So they turned around and started swimming back, as fast as they could. I don’t remember if I handwaved the trip back somehow or if the fight really was just that damn long, but Oliver got back just as Cid was on his last legs against the sea hag. He had a good run, but the next power attack spear was likely going to kill him outright (he was in single-digit HP, and Yvicca was regularly hitting for 20+ per swing, and she got two swings per round). Cid got lucky, Yvicca missed with the would-have-been fatal attack (although I think if it had hit Cid would have been like 2 HP above his negative Con). And then Oliver came in and did what he did best – critical hit bad guys with his cutlass. I’m not sure even that was enough to finish off Yvicca, but if Oliver didn’t, Cid did with another shocking grasp slash. And the fight – and with it the session - ended with the party in tatters and a ship that still needed exploring/looting.
Since I’ve gone over a couple “How I’d Do It” write-ups for other APS, and because I know UnArcaneElection likes Second Darkness and would like to thank him for checking up on me and this campaign journal/advice request/mad ramblings forum thread, here’s how I would do:
So, assuming your party can show some restraint (haha, restraint in an AP about Drow!) with cracking Drizz’t and dominatrix jokes, having an AP about Drow seems like it would be a good time. Certainly from what I’ve read on these forum boards about the AP, it certainly has some good set pieces here and there. The problem that led it to be possibly the most reviled of all the APs (before Wrath of the Righteous I suppose ;) :-p ) has to do with a couple major plot-related disconnects – and possibly players being unable to stop themselves from screaming “omg it’s Drizz’t lol!” at every drow they see as well.
I was trying to figure out how I would fix these plot disconnects, particularly the sudden tonal shift from Books 1 & 2 to the rest of the AP, where you go from being sort of “in it for yourselves” semi-criminal scum to being saviors of the elven race. I remember reading one person’s suggestion that they just ran it as the party working for the elves the whole time, which seemed to make a lot of sense to me.
But as you’ve seen thus far, I can never just leave anything alone to be simple and straightforward. And when I recalled this opening theme from a certain high-profile spy thriller from several years ago, it clicked. The players would be working for a secretive branch of Kyonin’s security forces, an Elf-I 6, if you will. Drawn from a variety of races so as to avoid less suspicion (as a group of all elves might), the PCs would be an assembled team of specialists that could be sent out to deal with threats to the nation. They would be semi-autonomous, but be given a variety of magical gizmos that would allow them to remain in occasional contact with HQ during their extended missions, as well as just whatever weird and cool things I could come up with that might just conveniently be exactly what they need to get themselves out of one jam or another (sound familiar? :-p ).
Initially they would be sent out to meet with an asset their boss had developed in Riddleport, a Saul Vancasterkin, but once the drow were revealed it would turn into a sort of cold war era spy show were they would be sent in to see what the drow were up to, while dodging the drow’s own secret security branch. And when the party finally got back to report this directly to the elf queen in book five, *of course* they would be branded as traitors and thrown in jail, because that’s how these sorts of things go when you’re in a spy thriller and getting to the end of the movie (seriously, about every other spy thriller has the hero getting screwed over by his own organization if he works for one at some point).
And then they find out that their boss is actually the BBEG, also a classic with spy thrillers, and they chase him down to the ancient command center as the clock runs down on the insane doomsday device that’s about to blow up the planet. Second Darkness really could be run as “James Bond in Fantasy-Land” if you tweak it *just a little* bit!
Oh yes, we’re still going here! Tomorrow will be session sixty-seven, where-in I will be forcing the party to make some unpleasant decisions with even less pleasant consequences to determine who the most important people to them are and who they will stand beside. Real-life has simply been straight up kicking my ass, and I just haven’t had the energy to write up anything, session re-caps or otherwise.
I feel your pain . . . sounds like you need a new job. Yes, I read your second spoiler in your second post. This is awesome and would defuse a LOT of people's complaints about Second Darkness (although I don't think it's THAT bad -- come on people, it's supposed to be a bait-and-switch.
I actually did my own take on this from the player character end (but who is not yet in a PbP, unfortunately -- real life and all that :-( ). I built her for a traditional Second Darkness -- well, traditional apart from the obvious exception of needing to accept her, but I crafted her backstory to avoid anything that would break the AP; however, with (as far as I can tell) NO change in backstory, she would fit even more easily into your rework of Second Darkness. Let me know if you plan on running a PbP of this . . . .
Now I've got to hear what you'd do to rescue Wrath of the Righteous. Wrath of the Righteous was a good idea, but got horribly botched in execution of both the Mythic rules and an apparent attempt to balance it for Mythic play that (according to many people's posts on these messageboards) ended up completely unbalancing it to the point that the opposition is often too weak even for non-Mythic PCs.
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Heh, nice character. I’ll be sure to keep you in mind should I ever decide to pick up yet another PbP game (the two I’ve been running along with this game have sort of died due to DM neglect. Ooops. Although I was doing okay until real life decided to stomp all over me. 2015 has sucked thus far. ><)
As for Wrath of the Righteous, well . . . I was kinda interested in running it when it was first coming out, and ironically enough we were just starting this campaign at the time. But when I put forth the idea of running it, the player who was running the Reign of Winter game (Ichi-hara’s player way back in session one, who quit and disappeared immediately thereafter) urged against it. Citing that there was pretty much the entire kitchen sink of Pathfinder subsystems between hexploration, army management, and of course, mythic.
In hindsight I’m *really* glad I was talked out of it, because I’m pretty sure trying to run that insanity as a DM new to Pathfinder would have poisoned my opinion of it. Even now I’m not so sure running it with mythic as written would be a good idea (see the Wrath of the Righteous forum for magnuskn’s slow descent into madness over the mythic rules – his campaign write-up is rather funny, if a bit sad). Keep in mind that I haven’t read the actual books, so I only know what people have discussed (or screamed in frustration about) on the forums. Nonetheless, here’s my take:
So, first while you probably could run WotR as a normal game with a little toning down of the mythic powers of the bad guys I think the main attraction of WotR is the mythic aspect. As a result I would probably want to try to keep mythic, intense headaches and all. For mechanics I would probably look into the third-party stuff being put out by Legendary Games, and see if that manages to patch any of the gaping holes in mythic, and I might look into a few houserules if necessary to curb the more excessive aspects of mythic – some suggested houserules on the forum seem pretty reasonable to me.
More importantly, I would put the game on the Slow XP Track, or perhaps even forgo XP altogether and go for leveling at specific points in the game. Either way, that would give me more space on the XP progression to ramp up the difficulty to a more appropriate level. That includes sending a death squad of Balors against my level 5/mythic 2 party if necessary. :p
More seriously, whenever the party fought demons I would have there be a *lot* of them, including each larger demon having a swarm of little ones with them to slap/boss around. These lesser demons wouldn’t be much of a threat due to being lower level, but they could still be a nuisance – get in the way, help the demons that are the real threat with flanking, etc. AoE would take them down pretty quickly but that would only be a temporary respite because more would show up/get summoned (as a free action!) the very next round. Fighting the demons of the Worldwound should be like fighting the sea, with progress won only by wading through demon corpses hip deep. There’s too many f@@$ing demons! :p
That being said, I would also try to include some side quests that would involve threats *other* than demons, since this AP seems to be demons, demons, demons, oh and a couple demonic cultists for variety. Usually Paizo manages to have a bit more variety than that in its AP. For variety’s sake I may also have situations where their mythic abilities are suppressed for a time, forcing them to fight smart and giving me an brief respite from the insanity of mythic.
I would also strengthen the mythic trials – some of them seem *really* anemic – watching Baphomet get ganked, anyone? I mean, something metal like “No, you can’t just kill that chaos dragon flying around in the Worldwound in Book Three, no no. You have to tear out his heart and eat it, in mid-air, while his lifeless corpse falls out of the sky and you have to survive the thousand-foot plunge to the barren ground below!” *That’s* a mythic trial!
Another way to make things more “mythic” is simply pump up the descriptions – instead of simply “you stab the vrock”, it’s “you kick the vrock through the wall, following after it into the next room, before stabbing it as it tries to rise from the pile of rubble”. There’s actually a quest from World of Warcraft that I always remember – all the quest involves is going out into the ocean to kill an orca (killer whale) at the behest of a bunch of murlocs (fishmen). But the description for this whale is “Grrglgrrl – HE WHO SWIMS AGAINST THE TIDES OF FATE – ERADICATING THE HOPE OF LIFE FOR ALL THOSE WHO HEAR THE SIREN SONG OF DEATH UPON THE WAVES!” It’s completely over the top – and that’s probably the key to running a good mythic game, besides a bottle of antacids (and a bottle of the “good stuff” alcohol too), completely embracing the ridiculous over-the-top nature of it all.
Likewise, while I don’t think the players will get a chance to know the bad guys as intimately well as they do in Crimson Throne due to constant interaction, I would make certain that my players know who their enemies are, at least the mythic ones. Legends, reports from previous battles, whispered fearful conversations between demons, etc. Another good example is the beginning of the AP itself – the Storm King crashes Kenebras, kills Trendelev, and throws the PCs into a pit without even really noticing them. That’s a good villain introduction.
For the big bad Demon Lords, I think I might try to have Dreskari figure in more so it’s not just all about Baphomet. And I would also like there to be three of them working together, or at least other Demon Lords during contract work for them. I’m leaning towards having Admiraches, Demon Lord of Madness, from Paizo’s own Shackled City AP, *the* first Paizo AP, as the third bad guy. Then we have corruption of the body (Dreskari), corruption of the mind (Adimarches), and corruption of the soul (Baphomet). Each would have some ultimate goal. Dreskari’s would be to open the Worldwound completely, and doom the entire world of Golarion to inevitable destruction. Baphomet’s would be to capture Iomedae, break Her, and turn Her into the daughter Nocitula never was. Adimarches . . . well, dude is crazy, so who knows what his actual goal is?
Anyway, enough about the mechanical stuff, let’s talk story since there’s some gaping holes there as well. First off, in overall tone, I suspect that I would run it less as Wrath of the Righteous and more as Desperation of the Righteous – this would probably make a decent theme song.
In short, despite the status quo established at the beginning of the AP, with the Worldwound relatively contained by the Wardstones, I would have that be only crusader PR. In the upper echelons of the crusade, the truth is that holding the line against the demons is destroying Mendev from the inside out. Queen Gadfrey will likely be the last queen of Mendev, as within thirty years or so the country will no longer be able to support its permanent war footing and the slow but relentless drain on its resources, populace, and political capital. There are simply too many f&*&ing demons.
The Wardstones are holding them back, for now, but even that doesn’t stop *all* of them – there’s still a few that manage to slip through the cracks, and the Wardstones don’t protect against cultists, corrupted crusaders, or other mercenaries brought in by the demons. And furthermore, the demons aren’t even trying that hard to escape the area of the Worldwound – Dreskari has focused his entire horde towards the single-minded task of learning how to break the Worldwound open completely and unleash the full weight of the demonic hordes into the world. Which means the demons are perfectly content to continue squatting in Sarkonis, consuming the land itself down into a blackened unrecognizable filth. When that happens, not even the Wardstones will be enough to hold back the tide.
*If* the world was united behind Mendev, and *if* the gods were united in helping drive the demons out of Golarion, things wouldn’t be so bad. But Mendev receives only token aid from its neighbors, and the gods continue to do their whole “divine boardgame” bickering as always. The volunteers aren’t enough to make up the difference. There are simply too many f~+$ing demons.
So the Crusade is slowly cracking apart under the strain of holding the demonic tide back, even *with* the Wardstones, although no one but the cynics and doomsayers actually are aware of this down on the ground. So everyone goes about their business as usual, and Kenebras has its typical yearly celebration at the start of Book One. I’d probably go with what others have done here and have some build-up to the celebration itself, maybe even a few “Welcome to the Worldwound Front, you dumb schmucks!” encounters with demons, cultists, brigands, converted wildlife that can get through the Wardstones, whatever.
I would start the actual “party” during the celebration with Areelu Vorlesh appearing from the midst of the crowd to gut the mayor in the middle of his speech. That would get the party introduced to Dreskari’s chosen mouthpiece right off the bat, and show that this is a BAD Woman. And then the Storm King and all ten thousand of his friends rain down out of the sky and up out of the earth as the Kenebras Wardstone explodes, and the party gets to fight for their lives until Trendelev’s body crashes to the ground, which splits open, dumping them down into the depths.
I’d probably lessen the fighting of random crap down in the depths, or at least make it more associated with the demonic invasion. I’d follow this up with the alliance between the city and the mongrelfolk, if only to start the process of “if you want to survive, you’re gonna have to make friends with people, sometimes even with people you really don’t like”. Continue with a guerrilla warfare situation against the endless army of demons wading through the remains of Kenebras for the rest of the AP, concluding with the desperate assault on the Wardstone citadel to keep it from blowing up the army Queen Gadfrey has assembled to desperately trying to fill the hole in the Wardstone line. Pretty much, she’s just coming to Kenebras to die and get it over with in one big last battle, because one would expect the demons to surge forth through that gap like an unending, unstoppable tide of water through a fracturing dam.
Of course, that doesn’t happen, the PCs destroy the corrupted Wardstone, become mythic, and the demons for whatever reason back off (remember, Dreskari doesn’t care about actually winning versus the crusade – his sole end-game is breaking open the worldwound entirely so that nobody, not even the gods, can stop him from overrunning the entire world.)
Meanwhile, Areelu Vorlesh goes on a merry whirlwind tour, blowing up the rest of the Wardstones all along the perimeter – this is my excuse for other mythic people to show up later, should one or multiple PCs actually irrevocably die somehow – which I suspect was one big reason why the designers did make the later book so easy. They low-balled it on top of not calculation encounters correctly for mythic in order to help DMs avoid having to try to come up with where more chosen mythic people come from.
Book Two is trying to piece the crusader army back together and rally them to still stand against the demons, despite the fact that Areelu just blew up the only thing really saving everyone’s ass from getting overrun by the demons that *don’t* want to listen to Drekari’s orders to simply deathball around the Worldwound until he gets done breaking it open for the rest of the horde. Gadfrey’s idea for that is to try and take back Drelev, a fortress just beyond the Wardstone Front that got overrun (or possibly a sister city to Kenebras that just got overrun when Areelu blew up its Wardstone as well just for laughs). I might have some Game of Thrones style intrigue going on as well, with the Hellknights from Cheliax trying to stage a coup of the crusade and take it over from Gadfrey and turn this into a LE vs. CE war with their suggested military tactics of forced conscription and kamikaze-style attacks of people luring demons into traps with their own bodies/blowing themselves up along with the demons. For some reason I like the idea of Gadfrey having a secret demon advisor in the form of a redeemed Babau. Anyway, the party has to liberate a secret weapon from the overrun Drelev, the Sword of Valor, and while they’re doing that they learn of a man called Staunton Vhane, who has been the military mind behind all of these coordinated demon attacks on the Worldwound Front.
Book Three is all about hunting Vhane down, and going into the outskirts of the Worldwound to do it. The players would also meet Arushalae, who rather than being a loner is actually the leader of a small band of outcast demons – I think it would be interesting to see how well the players cope with having multiple demons to redeem at once, especially some who may be spies and are only paying lip-service to the idea, or who want to change but lack the willpower to control their demonic CE urges.
I’m not sure how I feel about Book Four. I like the idea of keeping Nocitula in the AP somewhere, and I like there being some planar travel involved in the later stages of the AP. I’m just not sure making an entire book about going to Nocitula’s demon city is worth it, especially with Book Five coming immediately thereafter. Oh well – I would probably also change the ending where Baphomet just shows up, only to be immediately ganked by Nocitula.
There would be some minor changes in Book Five – namely that the players are invited to plane shift into the Heavens rather than being immediately yanked there by Iomedae, or else go there simply in their dreams. Baphomet stole Iomedae’s herald, and as a result he’s able to tap into the herald’s divine connection to establish a portal between Iomedae’s realm and his. And pretty much Act 4 of Diablo 3 is the result – demonic armies charging forth into the Heavens to corrupt and destroy everything they can. Ragathiel is busy on the front-lines, crushing hundreds of demons single-handedly, but slowly but inexorably the demons are winning. There’s too many f&#*ing demons. In the end, even if it takes another thousand years, Baphomet will win unless the connection is severed. Which is where the PCs come in – Iomedae will be stern and probably a little irritated with having Her realm getting invaded and all, but I will probably forego the sound torture unless the PCs *really* piss Her off. After the players destroy/save Iomedae’s herald, I will leave the option open to fight Baphomet if they want. But if they do, I will have him cheat like a bastard. If that means having him exploit Mythic Time Stop ruthlessly to spam scrolls of every spell in the game at them, then so be it – they knew what they were getting into when they picked an unnecessary fight with a Demon Lord in his own realm. :p
Book Six . . . Book Six I would probably completely rewrite. A demon brothel . . . that’s your idea of a mythic end-game, Paizo? Seriously!? The first part would be getting the means to seal the Worldwound, followed by an epic end of Mass Effect 3-style dash to the Worldwound through the countless ranks of Dreskari’s forces that he had assembled *specifically* to prevent this from happening. The players ultimately beat Areelu Vorlesh like a drum at the base of the Worldwound, maybe kill Dreskari who shows up immediately thereafter, and start sealing the Worldwound. Which is when Dreskari goes completely a#$$*$@, and re-appears as a Kaiju-sized bug, forcing the Worldwound to stay open through sheer willpower and his Godzilla-sized posterior. (Likely with a cliché scream of “I *AM* THE WORLDWOUND!”) Cue the final battle, with the players finally destroying Drekari for good (as the Worldwound itself was literally his domain, or at least it was after he made it so as his final gambit to keep it open, so it counts for killing him permanently inside his domain itself). The Worldwound collapses, the world is saved, roll credits. Possibly with or without heroic sacrifice from the PCs, or at least them expending their mythic ranks in order to manage it.
I sometime amuse myself with the idea that I will have every AP I run end with Cheliax benefiting in some way. I probably won’t actually do it because I like not being lynched by my players. Curse of the Crimson Throne’s ending, therefore, would be a massive expeditionary army from Cheliax arriving, crushing the PCS underfoot, and conquering Korvosa to re-integrate it with the empire. Wrath of the Righteous’s ending would be a Hellknight kneeling before Queen/Empress Abby, and opening a box to reveal a shard of the Wardstone – i.e. “Here, have some mythic ranks Abby!”
And wow, that was a long diatribe. Any questions? :p
Heh, nice character. I’ll be sure to keep you in mind should I ever decide to pick up yet another PbP game (the two I’ve been running along with this game have sort of died due to DM neglect. Ooops. Although I was doing okay until real life decided to stomp all over me. 2015 has sucked thus far. ><)
I feel your pain. (Like I said, you need to change jobs over to working for Paizo.) CotC campaign still going okay?
{. . .} So, first while you probably could run WotR as a normal game with a little toning down of the mythic powers of the bad guys I think the main attraction of WotR is the mythic aspect. As a result I would probably want to try to keep mythic, intense headaches and all. For mechanics I would probably look into the third-party stuff being put out by Legendary Games, and see if that manages to patch any of the gaping holes in mythic, and I might look into a few houserules if necessary to curb the more excessive aspects of mythic – some suggested houserules on the forum seem pretty reasonable to me. {. . .}
From what I've read on the forums, you actually need to boost some of the encounters even if the PCs DON'T have ANY Mythic powers. The most popular alternative to Mythic seems to be regenerating Hero Points, which, aside from being less overpowered, sounds a LOT simpler to run -- just have to figure out the right Hero Point regeneration rate. Another suggestion that I've seen less commonly, but which I think would be really cool, would be to have normal PC levels go well past 20. (This has its own balance adjustment requirements, but I think would be a LOT more straightforward than Mythic.)
{. . .} More seriously, whenever the party fought demons I would have there be a *lot* of them, including each larger demon having a swarm of little ones with them to slap/boss around. These lesser demons wouldn’t be much of a threat due to being lower level, but they could still be a nuisance – get in the way, help the demons that are the real threat with flanking, etc. AoE would take them down pretty quickly but that would only be a temporary respite because more would show up/get summoned (as a free action!) the very next round. Fighting the demons of the Worldwound should be like fighting the sea, with progress won only by wading through demon corpses hip deep. There’s too many f!$+ing demons! :p {. . .}
From what I've seen of other APs, this kind of thing should be done a lot more in general. The PCs usually get the Action Economy advantage except in encounters with a lot of really wimpy things for their level, and get to take nice orderly 15 minute adventuring days. Instead, if they're going to be Mythic, make their life be like a holdout mission against the Zerg (in StarCraft 1 and 2).
That being said, I would also try to include some side quests that would involve threats *other* than demons, since this AP seems to be demons, demons, demons, oh and a couple demonic cultists for variety. Usually Paizo manages to have a bit more variety than that in its AP. For variety’s sake I may also have situations where their mythic abilities are suppressed for a time, forcing them to fight smart and giving me an brief respite from the insanity of mythic.
Yes, throw in some Undead (some Demons have an Undead connection anyway), Aberrations (some of which won't mind the weird conditions of the Worldwound), some of the weirder Magical Beasts and Monstrous Humanoids (as with Aberrations), and corrupted creatures of various kinds. In addition, as noted later, Cheliax and Hell really do benefit from the Worldwound problem, because they can use the Demonic threat as an excuse for Infernal rule (and the Demonic threat draws away forces that might otherwise actively oppose Cheliax and Hell), so have a significant amount of opposition and sabotage from Devils, Diabolists, Chelish agents, and even Hellknights (although a significant subset of Hellknights would be genuinely and wholeheartedly opposed to the Worldwound).
{. . .} I would also strengthen the mythic trials – some of them seem *really* anemic – watching Baphomet get ganked, anyone? I mean, something metal like “No, you can’t just kill that chaos dragon flying around in the Worldwound in Book Three, no no. You have to tear out his heart and eat it, in mid-air, while his lifeless corpse falls out of the sky and you have to survive the thousand-foot plunge to the barren ground below!” *That’s* a mythic trial! {. . .}
I remember that the playtest version of the Mythic Rules had ways that Mythic Tiers would be unstable. One option offered was a dependency upon something -- if you didn't keep eating the right kind of cheese and/or beans or something like that, your Mythic Powers ran out of gas. Another option (not mutually exclusive with the first) was a Kryptonite/Green Lantern option -- your Mythic Powers were vulnerable to something not too impossible to get. They should have kept these, at least for Mythic Initiation -- maybe your Mythic Ranks upgrade later so that your lowest Mythic Tiers become stable, but more recently gained Mythic Tiers are still unstable.
{. . .} For the big bad Demon Lords, I think I might try to have Dreskari figure in more so it’s not just all about Baphomet. And I would also like there to be three of them working together, or at least other Demon Lords during contract work for them. I’m leaning towards having Admiraches, Demon Lord of Madness, from Paizo’s own Shackled City AP, *the* first Paizo AP, as the third bad guy. Then we have corruption of the body (Dreskari), corruption of the mind (Adimarches), and corruption of the soul (Baphomet). Each would have some ultimate goal. Dreskari’s would be to open the Worldwound completely, and doom the entire world of Golarion to inevitable destruction. Baphomet’s would be to capture Iomedae, break Her, and turn Her into the daughter Nocitula never was. Adimarches . . . well, dude is crazy, so who knows what his actual goal is? {. . .}
I definitely like this idea. But also get Hell and its lackeys in on the act, for the reasons noted above. And Abaddon as well, because from the Daemonic point of view, the more destruction, the merrier. Opposing them out of desperation would be some most unlikely (and generally unwilling) allies, the Qlippoths . . . and that leads me to link to another one of my character concepts (sorry, not statted up yet).
{. . .} First off, in overall tone, I suspect that I would run it less as Wrath of the Righteous and more as Desperation of the Righteous {. . .}
The threads about Iomedae's harsh treatment of the PCs make it seem that she is starting to crack under the pressure.
{. . .} *If* the world was united behind Mendev, and *if* the gods were united in helping drive the demons out of Golarion, things wouldn’t be so bad. But Mendev receives only token aid from its neighbors, and the gods continue to do their whole “divine boardgame” bickering as always. {. . .}
And any deity who doesn't like this and is thinking of doing something open about it knows that they're probably going to wind up under 6000 feet of rock, like what happened to Rovagug.
{. . .} So the Crusade is slowly cracking apart under the strain of holding the demonic tide back, even *with* the Wardstones, although no one but the cynics and doomsayers actually are aware of this down on the ground. So everyone goes about their business as usual, and Kenebras has its typical yearly celebration at the start of Book One. I’d probably go with what others have done here and have some build-up to the celebration itself, maybe even a few “Welcome to the Worldwound Front, you dumb schmucks!” encounters with demons, cultists, brigands, converted wildlife that can get through the Wardstones, whatever.
This was the impression that I got from reading stuff outside of the AP (I don't have the actual AP). You can see this from reading about the Mendevian Crusades, especially the 3rd and 4th. And by the way, how come nobody ever repaired or replaced the &$#(*!@ Kenabres Wardstone after it was damaged in the attack that began the 4th Crusade?
I would start the actual “party” during the celebration with Areelu Vorlesh appearing from the midst of the crowd to gut the mayor in the middle of his speech. That would get the party introduced to Dreskari’s chosen mouthpiece right off the bat, and show that this is a BAD Woman. And then the Storm King and all ten thousand of his friends rain down out of the sky and up out of the earth as the Kenebras Wardstone explodes, and the party gets to fight for their lives until Trendelev’s body crashes to the ground, which splits open, dumping them down into the depths.
I’d probably lessen the fighting of random crap down in the depths, or at least make it more associated with the demonic invasion. {. . .}
+1 on on each of those things. I would also recommend letting Prelate Hulrun actually deliver some of his speech so that it becomes clear that some of the leaders of the Crusaders are themselves NOT nice people. Preferably have this unwittingly hearken back to some of the more unpleasant introductory encounters with Crusaders -- seriously play up the dystopian aspect of Mendev. Also get rid of the cheesy aid that Terelendev gives -- have a long battle in which the PCs battle to save as many people as they can, while they see Terelendev attempt to save some random people, and then get cut down before their eyes. Then they undergo a full-gravity fall into the chasm (perhaps even actively swept into the chasm by the Khorramzadeh's pet giant demon that I haven't been able to identify yet -- the thought of this horror using a gigantic push broom to sweep them in, perhaps aided by some high level Hand-series spell cast by Areelu Vorlesh, just sounds too funny to pass up). No magic scales either -- the party has to survive by their wits. They only survive the fall because they landed on the sloping side of a pit of walls of really soft dirt, and should consider themselves simply lucky that they didn't end up with a broken leg like Anevia, or worse yet completely smashed, crushed, or suffocated like the many bodies they will see down there once they get some light or darkvision going. As compensation, do let them pick up a few critical consumables, some of which do what the scales would have done. Although I do have to admit that on second thought, having the giant demon sweep the PCs and other stuff into the chasm with a giant push broom would explain how some of Terelendev's scales got down there . . . .
{. . .} Of course, that doesn’t happen, the PCs destroy the corrupted Wardstone, become mythic, and the demons for whatever reason back off (remember, Dreskari doesn’t care about actually winning versus the crusade – his sole end-game is breaking open the worldwound entirely so that nobody, not even the gods, can stop him from overrunning the entire world.)
Meanwhile, Areelu Vorlesh goes on a merry whirlwind tour, blowing up the rest of the Wardstones all along the perimeter – this is my excuse for other mythic people to show up later, should one or multiple PCs actually irrevocably die somehow – which I suspect was one big reason why the designers did make the later book so easy. {. . .}
Actually, a rational explanation of this would be that even Chaotic as he is, Deskari realizes that if the other Wardstones aren't smashed first, they are still providing some protection against the Demons that could lead to them getting flanked and destroyed before he can complete his dirty work of opening the Worldwound the rest of the way, so his first priority after the initial incursion is to pull back and take advantage of the chaos to break as many of them as possible before the Crusaders can respond properly.
Also, the Demon-hating Qlippoths have launched a small incursion of their own, and the PCs might find themselves in a very uneasy but necessary alliance with them.
{. . .} I might have some Game of Thrones style intrigue going on as well, with the Hellknights from Cheliax trying to stage a coup of the crusade and take it over from Gadfrey and turn this into a LE vs. CE war with their suggested military tactics of forced conscription and kamikaze-style attacks of people luring demons into traps with their own bodies/blowing themselves up along with the demons. For some reason I like the idea of Gadfrey having a secret demon advisor in the form of a redeemed Babau. {. . .}
I like this. As noted above, Cheliax and Hell itself stand to benefit from the Worldwound incursion, so they don't want it dealt with too successfully. Why else would the Hellknights have pulled out their forces in past Crusades? With respect to the Babau advisor fitting into the intrigue -- somebody finds out, and is using this to extort concessions from Queen Galfrey. {. . .}
Book Three is all about hunting Vhane down, and going into the outskirts of the Worldwound to do it. The players would also meet Arushalae, who rather than being a loner is actually the leader of a small band of outcast demons – I think it would be interesting to see how well the players cope with having multiple demons to redeem at once, especially some who may be spies and are only paying lip-service to the idea, or who want to change but lack the willpower to control their demonic CE urges.
I like this. But not only do the PCs have to deal with redeeming a horde of Demons and trying to find which (if any) of them are sincere, but they also have to deal with Burners (as in the zealots of the 3rd and 4th Crusades), Hellknights, Diabolists, Devils, and Qlippoths who want to sabotage the whole thing, as well as more obviously unredeemed Demons and cultists who have more or less the same idea, and who want to kill or capture or even corrupt the PCs while they are at it.
I’m not sure how I feel about Book Four. I like the idea of keeping Nocitula in the AP somewhere, and I like there being some planar travel involved in the later stages of the AP. I’m just not sure making an entire book about going to Nocitula’s demon city is worth it, especially with Book Five coming immediately thereafter. Oh well – I would probably also change the ending where Baphomet just shows up, only to be immediately ganked by Nocitula.
Actually, double down on it. Make the redemption of Nocticula that is hinted at somewhere in the AP (I think in the post-book-6 section) be not an option, but a necessity, although it is not necessarily immediately obvious. If she's going to have a showdown with Baphomet here, make him prove to be unexpectedly tough, so that actions of the PCs are actually needed to tip the balance. Since he's going to be needed later in the AP, after he's defeated, make it apparent that this was just some avatar of his, and that he's likely to be already plotting his revenge.
There would be some minor changes in Book Five – namely that the players are invited to plane shift into the Heavens rather than being immediately yanked there by Iomedae, or else go there simply in their dreams. Baphomet stole Iomedae’s herald, and as a result he’s able to tap into the herald’s divine connection to establish a portal between Iomedae’s realm and his. {. . .}
Actually (especially if the party is short on Plane-Shifting power themselves, like for instance they are a D team), have them make use of this portal to get there from events at the end of Book 3.
{. . .} Iomedae will be stern and probably a little irritated with having Her realm getting invaded and all, but I will probably forego the sound torture unless the PCs *really* piss Her off. {. . .}
But make it clear that she's starting to crack under the pressure. Also have some sleazy Infernal agents show up, offering her and the PCs literally a deal with the Devil . . . and they pull every high-pressure sales trick in the book. In addition, they infiltrate Iomedae's chorus, which they use to try to drive a wedge between her and the PCs by means of a musical assault. (This is the PDQ Bach fan in me reacting to Iomedae's musical assault that people have complained about on these boards.)
{. . .} After the players destroy/save Iomedae’s herald, I will leave the option open to fight Baphomet if they want. But if they do, I will have him cheat like a bastard. If that means having him exploit Mythic Time Stop ruthlessly to spam scrolls of every spell in the game at them, then so be it – they knew what they were getting into when they picked an unnecessary fight with a Demon Lord in his own realm.
Not only that, but even if they win he still cheats. Fortunately, they should have some warning of this from seeing that he cheated in the previous book. On the other hand, if they DON'T beat him hard enough to at least take him out of action for a while, their mission will probably become impossible in Book 6.
Book Six . . . Book Six I would probably completely rewrite. A demon brothel . . . that’s your idea of a mythic end-game, Paizo? Seriously!? The first part would be getting the means to seal the Worldwound, followed by an epic end of Mass Effect 3-style dash to the Worldwound through the countless ranks of Dreskari’s forces that he had assembled *specifically* to prevent this from happening. {. . .}
Well, he COULD be forcing them to wade through a Demon brothel . . .
{. . .} The Worldwound collapses, the world is saved, roll credits. [. . .}
Post-credits scene: "6 months later": Cultists of Adimarches (Aldinach?), now equipped with Numerian technology, complete their ritual to reopen the Worldwound . . . .
Yup, although I have been entirely too nice to them lately, letting them talk their way out of several big fights and get away with robbing Togomor. In my defense, one of the big fights was framed as "this guy really doesn't want to fight you", and they're pretty far behind WBL right now, as they've been fighting people in Old Korvosa who basically only have their own feces to use as currency. Plus the alternative was Togomor killing Oliver's henchmen in a brutal, disgusting, and morally repugnant fashion. And hopefully it'll take the sting out of how I plan to completely screw them all over at the end of Book Three, motivating their flight from Korvosa. We'll get there in the write-ups eventually! Although at my current pace, I suspect we'll be in the middle of Book Four before we finally manage to catch up. ><
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Now where was I? Oh yes, the party was exploring the sunken ship the Thrune’s Breath. I also seem to have forgotten to mention in my hasty last update for session thirty that the party hit level 6 after returning Magnimar’s aid to Korvosa. No real surprises here – Oliver took another level in fighter, Vaz’em in ninja, Cid in magus, and Rholand in oracle.
So the party had just got done dealing with the sea hag, and their former archnemesis Skinshear the Shark. That left the main hold of the ship open for further exploration. Wary of more Snare-spell traps, the party swam inside after healing up. They found that the hold had been pretty smashed up, likely by the Blood Veil zombie cargo. Still, Rholand’s sharp eyes (yes, a Blind-curse oracle with a good perception roll) found a secret compartment near the very front of the hold. Inside was a watertight package, which they wisely chose to open once back on dry land.
Finding nothing else of interest here, the party left and went over to the back half of the ship, which had snapped off in such a way that the hull formed almost a cave . . . . kinda like the rock formation cave that they discovered the ship had crashed down onto – thus causing the ship to crack in half entirely . . . hmmmm. Oh well, they’re PCs right – of course they advance forth! Right onto the menu of the two giant moray eels that came slithering out, one from the boat, the other from the rocky cave. Underwater? With a sea hag? And two giant eels? Yes, the party had wandered onto the set of the remake of the Little Mermaid, and nobody was happy about now that Ursula – Yvicca was dead. Nonetheless, Floatsam and Jetsam did their best to avenge their new neighbor. They failed. Although not before both of them beat the odds and hit Cid even through his fresh mirror images, dropping him back into critical health after both hit, one grappled, and got to use its gnaw ability (auto-hit while grappling) ability on him once before expiring.
The last of the ship’s denizens taken care of, the party explored the back end of the ship – turned – eel cave, and found an intact chest with several potions (various buffs and a CMW), and 1,500 GP worth of coins scattered about that they greedily sucked up into their bags before returning to shore with their salvage. They quickly identified the potions, and then turned their attention to the waterproofed parcel, which turned out to be the ownership documents for the Thrune’s Breath.
Not wanting to give up the jig on Dr. Davaulus just yet, given I had a pretty good idea the party would immediately squeal to the queen and attempt to murder him, which, given Davaulus had been promoted to a 9th level alchemist, he pretty much would have beat the party to a messy pulp, blown them up, and mashed them down into potions reagents. And obviously it would also point pretty directly to the Shrine of the Blessed Maiden, and if Davaulus didn’t get them, Andaisin and the rest of the s!~@ down there certainly would! So I played for a bit more time, and made things more interesting by choosing a different owner for the ship now at the bottom of the Jeggare River. Someone who the party had all but forgotten about after the queen had him thrown in jail at the end of Book One. Written quite clearly on the Thrune’s Breath deed was the name – Adonis Kreed.
So the party went to the Longacre building to pay Andaisin’s shifty lawyer a visit. The guards weren’t happy with the idea of letting the party see him, as Adonis had killed several guards during his incarceration and was now chained up in solitary confinement – evidentially the lawyer was more dangerous than anyone thought at first. But of course the party could be rather . . . forceful when they wanted something, especially from pissant NPC guards. So, eventually, the party was led to a small interrogation room where they were instructed to wait.
A few minutes later, several guards dragged Adonis Kreed, wrapped in chains, into the room and shackled him down to the bench across the table from the party. Despite his condition, the evil lawyer greeted them with a pithy tone. So Cid greeted him with a punch to the face (ah, the days when Cid was a complete a@~#+~#). That got the guards upset, who while they were happy to see this guard murderer beaten, their orders were to keep him in one piece, and Cid using him as a punching bag was decidedly against that. There was another pissing match between Cid and the guards, which being a Hellknight of course Cid ultimately won, with the guards sullenly retreating back to their corners with orders not to do that s$!$ again.
Greetings taken care of, the party got down to brass tacks, and Adonis was surprisingly willing to help them. He revealed that he was a member of the league of elite assassins, the Red Mantis, and that if they weren’t willing to spring him from their dreary hellhole, then an official pardon from the queen would have to do. She put him in here, she could just as easily get him back out was Kreed’s reasoning, murdered guards or not.
In return for his release, Adonis would give them Andaisin. The Red Mantis had secured a base of operations for her, and were providing her with further aid to murder Korvosa. Given the spread of the plague, and paranoia on the part of Andaisin potentially leading to her abandoning the hideouts Adonis knew of, the party and the queen didn’t have long to take this deal. That was also assuming that the Red Mantis would not finally get around to sending someone into the prison to silence him as well.
The party tried various negotiation tactics (I can’t remember but cid may have punched him again at one point), but Adonis was pretty firm in his position. Despite his current situation, he had the party over a barrel and he knew it. They might have been able to torture the information out of him, but given that he was a Red Mantis agent breaking him would take longer than Korvosa had left. So the party reluctantly took Adonis’s deal to Queen Ileosa. Who, pretty much, shared their opinion of “Not a snowball’s chance in Hell” of pardoning Adonis Kreed. But even so . . . what choice did any of them really have? It was let Adonis go or watch Korvosa continue to wither or die.
Ileosa asked them to find her an alternative, any alternative, to meeting Adonis’s demands. But if they couldn’t find one, to save her city . . . she’d give Adonis what he wanted. She would have no choice, unless she wanted to watch Korvosa die or surrender herself to Andaisin and hope she would be merciful to Korvosa . . . yeah, that idea was pretty laughable at this point. But that idea did spurn on a brief scene between Ileosa and Rholand where she contemplated that very thing – and then slammed her fist down onto the balcony banister in frustration, breaking one of her fingers. Which she immediately popped back into place, and it regenerated as if nothing had just happened. Yay Kazavon.
The session ended with the party being contacted by Field Marshall Kroft. Apparently their old mutual friend Vencarlo Orsini had gone to that party Ausio Carowyn had invited him to back at Queen Ileosa’s coronation in Book One. And he had never come back from it apparently, since Kroft hadn’t seen him for nearly a week – and given Vencarlo’s obnoxious version of friendship, that worried her. Would the party be willing to go to Carowyn manor and check that he was just passed out drunk somewhere, instead of shambling around as a Blood Veil zombie? Vencarlo being one of the party’s favorite NPCs at this point, of course the party would love to go make sure he was alright! Next session.
Cool, keep it coming.
Occurred to me after some more thought that I would need a different character concept from the ones I had (see my profile -- no separate character profile yet) if I was going to play in your Curse of the Crimson Throne. Since your version is really cool (and by the way, are we getting any more installments?), I want to think of one even though yours is already occupied. Although maybe the revolutionary Bard concept I already have in there could be adapted to it -- starts out totally anti-Noble/anti-Royalty, then finds out that Queen Ileosa is actually a decent person (unlike the expectations prescribed by the AP as written) with humble origins, then has to watch her descent into madness.
Yes, more installments will be coming. I've simply been too busy as of late to write them!
I like that idea for a character - I would be interested to see if s/he reverted and said "I was right all along! *All* nobles suck!" Or realize that Ileosa is gravely ill and would become increasingly desperate to try and save the one noble in Korvosa that s/he likes.
(Zenderholm is also fair if not entirely nice, along with one or two others like Marcus Endrin, but for the most part I've taken pains to portray Korvosa's nobility as complete bastards - Arkona has "good" company there).
As for the party taking on Davaulus, if they got to jump him in an alleyway, when he has no friends or buffs running, sure. You can kill just about anybody, including the damn god-wizards if you get the jump on them (good luck doing that with a god-wizard btw, assuming the god-wizard fanboys don't block with you countless "nuh uh! He totally has a spell up which prevents that cuz he saw you coming, cuz he's INVINCIBLE!" *yawn* ) Anyway, even if they got the queen to summon him, Davaulus pretty much is aware that he's operating on borrowed time so he'd probably decline and just sit in his new home at the Hospice of the Blessed Maiden and wait for the hammer to drop.
Which would be the main issue of setting the PCs loose on him - that going after him would almost certainly lead them to the Hospice, and I wasn't quite ready yet for Book Two to enter its final chapter yet. Plus it gave me the chance to throw up a moral quandary/re-introduce Adonis Kreed (even though they basically forgot all about him again afterwards *sigh* ).
For AP bosses, Baba Yaga is the one who is technically mortal but for all practical purposes absolutely invincible, even if ambushed -- best you can do is trap her (which has obviously happened once -- was working great until some meddlers came along and set her free -- if you're going to do this, DON'T do something stupid like try to turn the world into a popsicle)..
So unfortunately I don’t have the time right now to write up the next session (hopefully soon though). But that mention of Baba Yaga being obnoxiously hard to kill reminded me that I need to talk about the Relic of Kazavon bearers at some point in the near future.
Each of them as some sort of unique schtick to differentiate them, but all of them convey some powerful benefits to their wielder (in addition to corrupting them into one of Kazavon’s puppets, and ultimately into Kazavon Reborn). Foremost among these benefits is probably Kazavon’s fabled inability to die or even get seriously hurt (barring a hit from Serithiel) – mechanically I would probably reflect this as DR 30/Epic *and* Regeneration 50 (Serithiel) – and an immunity to the typical solutions to regeneration like cutting off the head and burying it. Which sounds ridiculous but it likely would take something that extreme to make it clear to my players that this is not a problem they can murderhobo away.
Speaking of Baba Yaga:
Not sure I have anything specific here, except that I would go out of my way to make working for her a miserable experience. And I would rub my players’ noses in it that they *have* to work for her. And then at the end of the AP, assuming they ask for her to leave Golarion as their boon, she would simply laugh and then throw *them* out of Golarion instead. And then busily get to work putting Anastasia through an accelerated version of her horrific “queen training program” to get her up to speed on ruling Irrisien and getting right back to business as usual (and maybe turning Elvanna’s ice machine back on just for laughs). Book Seven, if my players were willing to put up with all this to do a “continuing the campaign” segment, would be all about hunting down the means to kill the Old Goat for good. Bonus points if they have to turn around and rescue Elvanna in order to get the necessary information/just give the finger to “Dear” Grandmother.
^
Makes me think all the more that Good PCs should do everything possible to avoid going into the service of or otherwise allying with ANY member of the Baba Yaga/Jadwiga family, and seek to get them to fight each other, and then hit the victor with everything they've got. Alternatively, since Baba Yaga is the one is for all practical purposes immortal, but starts out trapped, maybe just leave her trapped, and gain power and take on Elvanna yourself, and meanwhile try to stall for time on the world getting over-refrigerated.
Actually, now that I think ore about it, that would make the opportunity for an interesting twist: The PCs embark on that path, and somebody else with less scruples signs up with Baba Yaga, and now the PCs have to try to thwart them to keep them from releasing Baba Yaga. More bonus points for making the party serving Baba Yaga (that the PCs are trying to thwart) look like a PC party.
More Reign of Winter thoughts (Spoiler in the thread, and also see Zhangar's' post above mine).