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So, enough about Reign of Winter - let's get back to the madness that is my Curse of the Crimson Throne game!
First, let’s talk about the relics of Kazavon and their bearers. As mentioned, they all share some similarities with each other, including giving the bearers Kazavon’s fabled invulnerability in return for basically getting possessed by Kazavon and eventually turned into him. While the intent is for all of these relics to make an appearance in-game by the finale and to juice up a number of the final enemies of the AP, that does not mean that they all necessarily get along with each other. Each relic is a reflection of Kazavon’s personality in life, but is naturally incomplete – it corrupts and distorts its bearer’s original personality, but until its grip on the bearer’s soul becomes more entrenched the relic can do little more than whisper into the bearer’s mind (and give them absolutely horrific and disturbing nightmares).
Here is where, while I will probably figure it all out eventually on my own, I wouldn’t mind a bit of group brainstorming. It would be nice if I could come up with a personality trait of Kazavon’s that each relic infects its bearer with the most intensely, and an alias of Kazavon’s that the bearer begins to use as he takes further control of them. What I have in the spoiler is what I have thus far.
Crown of Fangs
Bearer: Ileosa (Duh)
Catalyst: Death of her husband Eodred, investigating ancient sealed rooms alone, having the misfortune of being this AP’s designated antagonist.
Alias: Ileosa has several herself, but it could be Kazavon (or Agonybringer in the ancient tongue), Kazavon Reborn, The Eternal Horror (Kazavon’s first alias of choice), or perhaps The Horror Reborn? (definitely having her refer to herself as this near the end of Book Five, when Kazavon’s grip is at its zenith)
Personality Trait: Pride(?) Or possibly Rulership (as the Crown, being the first of the relics and taken from Kazavon’s original body, would be the strongest). Alternatively . . . perhaps Duty, for the duty of guarding Rovagug that Kazavon forsook in his thirst for power. This could either drive Ileosa further into his clutches from her sense of duty to protect Korvosa, or perhaps to ultimately abandon that desire to save her city in favor of power like Kazavon did.
Staff of the Slain
Bearer: Togomor
Catalyst: Rather than possession by Sergmiatto, Togomor found the Staff while searching a Thassilon ruin (it being one of the relics Sorshen created from Kazavon’s second body after she killed him).
Alias: The Eternal Horror (assuming Ileosa doesn’t take that one) – Alternate something like Razer of Nations? Destroyer of Continents? Torturer of races?
Personality Trait: Sadism. Absolutely sadism. Togomor has other faults – lust, gluttony . . . but his cruelty is his greatest vice. Poor Gwen has suffered the brunt of it.
The Throne of Night (f+@~ that Nalt guy)
Bearer: Queen Domina Arabasti
Catalyst: Domina escaped her death by assassination after a fashion, and the terrible fire that was to disintegrate her remains into ash. She dimension doored from her chambers straight down into the Great Mastaba out of desperation, down into a chamber even the Shaoti knew nothing about, used by Sorshen to protect and store the Throne. Drawn forward by its power, Domina dragged her broken body to the throne, and then up into it. Its power kept her alive, but didn’t restore her body. Crippled and needing to recover, Domina slumbered for nearly twenty years before the Crown of Fangs was discovered by Ileosa. *HER* crown.
Alias: The Bleeding Eye (that and the Eternal Horror are probably my favorites of Kazavon’s aliases I’ve come up with so far, if you haven’t guessed already ;) )
Personality Trait: ?????????? Perhaps patience, cunning? Domina has bided her time for a long time now.
The Bound Blade
Bearer (Upcoming): Sabrina Merrin
Catalyst (Upcoming): Rejection by Ileosa during Book Four Intro, leading to accepting the sword as a gift from Zarmagorf.
Alias: The Unbroken Cycle(?) The Endless Spiral(?) Something to reference the cycle of vengeance, where each injured party continues to seek revenge on the other, perpetuating acts of retribution forever.
Personality Trait: Rage. Definitely rage, although bloodthirstiness could also work. Either way, Sabrina is turned into a ravening, murderous berserker by the Bound Blade’s influence twisting her own grief and anger.
The Armor of Skulls
Bearer (Upcoming): Originally I had thought DeVries for this role, but now I’m leaning towards the original founder of the Order of the Nail, Leo Astares (original character since I couldn’t be arsed to go hunting down the origins of the Order of the Nail in Paizo’s Big Chelish Book of Hellknight Orders or whatever :-p ).
Catalyst (Upcoming): The devils that are actually in charge of the Order of the Nail (yay Lorthract) decide they want their own pet relic bearer. It doesn’t really end well for them, as the armor leads to the bearer, whether DeVries or Astares, taking over.
Alias: ??????
Personality Trait: Vanity, Arrogance, or perhaps Pride. Basically a prisoner of the devils, DeVries/Astares is forced to put the armor on, and then mocks them for it as he takes command away from them.
The Howling Horn
Bearer (Upcoming): Most likely an unwilling Gwen, although alternatively could be a pissed Zarmagorf who just doesn’t care anymore (who while happy to *carry* around the Bound Blade and such, has no desires to become an actual Bearer), who has been driven to the breaking point by the party and simply doesn’t care anymore so long as he gets to watch them all die in agony and despair.
Catalyst: One of the end-game attempts by Kazavon to resurrect himself, essentially the by-the-book way, which requires assembling all the artifacts and then sacrificing a dragon or whatever.
Alias: ?????
Personality Trait: ????? Perhaps not exactly masochism, but a lingering nihilistic joy for pain from Kazavon’s time as a Zon-Kuthite. It’s existence, inflicting it, enduring it, simply the agony itself and embracing its existence as a sign of life.
The Shredskin
Bearer (Upcoming): Cinnabar
Catalyst: Either out of a desperate bid to get enough power to redeem herself in the eyes of the Red Mantis, or much more likely, as a punishment inflicted by Mistress Katalya (her mother), to force her to fight the party again and hopefully succeed in killing them this time.
Alias: ?????
Personality Trait: ??????
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Okay, it’s been awhile, but now we’re back on track! Let’s see if we can start working on catching up with where the party is right now in my perversion of Curse of the Crimson Throne! As you no doubt recall (and if you don’t just read post Ninety-Six or so on page two – Session Thirty-One) from last time the party had just acquired the ownership documents from the Thrune’s Breath down at the bottom of the Jeggare River, discovered its owner was Adonis Kreed, and met him in prison to learn that in return for him telling them where Andaisin was he wanted a full pardon.
While the queen was considering whether she wanted to pardon him for his smear campaign back during Trinia’s trial or not, Kroft asked the party to go investigate Carroway Manor. Vencarlo had gone there to attend a party that House Carroway was hosting in spite of the plague – rescheduling such an event after planning it for months was simply just not done when you’re an arrogant noble. Fearing the worst given that it had been several days since then and no one had heard from Vencarlo, Kroft was anxious to learn of Vencarlo’s fate even if it was that he had joined the ranks of the fungal dead.
And so the next session began with the party going into the well-to-do district of South Shore, which was essentially Korvosa’s idea of a gated community for its nobility. Unlike the rest of the city which was steadily falling back into barricaded anarchy due to the plague, here it was largely business as usual. Beyond the walls (which the party got through only due to having a note from Kroft) there were no barricades, no bodies - just the occasional patrol of guards on the otherwise deserted but well-kept streets. The party found Carrowyn Manor easily enough, although they found that the windows were dark and most of the building itself was shielded from view by the street by a hedge-covered fence.
The party tried to do a bit of scouting by peering in the window that did face the street, but found nothing out of the ordinary, just an empty room (I probably could have left a blood trail in that room, but I figured since it *was* the only window that could be seen from the street Jostilina would have been careful not to kill anyone in that room. If they had peered in the other windows around the manor that were blocked off by that fence, they would have seen the dead bodies littering the various rooms (some of which were now blood veil zombies just sitting there in wait). Of course if they had gone over the fence, they would have immediately been accosted by the zombified guard dogs that were prowling around in the fenced-in courtyard that made up the manor’s backyard.
They also saw the second-floor balcony (I’m pretty sure that was an addition from the map as-written), which they might have been able to climb up onto from the front, but since only Vaz’em really had any sort of decent climb score, and Cid didn’t have Fly just yet, they elected to just do the sensible thing: Knock on the front door.
There was the sort of scrambling inside, and then the door opened a crack and a hoarse voice rasped “Yes?” This was the doorman, re-animated as a ghoul from Jostilina shooting him with a ghoul fever laced crossbow bolt. Cue Oliver shoving his foot in the opened crack in the door like an aggressive salesman, and the doorman previously keeping himself out of sight lashing out with his claws through the doorway to no effect because CR 1 versus heavy armor is a bad day for the CR 1. Oliver passed the opposed STR check to force the door the rest of the way open the following round, and the party quickly moved into the entry foyer and diced the ghoul up.
This surround-and-beat-down of the doorman irritated the six masquerade-dressed guests dancing a little way deeper inside the foyer. Oliver had a good moment to mutter “oh s~#%” before all six Blood Veil zombies surrounded *him*, the pack using the same tactics as previous zombies – several attempting to tackle the cavalier heedless of the AoOs provoked so that the rest could curb-stomp dance on his face. Unlike during the Book Two intro though, this time Oliver was wearing heavy armor and so the zombies’ routine was unsuccessful in tearing him apart (although they landed a couple bowel-clenching hits all the same).
Then Rholand came in, blasted them all with Channel Energy, Cid made with the Shocking Grasp, and Vaz’em sliced and diced while Oliver hacked and hewed at the swarms of zombies all around him (making the Fort saves vs. the disease pretty easily). Ultimately, while the six-pack of zombies was a nasty surprise when they all swarmed around Oliver, it was no big deal.
With that nuisance out of the way, the party quickly looked around and shut the door behind them, not wanting the patrols of privately-owned guards getting involved in this (likely by thinking that *they* were thieves breaking in after killing the doorman). The entry foyer was a mess, with several dead guests lying curled up on the floor in bloody pieces, and several large man-sized holes in the southern wall (evidence of Vencarlo’s scuffle with my own addition to Jostilina’s retinue).
Before they could go much further into the manor, however, their attention was drawn to the small study off to the north, from which the sounds of muffled groaning could be heard. Peering inside the study, the party saw two blood veil zombies standing guard over a gagged and hogtied elf woman dressed in a harlequin outfit. The whole set-up seemed fishy to them – they had never seen the zombies do anything *but* attack and try to eat people, and their Perception checks were good enough for Vaz’em to note that there was something odd about the way the she-elf’s bonds were tied (the result of Jostilina tying herself up with a knot she could undo herself to immediately spring free if the damsel in distress act didn’t cut it).
Still, the party couldn’t just ignore this “Zombie Bondage Clown” (as Cid’s player phrased it), so they went into the small study and quickly cut the two zombies down. While they were in there, one of the “bodies” lying on the floor sprang up as a third zombie, but it too was swiftly cut down (and Jostilina was really glad she had those potions of Remove Disease on her after inhaling some of the spores).
From there the party ungagged the elf harlequin but didn’t untie her, starting a series of questions that “Jo” answered innocuously enough, but not enough for their “player trap senses” to stop tingling. So eventually Jostilina got bored, slipped out of her faked bonds, slipped a hidden dagger into her hand, and tried to castrate Rholand while still on the floor. (I gave her the rogue talent that maximizes sneak attack damage during the surprise round with a concealed weapon, and the Daggermaster archetype to turn sneak attack with only a dagger into d8s.) The attack missed, the tip of the dagger passing in front of Rholand’s front by a mere couple of inches (rotten luck – that would have been like 30 damage!).
From there, the fight against Jostilina was on as I put on her theme song. Vaz’em’s player complimented me after the session on my choice of music. Score another one for finding an appropriate, evocative theme music for another bad guy!
Jostilina theme – Broken by the Birthday Massacre
Jostilina managed to dodge the couple blows thrown her way as she tumbled back up to her feet, and not liking the way this fight was going thus far, she went invisible while calling for “Gol” and “the rest of you” to get in here and mess the PCs up. A massive flesh golem came stepping out through one of the holes that had been smashed in the wall – Rolth had been busy since the party smashed up his last one in the Dead Warrens at the end of Book One! But hey, since he had the stuff he needed already, all he really needed was a big construct body for all those crafting materials (like a scroll of LIMITED WISH? O_O). He figured this would be a good test for the golem, and some needed back-up for his little love toy in case things went wrong (like a bunch of PCs showed up).
Jostilina was going to hang around for some more fun, but as she got out into the foyer again Cid caught her with a Glitterdust. She bombed the will save (stupid dice) and as a result was not only revealed to them for the next several rounds but was also Blinded. At that point she decided to get the hell out of dodge and ran up the stairs to the second floor while the party contented with Gol. Travis was the first to engage the flesh golem, and the first to endure its wrath as it picked the poor dog up (taking an AoO for its trouble but meh, construct), and then flung it through the wall. (Special attack because I liked the idea of this huge construct smashing people through walls all around the first floor, triggering the encounters of zombies in additional rooms as the fight went on.) This particular throw sent Travis into the dining room, and four zombies looked up from their meal for a moment before turning back and carrying on eating the entrails of the other dead guests around the table (their orders were to attack people, not dogs – lucky Travis).
Around the same time, a gaggle of ghouls (by which I mean two >> ) and a ghast come running in from the southern portion of the house where they had been playing with some bodies to join the fight. They manage to hit Oliver once or twice thanks to some lucky rolls (hurray nat 20s!) but since Oli didn’t fail the subsequent Fort saves to avoid paralysis, it wasn’t much of a big deal. Nor was it much of a big deal to hack them all down over the next couple of rounds while Vaz’em and the others dealt with the big golem.
Thinking outside the box as usual, Rholand attempted to keep the golem distracted for a round by using the Ghost Sound spell to try and mimic Jostilina’s voice so that he could give the golem confusing orders – like “Kill the f~#%ing ghouls”. I gave him a (low) chance, and as usual with Rholand, he rolled *quite* high on his Bluff check, and so the golem wasted a round trying to beat on the ghast. It got chopped down pretty shortly after that, as not even DR/Adamantite really does much against Vaz’em who can tear out even a construct’s spine (hurray PF updates to Sneak Attack >< ).
That was pretty much all we had time for this session, although the party was obviously quite keen on hunting down that “Zombie Bondage Clown” b@!$& (they just *love* it when my bad guys run away instead of staying to die like chumps). Of course, if they followed her immediately, they would be leaving the downstairs partially unexplored, which meant there could be *real* hostages somewhere, or more zombies that some dumb guardsman following them into the house on some dumb hunch would get himself eaten by. So the party was torn on whether to follow Jostilina immediately or clear out the bottom floor first. You’ll find out what they decided to do the next time *I* have time to write up a session!
So, enough about Reign of Winter - let's get back to the madness that is my Curse of the Crimson Throne game!
First, let’s talk about the relics of Kazavon and their bearers. As mentioned, they all share some similarities with each other, including giving the bearers Kazavon’s fabled invulnerability in return for basically getting possessed by Kazavon and eventually turned into him. While the intent is for all of these relics to make an appearance in-game by the finale and to juice up a number of the final enemies of the AP, that does not mean that they all necessarily get along with each other. Each relic is a reflection of Kazavon’s personality in life, but is naturally incomplete – it corrupts and distorts its bearer’s original personality, but until its grip on the bearer’s soul becomes more entrenched the relic can do little more than whisper into the bearer’s mind (and give them absolutely horrific and disturbing nightmares).
Here is where, while I will probably figure it all out eventually on my own, I wouldn’t mind a bit of group brainstorming. It would be nice if I could come up with a personality trait of Kazavon’s that each relic infects its bearer with the most intensely, and an alias of Kazavon’s that the bearer begins to use as he takes further control of them. What I have in the spoiler is what I have thus far.
My thoughts on the Relics of Kazavon inside the spoiler:
Crown of Fangs
Bearer: Ileosa (Duh)
Catalyst: Death of her husband Eodred, investigating ancient sealed rooms alone, having the misfortune of being this AP’s designated antagonist.
Alias: Ileosa has several herself, but it could be Kazavon (or Agonybringer in the ancient tongue), Kazavon Reborn, The Eternal Horror (Kazavon’s first alias of choice), or perhaps The Horror Reborn? (definitely having her refer to herself as this near the end of Book Five, when Kazavon’s grip is at its zenith)
Personality Trait: Pride(?) Or possibly Rulership (as the Crown, being the first of the relics and taken from Kazavon’s original body, would be the strongest). Alternatively . . . perhaps Duty, for the duty of guarding Rovagug that Kazavon forsook in his thirst for power. This could either drive Ileosa further into his clutches from her sense of duty to protect Korvosa, or perhaps to ultimately abandon that desire to save her city in favor of power like Kazavon did.
U would say for personality traits use Pride and Duty all rollwd into one, with Kazavon's personality tending to emphasize the former, and Ileosa herself (to the extent that she has any of her own will remaining) attempting to emphasize the latter. The Duty part could potentially throw Kazavon for a loop if the PCs remind him of his duty sworn to Rovagug -- if played right, this might give Ileosa a chance for a moment of sanity.
Staff of the Slain
Bearer: Togomor
Catalyst: Rather than possession by Sergmiatto, Togomor found the Staff while searching a Thassilon ruin (it being one of the relics Sorshen created from Kazavon’s second body after she killed him).
Alias: The Eternal Horror (assuming Ileosa doesn’t take that one) – Alternate something like Razer of Nations? Destroyer of Continents? Torturer of races?
Personality Trait: Sadism. Absolutely sadism. Togomor has other faults – lust, gluttony . . . but his cruelty is his greatest vice. Poor Gwen has suffered the brunt of it.
Why not have both this and the above artifact cause their bearers to take the name "The Eternal Horror"? Originally the Staff of the Slain was supposed to be Agonybringer (it is about sadism, after all), but something messed up in the splitting of Kazavon's personality, and sparks will fly if both bearers are in the same room after manifesting fully.
The Throne of Night (f*#* that Nalt guy)
Bearer: Queen Domina Arabasti
Catalyst: Domina escaped her death by assassination after a fashion, and the terrible fire that was to disintegrate her remains into ash. She dimension doored from her chambers straight down into the Great Mastaba out of desperation, down into a chamber even the Shaoti knew nothing about, used by Sorshen to protect and store the Throne. Drawn forward by its power, Domina dragged her broken body to the throne, and then up into it. Its power kept her alive, but didn’t restore her body. Crippled and needing to recover, Domina slumbered for nearly twenty years before the Crown of Fangs was discovered by Ileosa. *HER* crown.
Alias: The Bleeding Eye (that and the Eternal Horror are probably my favorites of Kazavon’s aliases I’ve come up with so far, if you haven’t guessed already ;) )
Personality Trait: ?????????? Perhaps patience, cunning? Domina has bided her time for a long time now.
These traits definitely, but also Vengeance. Or, since the next one is Wrath, alternatively Greed. Omina is going to be really insane after all this . . .
The Bound Blade
Bearer (Upcoming): Sabrina Merrin
Catalyst (Upcoming): Rejection by Ileosa during Book Four Intro, leading to accepting the sword as a gift from Zarmagorf.
Alias: The Unbroken Cycle(?) The Endless Spiral(?) Something to reference the cycle of vengeance, where each injured party continues to seek revenge on the other, perpetuating acts of retribution forever.
Personality Trait: Rage. Definitely rage, although bloodthirstiness could also work. Either way, Sabrina is turned into a ravening, murderous berserker by the Bound Blade’s influence twisting her own grief and anger.
This one would also be Wrath. This will cause a conflict with the bearer of the previous relic when both are manifested and in the same room. Also add Envy to the mix, initially not so apparent, but exploding when Domina sees who her successor is.
The Armor of Skulls
Bearer (Upcoming): Originally I had thought DeVries for this role, but now I’m leaning towards the original founder of the Order of the Nail, Leo Astares (original character since I couldn’t be arsed to go hunting down the origins of the Order of the Nail in Paizo’s Big Chelish Book of Hellknight Orders or whatever :-p ).
Catalyst (Upcoming): The devils that are actually in charge of the Order of the Nail (yay Lorthract) decide they want their own pet relic bearer. It doesn’t really end well for them, as the armor leads to the bearer, whether DeVries or Astares, taking over.
Alias: ??????
Personality Trait: Vanity, Arrogance, or perhaps Pride. Basically a prisoner of the devils, DeVries/Astares is forced to put the armor on, and then mocks them for it as he takes command away from them.
Alias: Eternal War. If you do use the founder of the Order of the Nail, make him a Graveknight, albeit with the unconventional armor provided by the relic. Hellknights are said to be especially vulnerable to conversion into Graveknights anyway, and the supposedly extinct Hellknight Order of the Crux exists entirely in Graveknight form.
The Howling Horn
Bearer (Upcoming): Most likely an unwilling Gwen, although alternatively could be a pissed Zarmagorf who just doesn’t care anymore (who while happy to *carry* around the Bound Blade and such, has no desires to become an actual Bearer), who has been driven to the breaking point by the party and simply doesn’t care anymore so long as he gets to watch them all die in agony and despair.
Catalyst: One of the end-game attempts by Kazavon to resurrect himself, essentially the by-the-book way, which requires assembling all the artifacts and then sacrificing a dragon or whatever.
Alias: ?????
Personality Trait: ????? Perhaps not exactly masochism, but a lingering nihilistic joy for pain from Kazavon’s time as a Zon-Kuthite. It’s existence, inflicting it, enduring it, simply the agony itself and embracing its existence as a sign of life.
AkuasL The Love of Pain. Personality Trait: A rather odd Gluttony and Lust, fitting in with the cheating of death.
The Shredskin
Bearer (Upcoming): Cinnabar
Catalyst: Either out of a desperate bid to get enough power to redeem herself in the eyes of the Red Mantis, or much more likely, as a punishment inflicted by Mistress Katalya (her mother), to force her to fight the party again and hopefully succeed in killing them this time.
Alias: ?????
Personality Trait: ??????
Alias: The Snake.
Personality Trait: Treahery (which isn't listed among the Seven Deadly Sins, but ought to be listed as the eighth, connected with Divination magic -- for an Earth analog, think insider trading, or secret and illegal spying).Come to think of it, might want to work on the above some more to connect them in a more orderly way to the Thassilonian Seven Deadly Sins (or Eight if you add Treachery, but this list has only seven relics). However, not having the AP myself, I do not have enough information to connect each relic primarily to one of the Seven (or Eight) Deadly Sins.
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Something interesting thoughts there! However, I would like to avoid tying each relic to a deadly sin, since the Runelords already have that schtick. Since the relics are pretty much a way for Kazavon to download himself into a new body like a fleshy Ultron, having each one reflect an aspect of his personality is a better fit. I know I mentioned wrath and gluttony in there though, so I can see that I may have muddied the waters a bit. So things like Ambition, Sadism, Savagery (or Fury), Contempt, Vanity, Cunning (the Thrill of the Hunt), and yeah probably Greed (he is a dragon). I did come up with another moniker for Kazavon though – the Heir to the Beast (referring to the Rough Beast, Rovagug). Of course, Kazavon doesn’t seem himself as Rovagug’s warden anymore, nor as his servant – instead he wants to pick up where Rovagug left off in subjugating all things to his will (although he’s more interested in ruling than destroying like Rovagug).
Also, one more detail I forgot to include in my write-up for each Relic – each one adds its own unique effect to the bearer’sblood.
Crown of Fangs (Ileosa) – Bearer’s blood becomes able to resurrect the dead (albeit damning the person’s soul by binding it to Scarwall – when they die again, their soul will go there rather than to the afterlife.
Staff of the Slain (Togomor) – Bearer’s blood becomes a corrosive and deadly poison.
The Bound Blade (Sabrina) – The bearer’s blood ignites on contact with air and if it comes in contact with a person’s skin they are infected with a version of the same rage that overwhelms the bearer (effects likely similar to a Rage spell).
The Throne of Night (Domina) – The bearer’s blood infects anyone who drinks it with diabolical power, ultimately changing them into a half-fiend or at least devil-touched.
The Shredskin (Cinnabar) – The bearer’s blood erupts into a gout of shadows upon contact with air, and momentarily afterwards the shadows coalesce into a shadowy clone of the bearer (this was a power I wanted to give to Cinnabar anyway, so having her spawn a clone every time she’s hit could be the way to go rather than her having to use an action for it).
The Armor of Skulls (Hellknight Commander) - ???????? Not sure for this one – I suppose if he’s a Graveknight he may not bleed, or it could do some sort of necromancy thing – turns dead bodies into undead?
The Howling Horn (Gwen) - ?????? This one I’ve had a lot of trouble with – maybe take a video game boss approach and have the blood spray off into an ooze blob, that then attempts to return to the bearer, and if the blob makes it, the bearer is healed for most of the damage that caused the ooze to spawn in the first place? (Hit the dragon, kill the ooze, hit the dragon, kill the ooze, hit the dragon, kill the ooze!)
So ultimately, the group’s collective disdain for the guards and their fear that one of them would bumble in and get eaten/unleash the zombies on South Shore won out. This gave Jostilina plenty of time to wipe Cid’s glitter from her eyes and make preparations for them. She could have probably just run out onto the second-floor balcony and leapt down to the street to get away, but at this point besides the Glitterdust she was basically at full health still and wanted to play. Meanwhile, the party worked on clearing out the rest of the ground floor.
Vaz’em barred one of the doors leading into the music room as they heard something tried to play an instrument in there, and didn’t want jumped from behind while they cleared out the dining room. After healing up a bit, the group piled in through the hole in the wall that the golem had smashed with poor Travis (right next to the one the golem had made in the wall with Vencarlo when he tried to interfere in Jostilina’s initial bum rush of carnage). Seated at the table and busy eating the remains of the other guests, the zombies are slow to get up to their feet, allowing the party to set up positions in the room. Vaz’em tries to get fancy by jumping up on the table – one of the zombies spear-tackles him down on top of it, and several others indulge in eating *him*. Other than that hilarious positioning misstep that backfired on Vaz’em, the four blood veil zombies in the dining room are taken down fairly quickly.
The party scouted out the rest of the southern part of the manor’s ground floor quickly, finding no one hiding in the sitting room that they looked into from outside before entering the manor, and found the back porch. They looked out into the backyard and saw the zombie dogs walking around in ceaseless patrol, but saw no reason to go out there so they didn’t (should have had somebody hanging desperately from a tree or something to lure them out there – ah well). They next went into the kitchen, finding two more zombies hard at work preparing a meal (actually hacking apart another guest’s body) and dealt with them most efficiently. They then found the door leading into the wine cellar, but if I recall correctly they did not go down there just yet.
Instead they moved on to the room that Vaz’em sealed earlier, the music room where a single zombie was still attempting to play its instrument for a crowd of corpses. Well, not entirely corpses – one of the three bodies slumped there was actually a blood veil zombie, which sprang to unlife and swiped at the party after they closed in on the musician zombie on the small stage. Being that these were fights with 2 CR2 monsters, the party curbstomped them all pretty quickly and now that the ground floor was finally clear, they moved on upstairs where Jostilina, of course, was waiting for them. With a bunch more undead.
The fun started off slowly, with the party cautiously moving up the stairs to be faced with two closed door – left and right. I can’t remember quite how it happened, whether they opened the right door first or Jostilina left it open so she could snipe at anyone reaching the top of the stairs, but either way the party was drawn into that eastern room on the second floor. This room was apparently a quiet gaming room, as four corpses sat around a table littered with cards and gold coins (of course one of the bodies was a zombie, which the party actually figured out right away before it could ambush them. Ah well, undead aren’t so great at that unless they can literally come out of the walls at you). Meanwhile, I had constructed a series of doors between the northern rooms, so rather than being trapped Jostilina fled that way.
The party responded with an enlarged oliver tearing the doorway off of its hinges, and the party charging after her as she went invisible again and fled out the western door of the bedroom that they were now in. A ghoul attendant was still in the room, and while the party dealt with that another ghoul and ghast, Lady Carrowyn, smashed through the doorway that led from the northeast corner of the bedroom to the bath, not really getting the drop on Cid but keeping him busy in any event.
At the same time, under yelled orders from Jostilina, the door on the west side of the hallway boomed open and two more blood veil zombies came swarming out to hit the party from the rear as they chased after Jostilina, pincering the party between the zombies and ghouls. Two more blood veil zombies, the last two in the manor, hung back and continued dancing (for now). Rholand started throwing down grease spells, which kept the zombies from charging into his face, but he also put a couple puddles down in the doorways that the party was trying to move through, slowing down their chase of Jostilina (oops!).
In any event, she soon emerged back out in the second-floor ballroom from a doorway connecting to the bedroom, and snapped off another shot at Rholand with her crossbow. Which missed I believe, because Rholand sometimes has the luck of the devil. Anyway, the party eventually cleaved through all the undead, and the battle moved out into the ballroom as the party engaged Jostilina and the last two zombies directly.
It was at this point that the insane harlequin pulled out her last trump card – having been disappointed that she didn’t have any bombs after her picture showed her juggling one and the write-up on Ausio’s knowledge describing her use of the bombs during her initial assault on the manor, I decided to make my own, of course! The bombs also proved a useful introduction to Andaisin’s end-game plot against the city.
These Blood Veil bombs were essentially the Blood Veil fungus in a weaponized aerosol form (yay Rolth) – upon being activated and thrown to the ground they filled a set of squares with a red-tinted mist (I believe it was a 10’ x 10’ square, or 4 squares). Any living creature that started its turn within the mist or move into it had to make a Fortitude save DC 16 (same as the Blood Veil disease). Failure meant that they were infected with Blood veil, and because the aerosol form was so potent, the flesh literally began to melt off the victim’s body, inflicting 1d3 Cha & Con damage PER ROUND that they remained in the cloud (although they got a separate save against the damage each and every round – one failed save meant they’d contracted Blood Veil, which likely meant even MORE Cha & Con damage the next morning).
With Cid up in her face and threatening to shocking grasp crit her head off, Jostilina concentrated her efforts on him, pelting him with one of the bombs, and then using a second one to block off the double doors leading out onto the balcony as she attempted to make her escape at low HP. Despite learning firsthand how painful that Blood Veil mist was, Cid chased after her through the mist, which after another failed save dropped his Cha down to 1 I believe (1 away from going unconscious – only going to 0 Con would kill you as usual). Cid’s persistence paid off, however, as he cut Jostilina down . . . unfortunately he was a little overzealous and so of course used a Shocking Grasp, which dropped Jostilina down to something like -13, which was 1 HP away from death for her.
The party had wanted to capture her alive, both because they wanted to know wtf was going on here and because I had suggested it would be fun to interrogate her (her reactions to Cid’s usual Jack Bauer intimidation routine would have been hilarious). But alas, Rholand was too far away to come heal her, Cid blew his Heal check (that’s what you get for not putting points in it!), and Jostilina failed her Stabilization roll, lost 1 HP, and bled to death at Cid’s feet. Sad. Oh well! At least that put to rest the idea of still having the Raun, kidnapped Varisian musician from the manor, subplot. He was probably forcefed a blood veil bomb by Jostilina or something, and even though immune to blood veil, the explosive force of the bomb split his head like a watermelon. Death to one-off characters!
With the main threats now taken care of, the party went down into the wine cellar to find a lone ghoul scratching at a section of the wall. They dispatched it with effectively no effort, and then discovered the secret door it had been trying to paw open – turning a bottle in the nearby wine rack proved to be the key. Beyond was a small panic room, inside of which was Vencarlo, one arm in a crude sling, and . . . Blackjack!? Well, no, it was really Ausio Carrowyn, who had gone to the masquerade party as Blackjack (I thought of having Vencarlo dress up as Blackjack but thought my players might get too suspicious, so this was just a little nose-tweaking on my part).
Vencarlo still had his sense of humor though it was a bit thin, but Ausio was definitely in shock, even several days after Jostilina’s attack. The ghoul pawing at the door to their secret room probably didn’t help his sanity any. The party tried to be a little circumspect with the poor man, but subtlety really isn’t their strong suit. So given my previously established hatred for one-off characters, during my description of the fallout from this event, Ausio committed suicide a day following his rescue. This effectively exterminated House Carrowyn from the city, and left the Carrowyn Manor up from grabs for the (given the location and value of the property) low low price of 10,000 GP as no one wanted it after news of the slaughter inside spread. The guards sniped the zombie dogs from the fence until they stopped moving, thus proving that they were not *entirely* incompetent, given fair warning of danger.
The party seriously considered buying it for a while, but ultimately they decided to keep their money separate for buying gear in the future instead (Vaz’em I think had nearly enough to buy it single-handedly, as he had been saving up since the start of the game for several items which he was finally almost able to use and thus ready to buy).
This pretty much wrapped up the subplots that the party really seemed interested in pursuing, and so it was time to move into the endgame of Book Two. One final subplot that I wanted to explore remained, which was the quarantine of Old Korvosa. When the party was done reunited Kroft with Vencarlo and recovering from their injuries overnight, they were summoned to the castle.
There, Ileosa informed them that the district of Old Korvosa had fallen into complete undead anarchy, with zombies and worse running rampant in the streets with seemingly no way for the guards nor even the Hellknights to contain them without crippling losses. Regrettably, this meant that the queen saw no choice but to evacuate everyone they could from the island, and then destroy the bridges connecting it to the rest of the city. Anyone left on the other side would be doomed to face the rampaging undead and spiraling out of control plague alone. Much like a doctor amputating a limb to stop gangrene and save a patient, Ileosa believed that this was the only way to stop the out of control portion of the plague form spreading beyond Old Korvosa. No one knew why or how it had gotten so bad in Old Korvosa so quickly, and that was another thing that Ileosa wanted the party to investigate in addition to helping with the evacuation.
Apparently the party didn’t get enough of a hint that they were needed to help with this evacuation, and that time was of the essence . . . because they spent the next several days resting instead of helping with the evacuation. *facepalm* So, of course, things got much worse, and after describing bands of refugees attempting to flee to the bridges being cut off and cut down by ravening blood veil zombies, the party was like “oh, well . . . s+*!! We didn’t know that. Stupid incompetent guards, we thought they could handle a simple evacuation . . .”
Oh well, at least they finally hustled their butts into Old Korvosa on the last day of the evacuation before the last of the bridges, including the main stone bridge, was destroyed (unlike as-written, where the stone bridge was kept intact - *all* bridge routes into Old Korvosa were severed in my game, in an attempt to stop the zombies from spreading . . . despite them being able to swim or just walk along the bottom of the river. Oh well, not having bridges to use would slow them down at least.)
The next session would cover the party’s travels in the horrifying, plague-infested Old Korvosa, a reunion with an old friend, and a near TPK that was part bad tactics, part “DM didn’t magically know the monster’s stat block was f+&@ed up”, and part “this monster is serious B~++@**%”.
Something interesting thoughts there! However, I would like to avoid tying each relic to a deadly sin, since the Runelords already have that schtick. Since the relics are pretty much a way for Kazavon to download himself into a new body like a fleshy Ultron, having each one reflect an aspect of his personality is a better fit. I know I mentioned wrath and gluttony in there though, so I can see that I may have muddied the waters a bit. {. . .}
I figured Kazavon might have studied Thassilonian Sin Magic as a way to bolster his power, both personally and with respect to controlling those that he wants to download his soul into, hence the reference to the Seven Deadly Sins (or Eight Deadly Sins if he decides to put his own mark on it by "discovering" another Deadly Sin). It also would be a good foreshadowing of Shattered Star.
Also, one more detail I forgot to include in my write-up for each Relic – each one adds its own unique effect to the bearer’sblood.
Crown of Fangs (Ileosa) – Bearer’s blood becomes able to resurrect the dead (albeit damning the person’s soul by binding it to Scarwall – when they die again, their soul will go there rather than to the afterlife.
Staff of the Slain (Togomor) – Bearer’s blood becomes a corrosive and deadly poison.
The Bound Blade (Sabrina) – The bearer’s blood ignites on contact with air and if it comes in contact with a person’s skin they are infected with a version of the same rage that overwhelms the bearer (effects likely similar to a Rage spell).
The Throne of Night (Domina) – The bearer’s blood infects anyone who drinks it with diabolical power, ultimately changing them into a half-fiend or at least devil-touched.
The ones above the last one I can see how the Bearer could use, but the Throne of Night seems to require the Bearer to convince an opponent to drink the blood. Unless the blood is meant to buff one of the Bearer's allies? What kind of Diabolical power would it give them?
The Shredskin (Cinnabar) – The bearer’s blood erupts into a gout of shadows upon contact with air, and momentarily afterwards the shadows coalesce into a shadowy clone of the bearer (this was a power I wanted to give to Cinnabar anyway, so having her spawn a clone every time she’s hit could be the way to go rather than her having to use an action for it).
That is seriously powerful -- how powerful are the shadow clones, and how many can stack up?
The Armor of Skulls (Hellknight Commander) - ???????? Not sure for this one – I suppose if he’s a Graveknight he may not bleed, or it could do some sort of necromancy thing – turns dead bodies into undead?
Definitely go for the necromancy thing -- have this Graveknight bleed like an evil version of the Holy Vindicator prestige class, if you want. Maybe even drop some in-game knowledge about the Holy Vindicator prestige class for foreshadowing purposes.
The Howling Horn (Gwen) - ?????? This one I’ve had a lot of trouble with – maybe take a video game boss approach and have the blood spray off into an ooze blob, that then attempts to return to the bearer, and if the blob makes it, the bearer is healed for most of the damage that caused the ooze to spawn in the first place? (Hit the dragon, kill the ooze, hit the dragon, kill the ooze, hit the dragon, kill the ooze!)
Okay, took me a few minutes to get it. I would say have the damage that the Ooze returns back to the Bearer be damage that the Ooze has done to the Bearer's opponents. And why stop at one Ooze? If we're going to go video game, make it like the Crypt Lord's Locust Swarm in WarCraft III/TFT, where the Crypt Lord can spawn **20** Locusts that do basically this. A Level >=6 Crypt Lord can be VERY hard to kill -- too bad almost no Undead player can ever survive to the point of getting one if they haven't already won the game.
The Throne of Night is definitely meant to be more for creating an army of half-fiend monsters than combat. Most of the blood powers are meant to be more utility or plot point than combat-based anyway.
Adonis Kreed drinks Domina's blood, becoming a particularly powerful half-fiend who I think I'm going to make "Bloodless", in that he has an enormous amount of temp HP the party will have to burn through before they can actually hurt him. Of course, having seen the destruction the party can cause, Adonis isn't planning on fighting them fair and square in an arena . . .
The Shadow Clones ability of the cloak is meant to give Cinnabar some flanking partners and cancel out some of the action advantage the party has over her given it's 4-to-1. I'm not sure exactly how powerful I want each of them to be, save that they should probably be able to take hit before dropping (obviously if she's spawning them left and right every time she's hit, they may be a *great* deal weaker than initially envision when it was a 1/day power of the cloak!)
Armor of Skulls - Actually, in addition to the necromancy thing, I just remember a similar thing I wanted to do with him.
Basically, the devils lock the Hellknight in the armor as punishment, he taunts them for it, and reveals that he knows how to solve the problem Sergmiatto is having - namely, despite having all these Hellknights and wizards as devil feed stock, none of them really retain much of their Magus powers after being turned into devils. The Armor bearer knows how to fix that, probably by using his blood somehow, so that Hellknights remember how to use Magus abilities after being turned into devils. Cue a devil magus Xerxes being sent after the party in Book Four.
That could work for the Howling Horn. Spawning oozes to leech HP off the party is an interesting ability, but if anyone has a better idea let me know!
By the way, is Adonis Kreed any relation to Thuldrin Kreed (official chief villain of Darkmoon Vale in Andoran)? Or is this just a really common last name?
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No relation between Adonis and Thuldrin Kreed as far as I know - although I suppose there could be a family resemblance!
So the session began with the party gathering themselves up to finally go help with the evacuation. By this point, this was the last day of the evacuation (and they only just barely avoided a disaster of some sort or another that would have happened if they had waited another day, whether they meant to slack off or not. Of course, some of them were fighting off the Blood Veil plague again, so that's why they took so long, but that's just how Book Two rolls - even if you feel like s*#$, you gotta drag yourself forward along the story or else the plague never ends.)
The party crossed over the stone bridge, basically the last bridge still standing and which was scheduled for demolition at the end of the day – so if the party didn’t hustle they risked being stuck in Old Korvosa with the people who didn’t manage to evacuation and all of the zombies. I made sure to decorate this city streets map with numerous bright splotches of red everywhere – pools of dried blood where someone had fal4 I made sure to decorate this city streets map with numerous bright splotches of red everywhere – pools of dried blood where something had fallen . . . and then gotten back up.
As they started to advance into the district in an attempt to find the source of this wild surge in blood veil, the party heard a loud crash and a lot of yelling. Turning the corner (it was right next to the bridge on the map, but as I told my players, it was really *several* blocks away from the bridge), the party found several zombies clawing at a boarded up house. On top of the roof, a man was spewing obscenities down at the zombies as he pushed over a pile of heavy crates down on top of them, dealing a not-insignificant amount of damage to them (but given they had like 40 HP apiece, they both survived). Then with a shriek, two more zombies appeared on one of the nearby rooftops, clawing their way across to the man who shouted “S@@*, I forgot these things can climb!”
Fortunately the man had an escape route, grabbing a rope and rappelling rapidly down to the ground level to join the party as they moved to engage the zombies after a bit of a debate on whether or not to help. The tipping factor was that Oliver recognized the man’s voice – it was Dodger! (Oliver’s old friend who worked for Lamm to get his sister out of Longacre until Lamm double-crossed him and so he helped the party find Lamm).
By now the party was pretty old hands at killing zombies (if even if they were sick to death of them and their hundred different ways to force Fort saves or get Blood Veil), so they cut the four of them down pretty quickly with Dodger’s help. After the fight was over, Dodger explained that he and his sister had come to Old Korvosa to hide out until the heat following Lamm died down, only to get caught by the plague. They had gotten together with a group of refugees in this fortified house, which seemed to be the only way to survive other than fleeing, which was difficult at this point because zombies were everywhere in between here and the bridges. (One of the players made a reference to The Walking Dead TV show, which is pretty much the idea – your only real chance was to fortify someplace and hope you could hold out).
But with the party’s help, the group of refugees might have a chance to get to the bridge! But when Dodger pounded on the front door, they wouldn’t open up to let him back inside. Even when one of them started shouting “oh gods, they’re coming!”, no one was willing to let Dodger or the party in. Cue the arrival of two bloody, obviously zombified warhorses, each one coming in to block one of the small courtyard’s two exits. They stood there for a moment, and then with a shriek, a flood of zombified crows burst out of horses’ skin, and together the horses and crowstorms attacked. It was a pretty horrific scene I thought, and firm evidence that the plague didn’t just effect humans but animals as well. Of course, they were just Blood Veil zombified versions of warhorses and CR 1 crowstorms, so at this point while the swarms with their auto-damage was a little annoying, between Rholand’s Channel Energy and Cid’s Shocking Grasp, the party tore through them pretty quickly.
After that quick dispatch of the monsters that had apparently been tormenting this group of refugees and keeping them from going outside (the horses would have run down any fleeing refugees), the party earned the band’s trust enough to let them inside. And, after another few minutes of conversation, they convinced the group to come with them to the bridge and escape Old Korvosa. Dodger once again thanked Oliver for saving him and his sister, and said that he was getting out of Korvosa.
Apparently despite the quarantine sealing off the city, Devargo was running a side business where he would discretely ferry people out – for a high price. Dodger had enough for himself and his sister – and Oliver too if he wanted to come. Dodger urged his old friend to get out of the city before it all became a nightmare like Old Korvosa, but being a PC of course Oliver refused. So Dodger, being a honorable thief and old friend, decides just leaving didn’t sit right with him and he decides to accompany the party further into Old Korvosa to find the source.
Now with an extra party member and all the non-combatants including Dodger’s sister Laressa delivered to the Grey Maidens guarding the bridge, the party continues deeper into Old Korvosa. I decide to skip over the next encounter, which was another group of refugees fleeing through a set of twisting, interconnected back alleys while being pursued by a handful of blood veil human zombies and dog zombies. Obviously any refugees that got caught would be killed and a moment later return as a new blood veil zombie. But we were pressed for time and it was just more zombie killing so I skipped it in favor of the pen-ultimate encounter for this little adventure.
Coming out of the network of back alleyways, the party emerged into a large courtyard at a T-intersection of streets (with the stem of the T on the opposite side from them). Much of the courtyard was covered in thick webs, and the party could see several man-sized and man-shaped cocoons hanging from the webs. Beyond the webs, the party could see the street that made up the stem of the T, and it was covered in a carpet of blood-red fungus/mold/mushrooms, and burst-apart blood veil zombie bodies. In another smaller courtyard, at the center of this mass of Blood Veil vegetation stood a thick, stumpy tree of sorts, made up of bodies and thick vines of fungus. Andaisin and Vengeance (Lamm 2.0) stood in front of it, Andaisin harvesting some sort of disgusting fruit off of the plant. Vaz’em, being particularly keen-eyed, spyed the source of the webbing – hidden up on top of a nearby roof was a gigantic, bloated undead spider, with swarms of tiny spiders crawling in and out of its shattered carapace.
For those of you familiar with scary monsters from the Bestiary, you probably already know what this is and are wincing in sympathy at my level 6 party. For those that don’t though, this is a Deathweb, a Large-sized undead spider with several particularly b&%&*!+# abilities. First, it is surrounded by a swarm so that any creaures adjacent to it take STR poison damage automatically and are Nauseated (if they fail the Fort save anyway). Second, it has STR poison of its own that it delivers with its bite for a melee-hating double whammy. And lastly, it has Vital Strike – but due to a misprint in its stat block, the vital strike is already included as part of its bite – or 2d8+12. But if you’re just reading the stat block and take it at face value as I did, and don’t instinctually know the monster design rules such that Large creatures have a 1d8 Bite, you do as I did and treat the Vital Strike Bite as 4d8+12! That’s a lot of damage. That is a LOT of damn damage and why Deathwebs are TPK machines.
Still . . . it only get one attack a round, and there’s ways to kite the thing around so it can’t always get the Vital Strike, and hitting for obscene damage and its swarm pretty much tops out its tricks other than the standard web spinning/web throwing that all spiders have. So what I expected to happen was for Cid to Glitterdust it, and/or at least move into melee with it while Mirror Image was up. The thing would then have a less than 50% chance to hit him, and he or Oliver (who had the AC & HP to take one or two Vital Striked hits) could tank it while Vaz’em tore it a new one with his Reach claws (via Lunge) and Rholand kept them alive.
That didn’t happen this time. Instead, it started off well enough with the party decided to burn the webs, and Rholand threw up a Fog Cloud. The webs didn’t burn immediately (being thick and sticky), but the couple squares they lit up with Alchemist Fire started burning and the fire gradually spread out from there. The spider came down to investigate the fire, and had just enough intelligence to want to try to put out the fire so it started stomping on it with its legs . . . and blew the Reflex save so now it was on fire too.
This let the party see the thing through the fog, since even though RAW it’s total concealment, it’s a horse-sized spider that’s now covered in flames – come on, you’ll probably be able to see that through ten or fifteen feet of fog. Unfortunately, this meant that Rholand could still target it, and for whatever reason instead of just hiding in the fog with the others until the spider went away, he stepped forward, pulled out a scroll of Scorching Ray from Vreeg, and blasted it.
Then the Deathweb knew that it wasn’t alone, and it had a straight line of fire pointing back through the fog for it to follow back to Rholand, while the rest of the party was out of position. With a shriek, it moved forward through the fog, got up next to Rholand, and Vital Striked. It nat 1’d the attack, but the damage line on the macro caused everyone’s balls to shrivel a bit. From there it was chaos as Rholand realized too late that he had just made a serious tactical error. As the rest of the party closed in, he took another Vital Strike from the spider that actually hit this time, dropping him to critical health. He provoked an AoO when he backed off (due to the monster’s Reach) which also hit despite the fog concealment, dropping him.
Without a healer down the party knew it was a race against time now, and they threw everything they had against it. Cid Shocking Grasped it, but since the spider had something like 100+ HP, it just ate the damage, and then Vital Strike bit his head off the following round so now it was only Vaz’em and Oliver still up. Vaz’em, wanting no part of this thing anymore, backed off Invisible and started trying to revive Rholand. Oliver took a vital strike hit from the spider but was not one-shot by it, so he kept fighting, starting to take some STR damage from the swarm surrounding the Deathweb that he had to stand in to attack it. Dodger got busy with a blood veil zombie that was freed from one of the cocoons, as while the webs trapping it burned away, the zombie was easily able to take the fire damage (setting the whole thing on fire wasn’t such a good idea now, was it guys!?).
At the same time, as the fire found one the cocoons a very human voice started screaming for help, but since the party was already failing to save their own skins, they pretty much left the poor bastard to cook. RIP Amin Jalento (man, just call me the one-off NPC serial killer).
The tide finally started to turn after Vaz’em got Rholand up with a potion, and Rholand got Cid up, who immediately crawled away and started casting Mirror Image like he should have led with. Dodger managed to drop the blood veil zombie, and rushed over to help, although he did little more than eat an AoO (which did let Rholand move away or Vaz’em close in again, not sure which it was) as his strikes flailed against the thing’s carapace (of course I roll like crap for the allied NPC). Vaz’em took a Vital Bite of his own, dropping him down to Disabled, and he did NOT like the STR damage that came with it. Finally, Oliver buried his cutlass in the thing’s head, and it stopped moving, the baby spiders dispersing rapidly away from the corpse. Fight over, as to save time since we were already past quitting time, and to keep the party from dying to the swarm of four more blood veil zombies about to be freed from the webs (I ruled those four got burned up . . . somehow).
From her position in the other courtyard, Andaisin clapped her hands in disdainful applause, and the party *really* knew they were screwed now.
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So, after last session’s tactical screw-up (and Paizo screwed up the monster’s stat block into TPK-causing BS levels of damage for a CR6) the very nearly TPK’d party was on its last legs. Standing pretty much right in front of their nemesis Andaisin (and the revived Lamm, although it was made very clear very quickly who was in charge of their relationship). Here, I had to make a DM judgment call – I could and perhaps should have TPK’d the party despite their victory over the Deathweb, as Andaisin simply could have told Lamm to kill them and he would have eagerly ginsu’d his way through them in their nigh-crippled state (Cid pretty much no longer had a STR bonus, and everyone was in the teens-worth of HP at best).
That was, in fact, the original plan – to have a fight after the Deathweb with the party initially versus Lamm 2.0 while Andaisin continued to harvest the fungal tree, until she got annoyed enough to turn and join the fight for a round or two before teleporting herself and Lamm away (and leaving the tree itself, a Blood Veil-style Shambling Mound) to finish them off. But after the pounding they took from the Deathweb, there was no way they’d survive even a single round of combat with Lamm, so I opt’d for something different. Something which was actually not out-of-character for the very stereotypical villainess that Andaisin was – she gloated.
She explained that this tree was the source of the Blood Veil – the final stage of the infection and the fungus’s origin, come full circle. It’s existence was why Old Korvosa got so out of control, as once there were enough blood veil zombies around to gain critical mass, they came together to make the tree, and it spread blood veil spores all over the district, creating even more zombies.
With the pods that Andaisin had just harvested from the tree, she would be able to make several giant versions of the aerosol bombs that Jostilina tested for them at Carrowyn manor. Bombs large enough to cover the entire city of Korvosa in a choking mist of Blood Veil that would consume everyone and everything in minutes, turning Korvosa into a city of the undead. Perhaps with that many zombies, the infection would even spread on from there to threaten all of Varisia – Urgathoa would certainly be pleased at this.
Andaisin told them all this because the party, while obnoxious, was literally no threat to her (and the party really wasn’t - to justify her Word of Recall teleport trick, I made her level 12 – which as it turned out was an overcompensating mistake. And on top of that, I made her Mythic as well, as out of anyone in the first three books other than Ileosa herself, the chosen of Urgathoa probably deserved to be Mythic). So now the party had a choice – they could even join her against Ileosa and live, or return to her and their city to tell them all that they. Had. FAILED. Their city was already doomed, and after the day it took Andaisin to make the Blood Veil bombs, it would be dead.
Lamm begged Andaisin repeatedly to set him loose on the party, but she denied him, claiming that she had no desire to watch him repeat his failure as the docks (pretty sure the fight would have clearly had a different winner given the party’s state). When he got too flippant, Andaisin spoke some sort of command word, and the dullahan suit of armor fell to its knees in agony, begging for Andaisin to stop as she reminded Lamm that she had spared him from Scarwall, and if he didn’t like her orders, he could be sent back there to rot immediately. After Lamm demonstrated his compliance, Andaisin allowed him to stand again.
Of course, even as beaten as they were, Cid and Oliver couldn’t resist pushing their luck by giving the bad guys a hard time. They mocked Andaisin, and Urgathoa (Oliver even going so far as to say that “The Pallid Princess” was almost certainly the stage name of a hooker he had slept with at one point). Again, I would have probably been within my rights as DM to have Andaisin simply roll her eyes and say “Lamm, kill them all.” And that would have been that, for this party at least. But sometimes, you got to cut your players some slack if they have bad luck (as they had with the Deathweb), and pull some punches in order to keep the story going (else the BBEG would just come and kill the PCs while they’re level 1 instead of sending ever-escalating and yet still-fair-challenge minions after them). And Andaisin, being the very stereotypical insane villainess that she was, knew that she had already won and she wanted the party alive to see her victory come to pass. (And as their fight at the end of Book Two proved, yes, this belief in her victory wasn’t just overconfidence - the party really was no threat to Andaisin and she could curbstomp them all by herself at any time she wanted . . . provided she had time to slather on her entire suite of buffs at least >> ).
So, they pissed Andaisin off a little bit with their flippant tone, and so as she teleported away with Lamm, she told them that she would let the Blood Veil deal with them as the “tree” shuddered to life. The horrid amalgamation of fungus and bodies stomped forward and again, managed to get ahold of Rholand who somehow was at the front of the party again. While it was crushing him, the party swarmed the abomination from all sides. Whereupon they discovered two unpleasant things – one, when struck the abomination released an aura 1 (all adjacent squares) burst of Blood Veil spores – the effect was similar to the gas bombs – make a DC 16 Fort save or take 1d3 Con & Cha damage a round. Two, electricity healed it, as Cid’s Shocking Grasp boosted it Con by 2 or 3, enough to give it something like 10 extra HP (oh how I laughed, and laughed, and laughed when he did that). Basically, the Blood Veil Shambling Abomination was your bog standard Shambling Mound, with the Yellow Mold variant (that sprayed yellow mold everywhere when hit) with the mold replaced with Blood Veil fungus.
Of course, since this thing *had* been meant to fight the party *after* they had gotten softened up by Lamm & Andaisin . . . it wasn’t really that impressive of an opponent. Vaz’em sunk his claws into its back, Oliver chopped it, and despite Cid’s shocking grasp gaffe the abomination died before it could manage to finish crushing Rholand (which only would have taken another round or two between the constrict damage and the blood veil gas, so . . . it did its job of nearly killing someone I guess). They were all pretty surprised at how quickly the thing died, but again, after nearly TPKing on a CR6 (an equal level fight mind you) the week before, I was pretty happy they just didn’t manage to somehow screw this fight up too and get themselves killed. :-p
With the death of the abomination, there pretty much was nothing else for the party to do, and so they went back to the mainland, upon which the stone bridge, the last connection to Old Korvosa, was blown up. Knowing they had very little time left to save the city, the party went back and reported everything they had seen and heard from Andaisin to Ileosa. And from that information, it was clear what had to be done – Ileosa gave the party Adonis Kreed’s pardon and told them to go to Longacre immediately.
The party went, delivered the pardon, and went back in to interrogate Adonis after giving him the good news. While he was stretching and boasting about his newfound freedom, Rholand slapped him on the back of the neck, branding him with some sort of tracking magic (I don’t quite remember the exact spell) that would allow the party to keep an eye on him – Rholand told Adonis as much. Fortunately for him, unfortunately for them, they forgot about ol’ Adonis and the spell, shortly thereafter.
Adonis kept up his end of the bargain though, and told the party where Andaisin had made her home, assuming she hadn’t gotten spoked and moved to another safe house – beneath the Hospice of the Blessed Maiden. The same hospice that the good Doctor Davaulus was using as a central triage unit for those suffering from the Blood Veil plague. It was all so obvious now . >>
They went back and told the queen, who was rightly furious that one of her most trusted underlings, her own physician, would turn against her (of course, Davaulus had been recommended to Ileosa by Andaisin way back in the day, so what did you really expect?). However, there was the matter that Davaulus had hostages . . . hostages that could be turned into zombified weapons at a moment’s notice. So a little bit of discretion was called for.
As a result, rather than just call up DeVries and have his hellknights fireball the place, Ileosa ordered the party, along with Kroft and a small force of hand-picked guardsmen, to go to the Hospice, arrest Davaulus, and discover if Andaisin really was hiding out there or not. Prior to that though, given their current condition, they would be allowed to rest, and treated by the new “Royal Divine Advisor” (can’t quite remember the exact title). Cue Orhner Reeds showing up with his cheesy “Asmodeus calling”, who swiftly slapped Restorations and Remove Diseases on the party, free of charge (to the party, anyway). Rholand wasn’t happy about this development, but he didn’t complain too much considering the need for those spells in order for the party to be at full strength tomorrow (and if the party *had* delayed to rest up here more than overnight, I would have destroyed the city and just declared the campaign over. You *DO NOT TAKE YOUR TIME* if the BBEG herself tells you that you only have one day to stop her.)
The next morning, the party gathered together, met up with Kroft and her hand-picked group of guard, and went for the Hospice. Hopefully getting there ahead of the Hellknights, since Cid had gone and TOLD THEM (well, just Maidrayne Vox but really that means the entire Order of the Nail) about what was going on and Davaulus’s betrayal. This did mean that the party would have the Hellknights as a back-up plan for the city, but it also meant they had to hurry if they didn’t want to sift through a crater and dozens of innocent, burned bodies. On their way out, a courier stopped them to drop off a package that Queen Ileosa had sent for them. Inside was a cornucopia of healing items – I forgot to write it down anywhere, but it was something like a Wand of Cure Moderate Wounds, four potions of Remove Disease, two scrolls of Restoration, four potions of Cure Serious Wounds, and a scroll of Raise Dead. At the bottom was a note in Ileosa’s handwriting. It said, simply, “Kick her ass.” The climax of Book Two was about to begin.
Although they were *just* shy of hitting level seven, I decided to show them a little mercy and gave them an “XP debt” of about 3,000 XP apiece in order to level up to level seven ahead of our next session. No real surprises here, Rholand took another level in Oracle and swapped that level of Sorceror back over to Oracle finally, Vaz’em Ninja, Oliver Fighter, Cid Magus.
The Deathweb deos appear to have more than one error in its statblock (this seems to be common among Bestiary listings -- for instance, the common housecat seems to have errors as well). Although none of them seem as large as already including Vital Strike into the bite damage without saying so. Problem is, with both monster stat blocks and character sheets, it seems that the usual convention is to abbreviate all of the computations, so that anybody trying to check for errors really has to puzzle over them and is likely to miss them. I wish that "show your work" was part of making a monster stat block (the full-fledged version, not the 2nd Edition-style abbreviated version which also has its uses and ought to be printed at the bottom like a "Fastplay" version) or character sheet. It is understandable why this is not done, though -- I actually went to the trouble to do this on the character sheets you can find linked from my Profile/Aliases because I was afraid of messing up character sheet creation, and these character sheets come out LONG. In the case of Sariel Cerea, I had to split the character sheet into 2 parts, because Paizo's messageboards apparently have some limit like 65536 characters (which I think applies to both posts and character sheets -- yes, I have occasionally run afoul of this limit on messageboard posts and had to split them into 2 parts).
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Yeah, messageboard limits are a pain in the ass. I've had to split my posts into two halves as well on several occasions.
So before we move into the climax of Book Two (the Hospice of the Blessed Maiden and beyond), I thought I would pre-empt a possible question of my version.
Namely, the Grey Maidens guarding the Hospice. As-written this is meant to be a red flag that the queen is supporting the plague, but obviously in my version this won't work as she is legitimately concerned with protecting her city. So the Grey Maidens at the Hospice were assigned to guard Davaulus, but when the party shows up to arrest him in the queen's name there is no doubt that they would turn on him.
I could have made them traitors, of course, but after all the corruption in Book One, and given that the Grey Maidens are fanatical enough about serving Ileosa that they're willing to self-mutilate as an entrance test (a fact that creeped Cid the hell out when he learned that from talking to Sabrina), I wanted something different.
So . . . I had Andaisin happen. When Davaulus's bodyguards got too suspicious, Andaisin showed up and Channel Energy'd them all into unconsciousness. They were then all dragged down below and tortured for sport by the cultists beneath the Hospice, while several cultists (Underpriests of Urgathoa) put on their Grey Maiden armor and took their place.
The deception wouldn't last forever, particularly if anyone who knew the Grey Maidens standing guard showed up, so Andaisin revived the Grey Maidens who died as Ju-Ju zombies. This gave the added benefit of making the Grey Maidens' already insane AC through the roof thanks to the zombie natural armor bonus, and made them immune to things like Shocking Grasp & Magic Missile (sadly I don't think Cid ever blasted one of them). Ju-Ju zombies are intelligent and capable of speech, so it let them return the zombies to service as "actual" Grey Maidens, just under the control of Andaisin instead of free will. A few cultists were kept in the armor to ensure the zombies stayed in line (as they hadn't managed to kill the last two of the Grey Maidens at the time the party got there).
Hilariously enough, at some point earlier in Book Two, Rholand visited Davaulus at the hospice to discuss the plague. He was barred from seeing the doctor, due to the plague, so Rholand left a message for him. On his way out, he overheard one of the Grey Maidens standing guard up front muttering about how the armor was "seriously chaffing his balls". If he had remembered that all Grey Maidens were female, this should have tipped him off that something was very wrong here. But no, he just laughed it off, which was probably a good thing since Davaulus wouldn't have hesitate to make him very dead and shoved him under the floorboards.
In my campaign the Gray Maiden and Korvosan Guard soldiers who were securing the Hospice were oblivious to what was going on below the surface. The PCs bypassed them by making a whole in the roof in Dr. Davaulus' first floor office and then used the elevator to go directly to the underground temple. Since the guards were only on the ground floor, they didn't notice the PCs.
When the PCs came out of the temple, they used the ground floor and ran into the guards. The party bard scolded at the Gray Maidens for their ignorance at what was taking place in the cellar, leaving them dumbfounded (bluff check), so the PCs could simply walk out. This left the Gray Maidens to discover the temple for themselves.
The bard's satisfaction at his successful bluff disappeared the next day, when rumors in the city spoke of the Gray Maiden rooting out the treacherous temple of Urgathoa and taking care of the vile doctors. This provided the queen with public deniability, since it were 'her troops' who discovered the evil plot and killed the doctors.
Nice rework of the scene at the Hospice. Except I can't find Immunity or Resistance to electricity or Magic Missile on either the Undead Type or the Zombie Template.
Nice rework of the scene at the Hospice. Except I can't find Immunity or Resistance to electricity or Magic Missile on either the Undead Type or the Zombie Template.
But it is on the Juju Zombie Template
^Oh, okay. Hadn't realized that Juju Zombie was a totally separate template. Weird immunity set, but it does make a decent counter to the most common builds of Magus (Shocking Grasp one-trick pony specialist and Frostbite one-trick pony specialist).
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Yeah, juju zombies are weird. Pretty sure they’re a carry-over from 1e AD&D, which had monsters have sometimes esoteric defenses, like immunity to magic missiles.
Okay, so let’s begin the end sequence of Book Two (or as I termed it in my after-session XP write-ups “The Last of Our Resident Evil Rising Dead”. First, there were a couple of shake-ups for the next several sessions. The first was that Maptools stopped working without warning, most likely being my router decided to throw a temper tantrum. It would be several weeks before I managed to get it fixed, so we played using the roll20 website – which means I don’t have old Maptools files of the fights, so I’ll be doing the next couple session purely from memory.
Second, and lastly slightly longer (though only slightly >< ) Alice’s player decided to come back and re-join the game. Dunno what prompted the change of heart, but I think Alice and Vaz’em’s players were friends, so maybe Vaz’em talked it up or something. Anyway, Alice’s player came back, but since Alice was dead (strangled to death by an aptly-named Choker with imp back-up), a new character was made. Enter Gromka, a half-orc scarred witch doctor.
Yes, yet again I made the mistake of allowing my players to have crazy powerful class/archetypes, although at least Gromka’s player held-off of abusing the Slumber hex (likely because it would have caused me to have a knee-jerk DM reaction and ret-gone Gromka out of existence). Still, Misfortune combined with Evil Eye and Cackle are not fun if you’re playing the bad guys. *sigh* Or at least, no fun if you have a Scarred witch doctor with something like Con 24, resulting in Will save DCs in the 20s. And the witch doctor had something like 80 HP, and decent AC while that Scarred Shield ability that grants Natural Armor was up (Gromka had crap AC without buffs though, something like AC 16).
Anyway, Gromka’s background was that she was a witch doctor from a tribe of orcs, which she was exiled from after getting into a dispute with her husband, the chieftain, over their daughter that ended with said orc cheiftain’s heart getting cut out. Afterwards, Gromka got separated from her daughter at some point (I had initially pictured her as a sort of rebellious teenager who ran off, but apparently the daughter was like the half-orc equivalent of eleven. :/ ), and came to Korvosa to look for her.
With the plague going on, Gromka’s search for her daughter led her to the Hospice of the Blessed Maiden, and while she wasn’t sick (haha, yeah no not with that Fort save), her nosing around the hospice got Davaulus nervous. So the plague doctors knocked her out (yeah don’t bother asking me how – they snuck up behind her with a BIIIG mallet, okay? :-p ), and made her one of their new patients. Which, since said patients could become zombies at any time, meant that Gromka spent the rest of her time at the hospice bound and gagged to one of the cots. Eventually, one of the doctor’s attempts to “cure” her actually got her sick, and so Gromka was in rough shape by the time the party arrived with Kroft and company.
As a way to foreshadow Gromka’s existence, and to remind the players of her existence, Zellara appeared to Vaz’em the night before the assault on the hospice. She said that Pharasma Herself had told her to give Vaz’em this – a Harrow card – and that he was to give it to someone else tomorrow when he met them, and that he would know who (obviously because they would have an aura of “I’m a PC!” around them). This card ended up curing the Blood Veil rampaging through Gromka’s system and restored her Constitution so that she could wreak havoc. Which she pretty much did.
So, now that all the set-up has been explained, on with the next session!
So the party shows up with Kroft & company, Gromka is still bound helpless to a cot inside, and Andaisin is down below with Rolth putting the finishing touches on four Blood Veil bombs that will destroy Korvosa. There’s a bit of debate over going in through the sealed up loading dock, which Vaz’em scouts out but ultimately does not open.
Good thing – whenever someone dies at the hospice, the plague doctors usually destroy the resultant zombie immediately – but every so often they keep it to serve as part of a rainy day army. By this point, there was a total of twelve Blood Veil zombies locked up in that back room the sealed loading dock opens into. So if they had opened those sealed doors they’d have gotten yet another mob of angry blood veil zombies to deal with.
But instead, the group went in through the front to deal with the standard welcoming committee of the nurse and two grey maidens. With orders to delay any possible inquiries or attempts to get inside, the nurse and the imposter grey maiden (along with one of the Juju zombies as backup) try to stall the party. No one is having it, least of all Kroft, and when it becomes clear that the party wasn’t just going to leave, the grey maidens and nurse attack.
The imposter grey maiden was actually an underpriest of Urgathoa (4th level cleric), which I had rebuilt as someone on the board suggested to have the Magic domain (allowing them to “throw” their sword as a ranged weapon something like 4 or 5 times per day). I also gave them Channel Smite, which the door guard attempted to use but failed . . . . so generally most of them resorted to using Channel Energy the old fashioned AoE way for the rest of the dungeon. >:) Sadly, Rholand had an epiphany recently, and slapped Protection from Evil on most of the party via Communal Protection from Evil. This stopped my plan to give each of the clerics one Murderous Command each and have the party melee itself to death. Oh well – Cid was exempt from this protection I believe, and it nearly cost him dearly.
The Grey Maiden juju zombies, since they are intelligent, I basically treated as my rebuilt version with +3 natural armor and some weird immunities. Again following some forum advice, I rebuilt the grey maidens as level 3 cavaliers, focused on teamwork and AC. And when two of them were together, with shield wall teamwork feat and Bodyguard, they were *really* good at it (something like AC 29 max if the Bodyguard went off).
Fortunately for the party, the only pair of juju zombie grey maidens was the pair upstairs, guarding the room full of varisian hostages and plague doctors. The pair at the door and the pair up in the rafters of the main room were a cleric imposter/juju zombie duo. The last two grey maidens were still alive below.
Unfortunately, the duo imposter/zombie at the door didn’t last long, as the imposter cleric decided to back away into the main room to scream bloody murder and let everyone there know that the party was here. Alone, the juju zombie quickly got dropped, and after taking a hard hit from Oliver the nurse surrendered – this kept Kroft and the guardsmen (I think they were more Grey Maidens actually since Ileosa/Sabrina trusted them now that I think about it) busy for a round tying the nurse up.
Cid ran in alone after the imposter, cut him down, and promptly found him alone in a room with four plague doctors, and an imposter cleric and a juju zombie up in the rafters. Good thing Cid cut down the fleeing cleric too – otherwise he was going to Channel Negative on his next turn, killing half a dozen of the people tied to the beds and causing them to turn into Blood Veil zombies within seconds (all of Davaulus’s staff had a potion of Hide from Undead or a spell of it just in case, and since the blood veil zombies were mindless they wouldn’t get a save.) Of course, being tied down the zombies would have been helpless for a round or two, but eventually would have broken free and caused havoc as they fell on more of the helpless victims around them, creating more blood veil zombies and yeah . . . you get the picture.
Again, following previous efforts made by this forum, I rebuilt the plague doctors as level 3 Vivisectionist alchemists. None of them really did anything effective, but Expeditious Retreat combined with the hilarious alchemist formula that lets you spit tanglefoot bags at people made them obnoxious. They also got a moment to shine after Cid stood over the fallen cleric’s body . . . and the cleric up in the rafters targeted him with Hold Person – and he failed the save! Cue three of the doctors making a beeline for Cid, while the last one ran towards the back to fling open the cell door and unleash the stored up army of a dozen blood veil zombies.
Cid failed the save on the following round as well, and thus it was only his Mirror Image standing between him and being Coup-de-graced to death. Well, that, and Rholand throwing up Life Link on him. The doctors’ attempts to cut Cid’s throat all sliced through images – but one. Thus Rholand took something like 17 damage from the auto-critical sneak attack and Cid got to make a DC 10 Fort save to not die (as a coup de grace is DC 10 + damage taken from the auto crit) . . . which he just barely made. Oliver got in there the following round, Cid finally made his save, and they butchered the plague doctors over the next round or two despite their “spit and run” tactics.
Meanwhile, the blood veil zombies came surging out of the back, prompting Kroft and the Grey Maidens to set up a defensive line just in front of the first refugees to hold the zombies back. Again, this explained what they were all doing during this fight instead of helping the party (plus I figured after the entire book, they didn’t want to deal with a single more blood veil zombie, heheheheh).
With Gromka unable to free herself (plague doctor CMB for tying up was just slightly higher than Gromka’s own CMB due to tanking most stats like STR in favor of bumping Con up as much as possible, so she was helpless during the first couple rounds of the fight), Vaz’em went over and cut her free. Guessing this was who Zellara told him about, Vaz’em handed over the Harrow card Zellara had given him and Gromka was healed of her afflication. And now she was ready to kick some ass given her treatment over the past week. She blasted the last plague doctor (the one who had let the zombies go), which left just the grey maiden zombie and imposter up in the rafters sniping at Rholand with bow and thrown sword left. Well, them and Dr. Davaulus, who appeared on the balcony overhead (who had spent the morning chugging a bunch of hours/level elixirs, and the several rounds of fighting to chug down his mutagen and several rounds/level elixirs). The not-so-good doctor demanded to know what was going on, and since I had wasted like an hour trying to sort maptools out and then emergency migrating to roll20, we ended the session there.
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And the continuation of last session which ended mid-fight as Davaulus revealed himself. Again, Maptools was down so we had to use roll20 – fortunately I was a little more prepared this time.
So, well aware of the difficulties in making NPCs live up to their CR, single opponent fights not being a complete joke due to action economy alone to say nothing of save-or-bad-stuff-happens spam, and my party being a bunch of pretty damn efficient melee-based killing machines, I decided to make Dr. Davaulus pretty damn ridiculous and buffed up to the gills before the fight. Fortunately alchemists have a lot of fun tricks, and I focused on giving him a lot of weird body augmentation abilities/feats/formulae.
Because I am a rather deranged individual from time to time, given the focus on undead and previous Resident Evil jokes (since my title for the Book Two end sequence that I posted last time) I decided to turn to Albert Wesker as my model for Davaulus. Which basically meant, again, body augmentation stuff meant to allow him to stand toe-to-toe with my party and b&~*#slap them all like a bunch of little girls. Unfortunately I built him before knowing about Gromka’s existence, and there was no reason for him to take precautions against a scarred witch doctor’s debuff b%#!&%!# as Gromka was a new variable, else I would have had him focus a bit more on his Will save (sigh).
So after appearing on the balcony, Kroft demands Davaulus surrender, Rholand demands to know why he was helping Andaisin, Cid and Oliver make their usual snide remarks/threats, blah blah blah. Davaulus feigns surprise, and then displays merely annoyance as he hefts the massive desk he had dragged out of his office, and throws it down at the nearby Vaz’em and Oliver. They both made their reflex saves sadly, so they don’t take any damage nor are pinned by it. Which is probably good for them as a moment later Davaulus leapt down onto the desk, his legs bending like an insect’s before he lands, shattering the desk (Jump spell, and if anyone had been pinned by the desk they would have been freed but taken even more damage). This pulverized desk was indeed the same desk that was worth a bunch of money save for the acid burns on it – that’s what I think of giving out *furniture* as treasure, Paizo! Holding up his hands, Davaulus reveals that they had transformed into claws (Beastmorph alchemist, meaning mutagen gives you claws), and the boss fight was on.
Being right there, Oliver and Vaz’em quickly moved in to engage Davaulus, only to find that he moved with sudden bursts of speed and never seemed to be where they were expecting him to be (Displacement -50% miss chance, which also made it impossible for Vaz’em to sneak attack). And when they did strike him, his rough and knobby skin tore at their arms (Thorns – when hit by melee, *each* hit, deal 1d6+level or in this case 1d6+9 damage to attacker).
Cid, meanwhile, got caught in the last surprise I had from the duo in the rafters – the juju zombie operated one of the old crane hooks that had been used when the hospice was a warehouse for House Arkona. Lowering down the hook, the zombie managed to catch Cid with it, hoisting him up in the air. When she hit the emergency release lever to drop Cid for some falling damage, however, Cid managed to avoid it by making a save, but he was still caught on the hook so he started climbing up the chain to get up in the rafters and fight them.
Davaulus’s turn came up again, and he melee’d Vaz’em for some pretty hefty damage (mutagen and Bull’s STR stacking is no joke), which revealed the other nasty surprise – he had coated his hands in poison in addition to buffing up before coming out to fight. All of the plague doctors had poisoned weapons actually, but greensblood oil is only like DC 13 Fort, and with their crappy attack bonus the plague doctors never hit anyway I believe. Davaulus, however, had something special just for the party – a dose of Deathblade on each of his hands, which deals a whopping 1d6 Con damage. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if it was a typo that the fort check is every minute instead of every round like most poison, but either way I ran it as per round since I assumed it was per round like every other poison (oh well!). Vaz’em made his Fort save though, so it was moot anyway (there was a lot of that this fight :( ).
Rholand moved in to heal the group with a Channel, and Gromka blasted Davaulus with some sort of Fort-save-for-be-stunned energy ball that he barely passed (yay!). The channel got Davaulus’s ire, and on his next turn he 5’ stepped over and tore into Rholand as his limbs deformed and stretched (Long Arm, giving him 10’ Reach) including the use of a Stunning Fist (hahaha, discovery for stunning fist! He also had the Dazing Fist feat, but he never got a chance to use that one ). Rholand survived and made his Fort save, and Davaulus was briefly impressed – they continued to verbally spar at each other (or at least yell threats) for another couple rounds. This marked Rholand to serve as Davaulus’s punching bag for pretty much the rest of the fight.
Now Gromka finally got her debuffs rolling with Misfortune and then Evil Eye, while Vaz’em decided to make himself useful by chasing down the very last plague doctor who was running upstairs (since he couldn’t do much to Davaulus). Cid cut down the cleric in a round or two after he got up there and the zombie decided to leap out of the rafters to join the swirling melee around Davaulus under his orders.
I suppose what I should have done at this point was have Davaulus run over to Gromka and start pummeling her, as even rolling twice with penalties he still could have easily hit her AC 16 . . . although it wouldn’t have done much given Gromka had 80 HP. Instead, I had Davaulus displayed his latest trick, as he tossed several alchemical vials into his mouth, crunching them between his teeth, and then opening his mouth to unleash a blast of fire over Rholand and Oliver! (Bomb Breath discovery). This put Rholand down into critical health, but unfortunately as he started limping away the grey maiden zombie came over into melee and cut him down. Davaulus dropped another breath weapon over Rholand’s prone form, at which point I decided to give him a little DM mercy and allowed him to make a Reflex save to cut the damage in half, as per the usual for the bomb breath discovery. He made it, which still put him at something like -13 or so (apparently he had just enough Con to survive that).
Kroft ran over and dumped one of her potions down his throat, bringing Rholand back around, and Cid cut down the zombie shortly thereafter, and Vaz’em killed the last plague doctor. That left Davaulus alone, and while he fought on his spell durations were starting to run out. I think his displacement was just about to cut out when Oliver landed the killing blow, dropping Davaulus. Sadly, this meant that he never got to use his Draconic Resilience formula (absorb lightning damage, like from Cid’s Shocking Grasp, and then use it to deal an additional 1d6 Electric damage with his own melee attacks) nor his Vomit Spawn ability (figured it was disgusting and it fit with the theme of extreme body modification due to exposure from the “T fungus” strain of Blood Veil Davaulus developed). And due to Cid (or someone, anyway) walking over and cutting Davaulus’s head off, he never got to use his Spontaneous Healing ability to jump up a couple rounds after he “died” to continue the fight at like 15 HP for another round or two. *Sigh* Oh well.
Gromka gave a few gruff sentences of introduction to the rest of the party, before it was cut short by a voice calling up from the second floor – one of the plague doctors up there wanting to negotiate, trading the lives of the varisian guinea pig hostages in exchange for Kroft and the party letting them go. Otherwise, the doctors would kill them all and then go out fighting as they were well aware what the penalty for them would be if arrested (that Korvosan policy of “slow death by torture” for traitors isn’t looking so good now, is it?)
Cid, in true Hellknight fashion, basically said “F$#+ you, we don’t make deals with dead men” as he lobbed a Fireball into the room where they were all hiding, dropping several of the doctors to half health, killing most of the hostages, and dooming the rest as the vengeful plague doctors carried out their threat. We . . . decided to ret-con that at the beginning of the next session, since it was very late at this point and I think nobody was thinking things through very clearly. Cid’s player may have also meant it more as a joke given the previous behavior displayed by the Hellknights. It certainly was *exactly* how a “real” Hellknight would have handled it, which is exactly why they’re all Evil sonsofb!@&~es in my version of Korvosa and rightly feared and despised by pretty much everyone *not* a Hellknight.
We rewound time back to the start of the negotiations and ended the session there.
Be glad Gromka wasn't a Reach Scarred Witch Doctor, for even more action economy abuse. With actually investing in Strength (instead of dumping it -- for instance, be an actual Orc instead of Half-Orc) and Reach Weapon use (especially Exotic Weapon Proficiency(Elven Branched Spear)), one could be very competitive with a Reach Cleric build until you got into really high levels where the BAB difference would become too big to overcome.
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Yeah – my players have spoiled me by playing mostly melee guys. It’s actually pretty easy to challenge martials . . . casters, not so much particularly if they have even a passing interest in bending the game over a barrel. I will hold off on any rants about 3.X/PF at this time. :-p Anyway, this next session was our *last* session on Roll20, as I fixed Maptools by sorting out my router the following week - hurray!
So, the session began with the rerun of the hostage negotiations, and while Cid was less-trigger happy this time, nobody was really willing to offer the plague doctors jack s+$$ save a quick death. So they slammed the door to the room shut and started killing people. With a curse, Cid used a different 3rd-level spell, Blink, which gave him a 50% chance to walk through the walls. Which he succeeded in, making quite the badass entrance as he leapt through the wall at the plague doctors as they merrily went around slitting Varisian throats. Two turned to fight Cid, but the last one kept executing people because he’s a dick like that.
Meanwhile, Oliver and Vaz’em and the rest are stymied by the two juju zombie grey maidens standing outside. They beg the party to lay them to rest, and to go down below to free their sisters-in-arms who still live, but sadly they are not strong enough to resist the orders of Andaisin and her underpriests. Namely, to kill anyone who tries to go into that room, so a fight with the two of them is inevitable. They get a taste of how obnoxious it is to fight opponents with an AC pushing close to 30, but at only third level the zombies really don’t have a lot of hit points and so with a couple lucky swings, they both fall into the peace of death once more.
Cid finishes off the last of the plague doctors pretty much by himself, and starts freeing people when the next complication shows up. Namely, a wing of Hellknights led by Vox smashing in the roof, throwing down some barrels of oil, and lighting the whole place on fire. While the party, Kroft and the grey maidens, and all of those sick people are still inside. There’s a bit of a scramble, but I handwave that Kroft and the grey maidens (and Varisians Cid just freed) all manage to help virtually all of the sick people out of the hospice before it burns down.
I think they also got to see a brief verbal catfight between Kroft and Vox, before Kroft had to turn her attention to pulling everyone out of the building that they could, in defiance of the Hellknight belief that any sick person was a threat to Korvosa that had to be destroyed. Of course, with the hospice burned to the ground above them, the party was unable to retreat, although really with Andaisin’s plan to blow up the city happened tonight, they didn’t really have time to retreat and rest anyway. Meanwhile, the Hellknights smugly think that with the destruction of the hospice their work was done.
The party, on the other hand, discover the elevator and deduce from the zombie grey maidens that there’s a way to get it to go down. The building burning down around them, they get on the elevator, Vaz’em disables the controls preventing it from going down into the basement (or maybe they just use the button they found on Davaulus, can’t remember), and they descend into the earth.
If the party had stayed out of the burning building I would have had Kroft voice her doubts assuming the party thought their work was done too. They could have then either sifted through the wreckage to find the remains of the elevator shaft going down into the untouched basement some hundred feet below, or followed the underground smuggling canal that connected Andaisin’s temple (and former warehouse basement) to the Jeggare River.
Finally arriving at the bottom of the elevator shaft, the party find themselves standing in the entry of an obvious temple to Urgathoa, the four walls surrounding them covered in extensive bas relief. From each direction a scene of intricately-created depravity leers out at them.
The west wall featured a pair of immense troll skeletons, wearing breastplate and armed with gigantic scythes, cleaving through groups of people begging for mercy – their bodies actually formed from rotting meat of some type.
The south wall featured worms (made from actual sea shells) borrowing through more bodies made of rotting meat.
Sadly, I can’t remember what was on the north wall – some similar scene of death and disease. I did take away the door that was there in the original map though – there was only one way out of this room other than the elevator, and that was the set of double doors to the east.
I was making up these descriptions largely as I went, which was why I was pleased with how they turned out. My players were impressed and disgusted with the details.
And on the east wall, was a carving of a naked woman who was nothing but bones from the waist down – Urgathoa herself. Her depiction was carved into a set of ominous double doors, and surrounded with what appeared to be small stone buttons set into the doors around Urgathoa, with small hieroglyphs on them. Above the door was an inscription, which basically said “If you are a true friend of Urgathoa, you will know what to do. What are the seven gifts of the Pallid Princess?” The question is a reference to the seven fluids of Urgathoa mentioned in the basins around Andaisin’s final boss room – bile, blood, milk, phlegm, pus, sweat, and tears. There were also a number of other false buttons of course, and a quick inspection of the door by Vaz’em revealed that there was indeed a trap that was connected to the buttons.
In actuality, the whole thing was a trap. Anyone who belonged down there, by Andaisin’s reasoning, would know they were welcome and open the door without touching anything. Intruders, on the other hand, would be flummoxed and think that there was some sort of trick, press some of the buttons, and regardless which ones were pressed, spring the trap on themselves.
The party puzzled over the door for a bit, Rholand made some checks to identify religious lore surrounding Urgathoa, and I revealed the seven gifts. So of course after a bit more deliberations he pushed the buttons. And the statue of Urgathoa came to life as a magic mouth triggered, and Andaisin’s voice hissed out. “Fool! Any true friend would have known that he was always welcome and would have just come in!”
Cid’s player thought this was hilarious and a well-played trap, while Rholand, understandably, was a little less thrilled with my modification to the temple’s front-door trap. Frankly, a trap that says “I’ma scan your alignment and if you’re not evil, you’re gonna take two scythes to the face” was not a terribly interesting trap to me, hence the *potential* to bypass it, even though no player is gonna pass up a puzzle, heeheehee.
So Rholand sprung the trap, Andaisin taunted them through a magic mouth, and then the statue of Urgathoa started spewing poison gas that covered most of the area around the doorway. The party except for Rholand had wisely stayed back out of the way, and so he got to enjoy the poison mist on his own. Nightmare Vapor, to be precise, which meant that after he failed his Fort Save Rholand was confused and taking Wisdom damage, which he took for several more turns because he didn’t get an “act normally” until his second or third turn in the mist – once out of the mist as I have done with most gas-based poisons thus far, he stopped having to make Fort saves versus the poison.
While Rholand was enjoying that, the *second* part of the trap activated, as the two giant armored troll skeletons stepped out of the bas belief in the back wall. This was the whole reason why I had a detailed bas relief mural covering each wall – so the existence of the two trolls skeletons sticking halfway out of the wall wouldn’t be so suspicious. If my players had gone and started trying to take off their armor or weapons the trolls would have reacted, but otherwise they were ordered to simply stand there and watch intruders until they triggered the door. Being skeleton champions and thus having an intelligence score, these two Champions of Urgathoa thus knew how to be patient while the party debated before Rholand finally set off the doors.
I was really pleased with building these things, as they were Bloody Troll Skeletal Champion Fighter 2s, which gave them a lot of hit points, the ability to wear armor (breastplates), and a number of feats to play with (they were built around Greater Bull Rush and combat Reflexes, so one would push a target past the other for a whole bunch of AoOs in theory. Also shove people back into the Nightmare Vapor while it lasted.)
Sadly, they didn’t live up to their self-hype, as Gromka nerfed them into uselessness and Cid used Shocking Grasp on one and pretty much one-shot it, and then used Chill Touch on the other to make it run away and cower in the back corner until they finished it off. And since they had already encountered bloody skeletons in the Dead Warrens back in Book One, they knew how to keep them both down (my versions that popped back up in rounds instead of hours anyway, and died permanently to any positive energy) – Wand of CLW to the forehead. Damn useless undead! Oh well, can’t win them all.
We ended the session with the party preparing to open the double doors to the next room, where they heard voices shouting orders that intruders were here and to get ready.
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And the next session, now finally back on Maptools proper!
As I mentioned a little in the last post, I modified the Temple of Urgathoa, both in lay-out and in dangers.
So, as I mentioned I removed the alternate path through the northern part of the dungeon - from the elevator there was only one way forward, guarded by the Nightmare Vapor door trap and two troll skeleton champions of Urgathoa.
The new layout of the dungeon was basically a cross lying on its side, with the elevator being the westernmost "head". The next room that the party was about to enter was the crosspiece where everything intersected, and basically served as a command center for the temple - lots of maps of Korvosa and notes on the construction of Blood Veil and the Blood Veil bombs. Working in here were four plague doctors, who were busily gathering up all the paper into a pile on the table so that they could alchemist fire the whole mess and destroy it, preventing the players from getting invaluable information on where exactly those bombs were going in the city.
To the north of this room was the barracks, where another couple plague doctors were relaxing along with about four underpriests of Urgathoa. Their entertainment for the evening was the abused and battered grey maiden Beautrice, who was forced to fight the (exploding, of course) skeletons that the Urgathoans were using as butlers. With her hands still tied behind her back. She’d been doing these fights for several days now to try and spare her fellow grey maiden Devinia from having to do these fights instead, but it had taken a serious toil – Beautrice was pretty much covered in filthy scratches from the skeleton’s claws, and one of them had clawed out her right eye. The idea was that the party would get into this room in time to watch Beautrice trip one of the skeletons and stomp its skull open, causing it to explode and pissing off one of the underpriests who had gotten a little too close while watching the fight. From there they’d have to take care of killing the rest of the skeletons near Beautrice as she was fragile enough that the explosions might kill her, to say nothing of the Channel Energy spam that the underpriests were starting to love using, even with friendly fire.
To the south were the laboratories and cells, which featured a couple more plague doctors and an underpriest, along with a couple blood veil zombies with the blood veil extracted (Rolth had been experimenting, and I figured my players were sick and tired of them). And then beyond that were the cells were Devinia was recovering from her own torments, along with a couple unfortunate Varisian citizens. The laboratory also had a new door that I added, which opened up into a small underground smuggler’s cove, where a group of underpriests and plague doctors were directing another troll skeleton Champion of Urgathoa to load one of the Blood Veil bombs onto a ship.
And to the east was the main Blood Veil manufactory, where Rolth awaited the party’s arrival with two plague doctors, four more underpriests, and the last troll skeleton Champion of Urgathoa. Given the warning from the Alarm spell on the door trap going off, they had time to get into formation – the doctor and troll skeleton down on the floor in front of the main doors, with Rolth and the four underpriests up on the catwalks over the large vats of Blood Veil where they could fling spells and scythes (using magic domain) down at the party.
The rest of the Temple was pretty much left as written, save that Ramoska was attended by his four vampire spawn caretakers/bodyguards/handlers since the party never dealt with them. And instead of Raun, Ramoska was studying Tayce Saldado, after she had gotten rounded up due to her daughter Brienna struggling through the sickness naturally. The Leukodaemon fight was pretty much left exactly as written, with the two underpriests also in the room ready to shatter the tube holding it as soon as the party entered.
Finally, I replaced the fight in Andaisin’s chamber. In a “Looking for Baal?” Durial from D2 moment, Broodmaster Pestilence, the intelligent mutated otyugh that had escaped the party when they took down Vreeg and the Brotherhood Below, would shatter the floor from below after the players entered the room to find Andaisin was not present (having already gone on to make preparations for her follow-up to destroying Korvosa, leading that city worth of undead up to Castle Korvosa to complete her overthrow of Ileosa). What would follow was a Super Mario Bros-esque fight with the players having to hop from platform to platform over a lake of liquid blood veil, while Pestilence moved about beneath the surface, springing up from time to time to lash at them with tentacles and spam spells like Spiritual Weapon at them.
That was how things were “supposed” to go, with the players going room by room. But of course, nothing is ever so simple when PCs are involved, so things got a bit more . . . complicated.
So the party kicks in the door to find the four plague doctors frantically piling papers onto the desk and preparing to light them all ablaze with an alchemist’s fire. Gromka puts a quick stop to that with a Stinking Cloud, which despite wearing masks that boost their Fort saves and being alchemists that have a good Fort save already, they pretty much all failed and started doing nothing but retching. Guess that’s what happens when you have to make a Fort save in the low 20s. The one or two that are not inside of the cloud race forward to deal with the party, trying desperately to hold them back at the doorway (they fail, obviously).
But here’s where Gromka’s plan goes awry. See, I don’t play my monsters as morons, so when they get CC’d instead of waiting patiently to be killed, if they can they run the heck away to get help. Since Stinking cloud only Nauseates, they still had a move action left – and the plague doctors took advantage of it, one running to the east to warn Rolth, one running to the north to alert the barracks, and one running south to alert the laboratory. And given that Stinking Cloud can friendly fire and nobody wanted to chance a DC 20-some Fort save, the plague doctors all got away. So instead of small fights in each room, cue a whole big mess of aggro as multiple rooms join the fight. Save for Rolth’s people, as he deliberately has them all continue maintaining a defensive position, expecting the party to come to him, right into the teeth of his prepared defenses (he’s wrong on that count, of course, because these are PCs).
Most of the people in the barracks are still getting back into their armor, but as the party deals with moving into the room, collecting the information on the table, and avoiding the Stinking Cloud, a pair of skeletons emerges, dragging the unconscious Beatrice out and escorting her down to the cells South. Since they’re undead, they don’t care about the Stinking Cloud, and they drag the unconscious and now green-faced Beautrice through it, through the south door, and out of sight, out of mind for now.
Afterwards the party attempts to storm into the barracks, but it turns into quite the doorway meatgrinder as underpriests and plague doctors rush forward to block the doorway with their bodies after the last exploding skeleton butler falls. After the party is deeply engaged with the northern swarm of bad guys, the door to the south opens up again, disgorging two plague doctors, two underpriests, the two skeleton butlers, and the three (not really) blood veil zombies, catching the party in a pincer movement.
Rholand drops an Obscuring Mist at some point, I think to keep him from getting focused down or something, but only adding to the confusion of the battle. It’s a pretty chaotic fight with Oliver and Travis taking the brunt of the damage that does manage to land, but in the end all of the party’s foes lie dead. Grand total - seven plague doctors, six underpriests of Urgathoa, three exploding skeletons, and three blood veil zombies.
In the aftermath the party explores the barracks, and the attached plague doctor supply closet, which contains some 1,000 GP worth of onyx for undead making and 4 potions of Cure Moderate Wounds, along with a nice supply of alchemist’s fire and acid flasks.
Exploring south, the party finds the now deserted laboratory, and beyond it, the still-occupied cells. Beautrice is still comatose, but Devinia is able to fill the party in on what happened to Davaulus’s grey maiden bodyguards. She also explains Beautrice’s sacrifices to futilely try and keep Devinia (and previously the other grey maidens before they died) out of trouble. The party wakes her up with a CLW, and is pretty much greeted with an incessant stream of profanity as Beautrice is *not* a happy person at the moment. They free the two grey maidens from their chains, open up the other cells holding a couple still (barely) alive Varisians, and tell them all to retreat to the elevator room and hide since there was nowhere else for them to go really. Devinia and Beautrice promise to do their best to keep the civilians safe, salvaging weapons from the mass of dead plague doctors and underpriests.
Seeing the side door leading off from the laboratory, the party gets those disruptive PC ideas again, and decides to go through it next session.
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Onward into the Temple of Urgathoa!
So with the archetypical PC talent for picking the “unexpected” route to go (technically Rolth was the one not expecting this), rather than head into the teeth of the meatgrinder waiting for them in the manufactory, the party goes through the door in the laboratory, entering the smuggler’s cove. Just in time to find more plague doctors and underpriests loading a gigantic metal case that was pretty clearly a bomb onto the boat with the aid of another troll skeleton Champion of Urgathoa.
The party’s deadly reputation proceeding it, the group of Andaisin’s minions panic, with one underpriest screaming for the doctors to cut the ropes holding the boat against the makeshift dock, while he ran for the ship’s wheel. Gromka put a swift stop to that by dropping an Evard’s Black Tentacle Rape on top of the boat. With their crappy BABs and middling strength, most of the plague doctors and the underpriest were unable to break free (also due to crappy rolls – thanks Maptools!) and died, squished to death by the tentacles over a number of rounds as even if they broke free the tentacles counted as difficult terrain, and attempted to regrab their victims if they were still inside the area after a single half-speed move action followed breaking free for a round.
But here’s where once again CC that allows your opponents to run away is a bad idea. Cid used Chill Touch on the skeleton champion, and so it ran away from the party after failing its save (again, damnit!). But for ease of transporting the finished bombs to the boats, there was a set of doors leading between the smuggler’s cove and the manufactory. So instead of cowering in a back corner until the party felt like dealing with the champion, the troll skeleton crashed through the doors to the north, breaking into the manufactory just under the catwalks and alerting Rolth that the party had bypassed his little formation.
Not to worry though, Rolth simply ordered his minions to turn around and flood through the now-open doorway, while he began pelting the party with spells. Gromka nearly shut Rolth down right at the start with a Silence spell, but thankfully he made the DC (whew!) and simply sidestepped the patch of silence while continuing to cast. Built to counter mages, he had a lot of obnoxious feats and spells, such as Disruptive spell (which, as I soon learned, was actually useless as the concentration checks were pretty much something that Gromka at least could auto-pass), Vengeful Comets, and that most dreaded of feats, Dazing Spell. I didn’t go whole-hog on the Dazing spell thing, just giving him one set of magic missiles to try and Daze the whole party for 1 round, but given how quickly that feat can get out of hand especially in a player’s hands who is much less willing to *not* exploit something ripe for horrific abuse, I may ret-gone that entire feat from my game and give Rolth something else for his rematch with the party. Unfortunately I forgot to play his combat theme, so it’s going to have to be something that they enjoy during said rematch.
Anyway, what happened was another Doorway Meatgrinder of Death, as the swarm of minions crashed into an Oliver with an Enlarge Person slapped on him and Cid. I think he may have sent this Champion of Urgathoa also running off with a Chill Touch, but at least one of them died to melee with the party so he may have just Shocking Grasped this one.
While the party took quite a bit of damage between Rolth and the clerics running forward to Channel Energy indiscrimately with a battlecry of “F&$! it!”, eventually Rolth ran out of spells to pummel the party with. It seems I had packed him so full of defensive spells that he didn’t have a whole lot of high-damage spells after his initial rush of Suffocation (cast on Oliver as he was the only one visible, he easily passed the first Fort save which was a good thing given he’d have dropped to 0 if he had failed). And with most of his allies dead on the floor, Rolth decided it was time to leave, and so with a last threat, garbled by the cheesy pseudo-German accent I gave him, Rolth disappeared (Invisibility followed by Dimension Door straight up into the air over the ruins of the Hospice).
The party picked their way over the small mountain of corpses to find Devinia rushing through the doorway that the still-fleeing troll skeleton had flung open (the doors to the command center – basically it looped around the map in its flight from Cid). She called out to them for help, and the party followed her back to the elevator room to find Beautrice standing over the troll champion’s prone body, hacking at it wildly with her scythe to keep it down (Bloody = stand back up until hit with positive energy, remember) while swearing at it profusely. Apparently the grey maidens and the civilians had panicked after it came charging into the room, but after the skeleton started cowering in the back corner Beautrice wanted to kill it and so they threw things at it until it fell over. Then it got back up, and Beautrice got angry.
Partially this was for a slight comedic effect, partially to show that although beaten the grey maidens were still pretty badass, and partially this was so the party didn’t actually have to deal with the skeleton after this second meatgrinder of a doubled-up two room fight. So the party tapped it with a CLW wand, and moved on to figuring out where to go for next session. They had discovered a half-assembled bomb in the manufactory, which meant with the one onboard the boat they had already disabled half of Andaisin’s plan, as it called for four bombs spread about the city.
With the captured boat, the party could also now escape the dungeon if they so chose, but Andaisin was still here presumably somewhere, behind either the single door up on the catwalks (Ramoska) or the set of double doors (leukodaemon and then Pestilence’s ambush in Andaisin’s chambers). The group started making plans for the next session, but what lied behind those doors would have to wait.
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And now we come to the end of the Blood Veil plague . . . but not quite Book Two.
So the party is finishing their bookkeeping for healing back up using what resources they had, and discussing which door to take, when Gromka’s player gets bored. So Gromka’s player makes the same mistake that got Alice killed – Gromka wanders off by herself without the rest of the party, and goes and kicks open the northern door up on the catwalk. Gromka sees the four vampire spawn crawling around on the ceiling and being just generally creepy dicks. Sees Ramoska standing there over Tayce strapped down to the operating table. And shuts the door and runs away screaming that the party has serious trouble and they need to get out of here. All before poor Ramoska can even open his mouth to offer a deal to the party, his departure without a fight in return for the “measly” sum of 2,000 gold.
Ramoska follows Gromka out the door and onto the catwalk, but by then the party is all in full-blown flight. They hop on the boat, cut the ties mooring the boat to the docks that the plague doctors didn’t manage to get, and sail away down the tunnel. So Ramoska shrugs and goes back to his work, but since he gets the idea that things are about to go sideways down here, he packs his bags, has his minions slake their thirst on poor Tayce, and leaves Korvosa, likely never to be seen again unless I feel like throwing him in Arkona’s dungeon or somewhere else much later (like in Book 4 or 6) for some reason.
Likewise, the underpriests in the Leukodaemon room get the bright idea to pre-emptively let the daemon out, whereupon it kills the two of them, and blindly teleports up into the city of Korvos and flees into the night. Unlike Ramoska, however, the party does encounter the Leukodaemon in Book Three (details forthcoming in about twenty sessions. :-p )
Broodlord Pestilence sinks down into the blood veil muck, gets super huge (like Colossal+), and joins Andaisin in her attack on Castle Korvosa at the Book Two finale.
This, of course, all happens unknown to the party, who are at this point just glad that they escaped from the terrible, evil vampires with their lives. Never saw a party run away from a level-appropriate encounter like that before, but it amused the hell out of me. Apparently everybody knows vampires are bad news, and not something you deal with after you’ve taken a pretty heavy pounding (which the party has taken after all of the fights in the Hospice and the mega fights in the Temple).
Once they get the boat out of the smuggler’s tunnel and into the Jeggare River, however, their problems continue. A black-cloaked figure swings down on a rope onto their boat from the roof of a warehouse along the nearby docks – Blackjack has returned! Oliver and Cid exchange some snide “pleasantries” with the vigilante, but it’s pretty clear that Blackjack is here to help. And with two more Blood Veil bombs to disable, the party definitely could use some more help.
As it turned out, those two bombs had already been delivered to their locations, which according to the documents the party recovered was the Kendall Ampitheater and All the World’s Meat, now under the new management of Fishguts and his wife/business partner Naomi/Tiora/Princess WhatsHerFace. So naturally the party wanted to go to All the World’s Meat first to save their friend, so Blackjack agreed to handle the bomb at the Kendall Ampitheater. With that decided, Blackjack wished them luck and fired a rope arrow from his hand crossbow to a nearby warehouse and swung off into the night once more. (The Arrow-inspired version of Blackjack was now COMPLETE!)
The party alerted Vox and the hellknights that there was a structure underneath the hospice that they should really go clean out for the party once they were done having fun sifting through the ashes. They eventually managed to get down there to, as I mentioned above, find only dead bodies and Tayce’s exsanguinated one to greet them. Ramoska, the Leukodaemon (who I later named Lord Bile), and Broodmaster Pestilence all escaped.
So the party went to All the World’s Meat to find that it was closed up under “quarantine” with several plague doctors standing guard – one at the front door, and another watching the delivery yard doorway. Vaz’em ambushed the two plague doctors, tearing them apart before they could cry out an alarm, and the party prepared to storm the building from both entrances at once like a full-on SWAT team raid.
The other two plague doctors and two underpriests were set up in the cutting room, Fishguts Jim and Naomi tied up to the Blood Veil bomb itself. They had two blood veil zombies that the priests were using Command Undead on, taken from . . . somewhere . . . to serve as back-up. The party charged into the room, and swiftly cut the zombies and underpriests to pieces. During the short fight, the leader of the small group called out to manually detonate the bomb, which one of the plague doctors rushed over to the bomb to obey.
Fortunately the party was able to cut the man down before he got a full-round action to activate the bomb, Vaz’em disarmed its timed fuse, and the third bomb was no longer a threat! Meanwhile off-screen and across the city, Blackjack somehow disabled his bomb as well. Now, I have no idea how Blackjack managed to handle a similarly-sized party of plague doctors/underpriests/undead minions, but he did, and it was badass! Because he’s (not-)Batman! And thus the city was saved . . . or so the party thought.
They were allowed to sleep and recover spells and all that, but in the morning they were awoken to the sound of alarm bells coming from the direction of the castle and screams from the people outside. A few moments later, Gwen in dragon form landed in front of Zellara’s House where they were all conveniently sleeping the past night’s “fun” off. She told them in a rush of words that the castle itself was under attack from a swarm of undead (just about all the undead left in the city actually) and that they were needed there urgently. So they all hopped onto Gwen’s back and off they went into the sky, towards the castle.
As they flew over the castle, they observed grey maidens holding their own against a tide of Blood Veil zombies. In a nearby courtyard, Togomor (or a Projected Image of him anyway) soared over the massive bulk of Broodlord Pestilence, the mutated otyugh now Kaiju-sized, although that wasn’t helping it much as Togomor rained down Chain Lightning, Disintigrate, and various other devastating spells form above.
Gwen landed on a large balcony and told the party to get in there and hurry to the throne room. A moment later, a familiar bloated gigantic spider appeared on the nearby roof, leaping down to bury its fangs in Gwen’s neck. But a Huge green dragon is more than a match for some b@%!&#!& CR 6 spider, so Gwen hurled it off of her back into the wall, before covering it in corrosive gas. While this clash of the titans continued (with Gwen roaring at them to hurry and let her handle this), the party ran inside.
To keep things simple, I had the party land on a balcony that was almost right outside the throne room, so they went down a hallway lined in the bodies of grey maidens here and there, each one surrounded by the broken bodies of nearby a dozen zombies. They emerged into the antechamber to the throne room to find more grey maidens and blood veil zombies scattered about, and Sabrina and Lamm locked in combat with each other. Sabrina shouted at them to hurry past, that Andaisin was already in the throne room with Ileosa, and that she could continue holding Lamm off, although her wounds and Lamm’s slowly resealing armor suggested that their duel could end only one way (in truth I have no idea who would win in a straight up fight, but I will say that with Sabrina’s Cavalier challenge boosting each of her hits by 14 damage or so, she was a buzzsaw).
But since this was Lamm, and they hated his guts (and didn’t really want him jumping them from behind after Sabrina died), they stayed first to deal with him once and for all! Or they would, at least, at the next session and final one for Book Two.
Okay, so I forgot one key detail in Andaisin’s plan, when she revealed it back in Old Korvosa. Based off of an old 1E cursed item that attracted monsters to you (boosting random encounter chance), I created a “Phylactery of Undead Attraction” that worked on a similar principle in that it drove undead crazy and forced them to go towards it. In combination with the blood veil fungal tree, Andaisin had placed the phylactery in Old Korvosa as a test, drawing most of the Blood Veil zombie monsters there, which was why it spiraled so quickly out of control, with an entire city’s worth of undead concentrating there. She took that with her when she teleported (Word of Recall) out, and disabled it somehow so she didn’t get an entire city of undead crashing into the hospice >>.
Her end game plan was to poison the entire city with the Blood Veil bombs, killing pretty much everything and everyone inside the city walls in a matter of minutes. Then, she would reactive the phylactery and return to Castle Korvosa, leading an entire city of zombies straight up to its walls. Since the Blood Veil zombies all had climbs speeds, walls wouldn’t keep them out for long, Ileosa’s defenders would be overwhelmed by an unstoppable of tide of thousands upon thousands of zombies, and then Andaisin would capture Ileosa and force feed her Blood Veil until she turned into a zombie herself, a undead queen to rule over a damned city in Urgathoa’s name.
Well, Andaisin didn’t get the city-wide army-spawning catastrophe that she wanted, but there were still enough zombies around from the regular ol’ plague to keep enough of the grey maidens busy for her and Lamm to hack their way through to Ileosa herself. And for the party to arrive for a climatic confrontation with Urgathoa’s chosen champion before the Crimson Throne itself.
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THE END! (of Book Two)
So the climatic session of Book Two began with the party facing down Gaedren Lamm for the second (and final?) time, third if you count the fight in Book One and the one with his reborn Dullahan form at the start of Book Two.
(For those who remember Lamm 2.0’s theme, it’s the same one as he had last time.)
Gaedren Lamm 2.0 Combat Theme
Sadly, Lamm was a terror two levels ago, but this time he just got rolled. Rholand healed up Sabrina, who smacked him for some hefty damage, Oliver, Vaz’em, and Cid did their melee beatdown thing, and Gromka debuffed the hell out of him. This is what happens when you send in a lone bad guy to fight an entire party just after they rested and got all their spells back though. Doubly sadly, he failed to do much damage or drain many spells away either.
Lamm dropped to the floor after only a couple rounds of abuse, surprisingly quickly in the party’s eyes who no doubt remembered him as the terror that nearly TPK’d them all a couple levels ago (160 HP just doesn’t go very far these days). The black plate armor split apart, revealing the ghostly form of Gaedren Lamm. He cursed the party for damning him to Scarwall, and pleaded with them for mercy. Nobody was sympathetic, and the ghost of Gaedren Lamm disappeared with a scream as ethereal chains wrapped around and pierced his body, dragged him away to Scarwall.
From there Rholand tossed out another couple quick heals, while Sabrina ran to the doors leading into the throne room. Throwing them open, they found a dozen grey maidens lying dead just inside the door. Beyond, Ileosa sat on the Crimson Throne, held bound helpless by black chains (a modified Chains of Light spell Andaisin cast to instead be “Chains of Darkness”). Standing right in front of her, cooing taunts and still completely unafraid of the party’s entrance, was Andaisin. A giant, ogre-sized Andaisin practically rippling with divine power.
Stepping away from Ileosa, Andaisin taunted the party with the promise that she would make Ileosa watch her kill Ileosa’s precious Grey Thugs (her nickname for the party . . . which I carried on into Book Three as I found it amusing). And then the final fight of Book Two began without much further preamble after that.
Andaisin Phase 1: Daughter of Darkness – Combat Theme
Pretty sure Oliver and Vaz’em ran into melee while Cid opened up with a Fireball aimed such that it would hit only Andaisin. Not that it mattered, as the fireball exploded, only for the flames to disappear when they touched Andaisin – perfect spell resistance thanks to Spell Immunity. Gromka had similar luck to Cid, with her hex bouncing off of Andaisin’s protections (+19 Will save makes for a sad witch).
Then it was her turn, and she ripped into Oliver, Vaz’em, and Travis with a spinning cleave from her scythe – mythic point expended to active Mythic cleave, which allowed her to make a fresh attack against a new target in melee as long as she hit (one attack per available person). Anyone hit lost the benefits of Flanking for a round due to the Flanking Foil feat she possessed. As she activated her mythic power, a mist of blood veil seemed to trail after her movements like a rain of blood droplets – just a visual representation of her mythic nature unleashed.
It was pretty much here that the party started getting an inkling of just how much I had buffed Andaisin. I think giving her mythic *or* making her 12th level with time to buff up (as she was buffed up to attack Ileosa when the party interrupted) would have been alright, but combined they made her an unholy terror. There is no doubt that she would have slaughtered the whole party without much trouble in a straight-up fight.
Anyway, Cid switches up to melee the following round, Gromka *almost* manages to land a hex on Andaisin (she rolled a “2” on her will save) only for her to Mythic Surge out of it, and Oliver and Vaz’em try to beat their way through her Stoneskin spell. Vaz’em sneak attacks are flummoxed a bit by a Shield of Fortificaiton spell that gave Andaisin 50% immunity. Rholand attempts to use a Channel Energy to give out some AoE healing, only for Andaisin to scream as she unleashed a blast of negative energy, tainting the channel and causing it to actually DEAL damage instead of healing it! (Alter channel mythic feature). Getting the sense that Andaisin built herself specifically to counter everything the party could do yet?
Fortunately for the party, while they battled Andaisin Sabrina raced towards the Crimson Throne. Reaching the throne, Sabrina jammed her sword down into the links of the chain holding Ileosa’s right arm down to the throne’s arm rest, snapping that length. This got Ileosa’s hand free enough that she was able to free herself the rest of the way, working some sort of counter magic to shatter Andaisin’s chains completely, to the scion of Urgathoa’s shock.
(Mechanically, Chains of Darkness paralyzes you – Ileosa used the bard spell Primal Scream to cancel the paralysis.)
Standing up from the throne, Ileosa drew her rapier and started to sing as her shadow grew in size, growing giant and distorted but still mirroring her movements . . . for the most part (this was the Shadow of Kazavon, the depiction of Ileosa’s own expenditure of mythic power). She used her own mythic point to cast a Greater Dispel Magic, stripping Andaisin of some of her power. This shrank Andaisin back down to a normal sized person and removed her Stoneskin, as well as a few other defensive buffs (but not spell immunity or shield of fortification yet). To reflect Ileosa singing and the balance of power suddenly changing, a new musical theme was thrown up.
Andaisin Phase 2: I Won’t Fall by Your Hand!
Ileosa’s sudden presence definitely helped, but that didn’t mean Andaisin still wasn’t a big huge b!*$~. Another round of melee went by, with Ileosa stripping off another set of Andaisin’s buffs (this time spell immunity and that shield of fort spell went bye). In response Andaisin decided that it was time to kick it up a notch as she rose up into the air, hefting her scythe and then bringing it down into the floor, causing an eruption of hellfire to burst forth. When the flames cleared, four Babaus with DR/Epic stood there beneath Andaisin, summoned by an admittedly b$$~#~!* standard-action Summon Monster spell (couldn’t find a feat to make it a standard instead of a full-round, so I just had her spend a mythic point to do it).
This was supposed to be “Phase 2” of the fight officially, with Andaisin floating above thanks to Airwalk while spamming ranged spells and the party hacked away at the Babaus. In the planning stages for this fight I had envisioned Ileosa throwing Oliver her super dancing frost rapier that she has in Book six, which may have been enough to breach the babau’s epic DR (mythic summoning buff), but I’m not so sure on reflection about it since I think Ileosa’s dancing frost rapier is only +3 total (and you need +6 to breach DR/Epic). Anyway, the party’s caster dumped a bunch of CC on the newcomer Babaus – Rholand cast Grease, Gromka did something or other, and the rest of the party prepared to melee meatgrinder them all to death.
At which point I made the mistake of having Ileosa use a Greater Dispel Magic on the babaus to banish all but one of them back to the Abyss on her next turn. Which I think was pretty much when most of the party felt like they were just there for window dressing on a fight between Ileosa and Andaisin, and thus become officially “done” with this fight. Gromka, since her Hexes didn’t work and Andaisin still had stupidly high saves, just turned and walked out, going off to help some Grey maidens elsewhere in the castle deal with zombies. The rest of the party fought on without her as Andaisin landed back on the floor, casting Enlarge Person on herself to re-biggen, and continue melee combat.
She also dropped a Flamestrike on Gromka and Cid on the round before Gromka left, dealing something like 46 damage. Most of which was healed immediately thereafter as Ileosa’s song of Healing (the one that does Cure Mass Wounds after 4 rounds) finally went off, pretty much immediately removing much of that damage.
Starting to get desperate and angry now, Andaisin turned to Vaz’em as her stoneskin cracked apart (she also used Harm while up in the air to heal herself due to Death domain). Casting defensively, she thrust her hand at his heart, the black magic of that spell tearing through the catfolk ninja’s body (he failed the save on a Slay Living). The magic didn’t quite manage to stop Vaz’em’s heart, but he clung desperately to life on the floor and he would carry a scar on his chest from the magic for the rest of his life (or a vanity-inspired Regenerate).
At that point I could have had Andaisin used her mythic point to send out a Channel Negative (that had been a plan of mine from the start, to have her melee with a Viscious scythe and then use a mythic point to get an extra standard to use channel energy to heal herself (Death domain) and deal further damage.) which would have absolutely killed VAz’em given he was at like -10 or something. But given how this fight had been received . . . poorly by the group (Rholand’s player said he wanted nothing to do with mythic now after the fight) I decided not to press the matter by adding a PC death to it. Although I did add an animal companion death to my tally – brave, brave Travis . . . she never stood a chance, and one or another of Andaisin’s scythes cut into her deeply, and she bled out while the party scrambled to save themselves.
And then, finally, Oliver did what he does best, and shoved his cutlass through Andaisin’s chest (not a crit sadly). She looked down in shock, and then slid off the blade onto the floor, gasping for air. Ileosa was merciless, as she came to stand over her former mentor. Deciding that death was too good for Andaisin, Ileosa called out for Oblivion to claim Andaisin as she gathered a dark power into her rapier, and then thrust it down into Andaisin who screamed before crumbling away to dust (her soul not actually destroyed, but damned to be imprisoned in Scarwall by the power from Kazavon that Ileosa just instinctually summoned).
The dark shadow hanging over and behind Ileosa faded as she looked around in sudden confusion, the mythic power fading from her body and mind as quickly as it had appeared. Ileosa stammered out a question about what was going on, what she had just done, and then she fainted. Session, and Book Two, over.
Sad that I had upgunned the fight too much, but at least it proved that Andaisin wasn’t just talking s@&~ like so many other enemy NPCs before her. The party all agreed without Ileosa there they would have TPK for sure. It took them a little while to overcome their resentment about that since they felt overshadowed and just window dressing to the fight, which was *not* the idea at all. Ileosa was there just to be support and help them kick Andaisin’s ass (and as a means to curb Andaisin’s power level back down if necessary, as it proved to be). Too much Greater Dispel magic I guess, oh well.
I blame Oliver’s player – he was the one who suggested I make Andaisin mythic in the first place. :p But if nothing else it was an interesting investigation into mythic and the limits of how far you can upgrade the opposition before it becomes WAY too much. I would definitely give Andaisin one or the other in hindsight – either leave her 9th and give her mythic and keep the “rises from the dead as undead monstrosity” after she goes down the first time, or make her 12th (with somewhat less of a laundry list of buffs). Also, the next time I want to make a bad guy do something, like teleport away, I’m just going to have them f%@&ing do it, instead of feeling I need to justify the ability by making them high enough level to cast Word of Recall or whatever they need to do it mechanically. Assuming it’s for flare and not just to screw my players, obviously – I have no intention of random bad guys just pulling Meteor Swarm out of their back pocket whenever they start to lose.
Ah well, onward to Book Three! Where things *really* go completely bugshit insane.
So, for those familiar with how the fight goes as-written, after she dies the first time, Urgathoa Herself intervenes and revives Andaisin as a twisted undead monstrosity known as a Daughter of Urgathoa. I cut that out by having Ileosa damn Andaisin’s soul to Scarwall before Urgathoa could intervene, removing that “second phase” of the fight. Everybody was sick of the fight by this point, and so I wisely just packed it up and closed out the book. But for those interested, here’s what I had for “Andaisin 2.0”.
Phase 3: Arise . . . Daughter!
As she falls to her knees, Andaisin spits out a curse and pulls out a small metal ball from underneath her battered breastplate – the last Blood Veil bomb. She vows that they would all be joining her in the afterlife, and activates the bomb. Ileosa shouts out from everyone to get close to her (assuming the party has no brilliant ideas in the split second they have before the bomb goes off) and uses a scroll of Wind wall to erect a barrier of air to keep the blood veil mist back as the bomb explodes. The mist hangs in the air outside that one corner of the throne room a moment, as all of the stained glass windows in the throne room depicting past rulers shatter from the blast.
But then instead of expanding outward, the Blood Veil gas suddenly begins to contract, flowing backwards to pour into Andaisin’s mouth. Her body convulses as a shadow falls across the sky, and a retching, gurgling female voice congratulations Andaisin on her efforts. And then instructs her to arise and take her revenge . . . “daughter” as Andaisin’s body mutates and lifts off into the ground to hang in mid-air in her newborn Daughter of Urgathoa form (which was also Mythic of course >> ). I never actually built this form, so it was just as well that everybody said to skip this part of the fight. Likely, instead of giving her mythic power like an NPC, I probably would have made this form have the Mythic Agile simple template, giving Andaisin TWO whole intiative turns this time without having to spend mythic power.
I’m not sure what would have marked the transition to the fourth and final phase, nor if I would have actually done this, but at least in the planning stages I had thought to have Pharasma show up and intervene on the PC’s behalf, restoring the balance while sticking it to her rival Urgathoa, healing everyone (and raising anyone who was dead at the time), and maybe even granting them “mythic rank 0”, giving them a couple mythic points to play around with just for fun to help beat Andaisin down faster.
For those curious, here’s the laundry list of buffs that Andaisin started out the fight with. I cheated a little by having Davaulus supply Andaisin with a potion of Barkskin (which she had already as-written, technically) and a Chirugeon Infused formula Shield spell from Davaulus. The rest she supplied herself, Stoneskin from her 6th level Strength Domain spell.)
Barkskin (Davaulus) - +4 Enc Natural Armor
Shield (Davaulus) - +4 Shield Bonus, Immunity to Magic Missile
Shield of Faith - +4 Def AC
Divine Favor - +3 Luck To-Hit/+3 Damage
Entropic Shield - 20% Miss chance with Ranged
Bull's STR - +4 Enc STR
Owl's Wis - +4 Enc Wis
Bear's Endurance - +4 CON
Communal Resist Elec - Resist 30 Elec
Prot from Law - Blocks Mind-Affecting, +2 Def AC vs. Lawful (Ignored while Shield of Faith is Up)
Wrathful Mantle - +3 Resist To Fort, Ref, Will
Airwalk - Walk on Air, float down when dispelled
Freedom of Movement - Immune to Grapple, any movement-impairment
Greater Shield of Fortification - 50% crit/sneak attack immunity
Spell Immunity - Shocking Grasp, Scorching Ray, Fireball
Righteous Might - Increase to Large, +4 Size Str/Con, -2 Size Dex, +2 Enc Natural, DR 5/Good
Magic Vestment - +3 Enc bonus to Armor AC
True Seeing - Sees through everything but fog and mundane stuff
Stoneskin - DR 10/Adamantite, Absorbs 120 Damage until dispelled
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So for those of you who have, for whatever reason, stayed with me thus far and actually read all these session reports of my dreck, you have my thanks and respect. But I thought I should warn you that going forward, as the saying goes, you had better "Hold onto your butts". Because up until Book Three, while I had changed things around I was still mostly following what was given in the AP.
For Book Three and likely going forward, however, I have pretty much said "yeah f&@! this", torn up the AP, and thrown it over my shoulder. So what you're going to get from now on is pretty much undiluted CRAZY, for better or worse (or possibly even BORING in some points). As such I dunno what this will give y'all other than entertainment value since we go pretty far out into the weeds of my own personalized version of Curse of the Crimson Throne, but if you can still find some ideas to mine for your own games have at it! (Special mention to Askren for giving me a shout-out in his own campaign write-up. It really tickled me to see someone getting at least some inspiration from this thread as it makes me feel like I'm giving back now, so thanks for that!)
So . . . as I said, hold onto your butts. Because now it just gets WEIRD (sort of - mostly just an extension of my ongoing separate vision, nothing deliberately bizarre like a Cow Level from Diablo weird).
Theme Song
Though in some distant corner of her mind she knew what was about to happen, Ileosa nonetheless was compelled to step towards the grave. As she had done over and over in her dreams, she stepped forward and dropped the single crimson rose she was carrying before the tombstone etched with the accursed words “Here lies King Eodred Arabasti II”. And as proof of the madness within this particular dream, the same result as ever occurred – an instant later the ground roiled up as a hand burst up to clench the rose, and crush it into dust. But this was not her Eodred returned from the dead, but Andaisin, her leering face marred into an almost unrecognizable mask by scars. Her voice was still the same, though, as she rose from the grave with a chilling cackle.
“From Death, from Hell, from Oblivion Itself, I return to repay you for your treachery, my “queen”!”
“It was your own treachery that led you to this fate, Andaisin! And your arrogance that will lead you to a swift return back from whence you came!”
Ileosa recited, knowing her lines by heart now, even though the terror clenching her heart as she recoiled back from the unearthed grave and its occupant was as fresh as ever. She knew what was coming next, as more shades erupted from the surrounding darkness to haunt her. Taking the form of her protectors – Oliver, Cid, Vaz’em . . . Rholand – these imitations were not coming forth now to save her but to bind her.
They crowded around her, grabbing at her to lock barbed chains onto her limbs while Andaisin watched. Meanwhile, the grave continued to vomit forth more earth, as more horrors arose from its depths. These would be the torture machines that her once-protectors would drag her over to, strap her into, and then use to inflict an unbearable agony until dawn finally broke the nightmare’s hold. Tonight would be no different – the shades were faster than her, stronger than her, and her cries for mercy were only met with ever more savage cruelty.
So tonight Ileosa focused her efforts on understanding rather than resistance, casting her sight beyond the shades to the last participant in this nightmare, who like Andaisin watched from a distance, but unlike Andaisin was always silent. In his usual spot at the border between empty darkness and the dream given form stood Eodred, his face scarred like Andaisin’s into a mockery of what it once was. But unlike Andaisin whose eyes only contained the reflected madness of the dream, Eodred’s eyes shone with something else. Something worse - dark, unreadable, and terrible – Ileosa was only able to meet his gaze for a moment before she was forced to look away.
She had tried to address this shade before, but each time she had called out to this twisted version of her beloved for aid, Eodred had only come forward to inflict further pain. This time as the shades began to drag her towards the machines, Ileosa called out a question instead, trying and failing to keep the tremor out of her voice.
“What is this about, my love? What are you trying to teach me?”
As if she had spoken some sort of incantation, the shades suddenly freeze in place. All except for Eodred, who advanced until he was standing directly in front of her. Reaching a maimed hand out, Eodred grasps her chin painfully tight, his fingers like talons as he forces her head to tilt until her gaze met his once more. As she looked into the bottomless darkness within those eyes, Eodred spoke, his voice a grating, screeching whisper, and his breath filled the air with the stench of carrion and rotten blood.
To teach you strength. You are weak, afraid of the power within you! Until you can grasp that power, you must be tempered. Agony is the temper of the soul.
As if that was that, Eodred released his crushing grip and stepped back, allowing the macabre procession to continue dragging her to the forge. A surge of irrational irritation swept through Ileosa at this simplistic explanation, and she dug in her heels, ignoring the pain brought on by the chains’ barbs.
“That’s it!? That’s all this is, some perverse attempt to make me stronger!? Well I don’t need your damn help, and I don’t need your damn power!”
Eodred had turned away, but as he whirled back the procession again halted. Ileosa could feel a spark begin to burn in her chest as she held on to her indignation, and it was easier to meet the monster’s gaze this time. To her surprise though, Eodred seemed to meet her anger with pleasure.
Yessss . . . focus on the rage! Channel your hatred and allow its power to surge through you! A true ruler takes what she wants, she does not ask or beg!
The lesson in managing her feelings would have been ridiculous in more normal circumstances, but within this nightmarish dream world it all made sense to Ileosa in a flash of insight. The only way to escape from this torment was to *make* it end, and the only way to make it end was to be stronger than the horrors tormenting her. And there was only one way to be stronger than a monster – it was to be something worse. Ileosa focused on that spark of rage inside of her and fed it with the outrage of every other wrong done to her in the real world – the betrayals, Eodred’s death, her life in Cheliax before Andaisin found her on that street corner. And then she reached out to that door in her mind she had hidden behind since all of this started happening, the door that she had built to lock away all of the strangle knowledge that had been whispering in her mind since the night of Eodred’s death – and she flung it wide open.
The feeling of release was incredible. For the first time in a long time, Ileosa felt good, and she could hear herself laugh as she flexed her arms and shattered the chains holding them down. Now free, she did not hesitate to deliver swift retribution to the shades who had nightly tormented her.
Cid was first – arrogant prick of a hellknight, thinking that she couldn’t see the disgust behind his eyes every time he looked at her. Fingers splayed like a claw, she tore out those eyes, and then raked her other hand across his throat, decapitating Cid’s shade in an eruption of blood.
Oliver was next, as his shade drew a blade and stabbed it deep into her chest. Just as in real life, the wound surged closed after Ileosa pulled the blade free, and that was only after she had driven Oliver to his knees and broke his neck.
Vaz’em chose that moment to leap onto her back, spitting and clawing to the same little effect as Oliver’s blade. She used the blade she had just ripped out of herself to disarm the cat – literally – and then left him to die mewling, sad and pathetic.
On the way to Rholand some other shade stepped in her way – a female half-orc by the looks of her. Ileosa did not recognize this one, which seemed rather strange given the connection that each of the other shades had to her life. There was something familiar about her, but Ileosa spared no time to reflect on it now, summoning a burst of fire to spew from her mouth and char the shade to an unrecognizable pile of dust.
For a moment, something approaching pity welled up inside of Ileosa as she faced Rholand, who was already starting to back away from her after the slaughter of the other shades. The spike of pain that shot through her at the idea of mercy quickly brought the rage surging back, and she plunged a hand through his chest, seeking his heart, and upon finding it, crushed it in her grasp.
All that was left then was Andaisin, who began to back away from the blood-soaked Ileosa with a rapidly growing panic. Ileosa howled like some sort of prehistoric beast as she tackled her nemesis, and straddling her, began pounding her scarred face into an even more unrecognizable mess. When Andaisin’s face suddenly morphed to that of Trinia Sabor, the painter of Eodred that she had convicted of murdering him only to arrange for her escape afterwards, Ileosa hesitated.
Although she had been initially outraged at the thought of the pretty young painter having an affair with Eodred, who had been known for a lecherous eye prior to their marriage, that fury had cooled after the reason for all the secrecy had become clear – a painting Eodred had commissioned of their fateful meeting in the gardens of Castle Korvosa. Now Ileosa bared the young woman no ill-will, and so began to lower her arms. Eodred was immediately at her side.
Mercy is a delusion for the weak. Fear is the only tool a strong ruler requires. Will you become a victor – or remain a victim?
Despite her earlier victories, Ileosa could feel the shades reforming behind her, ready to pounce if she once again showed weakness. But that wasn’t going to happen now, because Ileosa understood this lesson without needing several months of torture to drive it into her head. There were only two kinds of people in this world – victors and those they victimized. With a cold smile, Ileosa clenched her hand into a fist, and drove it into Trinia Sabor’s face.
--------
And abruptly awoke from her dream to find herself straddling Sabrina, her mask gone and blood dripping from her nose. As always, the stoic bodyguard simply stared up at her queen without comment, her expression unreadable as ever. It took the queen a few moments to comprehend what had happened – while she had fought the shades in her nightmare, she had pummeled Sabrina in the real world. Fortunately her bodyguard had not suffered the fatal wounds that the shades had – no doubt a favorable result brought about by the fact that neither Ileosa or Sabrina were armed after prior nightmares had led to Ileosa injuring herself in her sleep instead of others.
Finally after a long pause of just looking at each other, Sabrina rasped, “If you are finished, Your Highness, I would appreciate it if you got off of me – it is becoming a little difficult to breathe.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
Ileosa said, snapping out of her reminiscence of the dream to clamber off of Sabrina. She did not apologize for what had just happened, for that would have been to call it a mistake. But it was not a mistake, for as the last of the dream faded away Ileosa realized that something remained behind – the cold burning fury that had seared away all of her doubt and fear in the dream. Ileosa had been so afraid of what had been happening to her over these past few months, and now she finally saw that fear had been foolish. There was nothing to be afraid of, after all – not when she had such great power.
“I assume you had another nightmare just now. Are you feeling alright now?”
Sabria asked as she crawled across the floor and retrieved her face mask, setting it back on her face with a grunt as it pushed against her broken nose. That finally got Ileosa’s attention, and she decided that having a bodyguard wandering around with a broken nose wouldn’t be efficient. Tapping into her new wellspring of power, Ileosa channeled some healing magic into Sabrina after grabbing her by the shoulder and helping her back up to her feet – Ileosa had already regained her footing without noticing. And in examining herself to answer Sabrina’s question, Ileosa found that she was still exhilarated from the sleepwalking fight.
“It was not a nightmare.”
Ileosa corrected with a hint of irritation as she left Sabrina’s side to go over to the window, looking out over Korvosa. *Her* city.
“It was an education. A means for me to realize that I have nothing to fear anymore.”
(And that everything should fear me.) Ileosa silently added in her head, the mental wheels already spinning to put together a list of changes that needed to be made. She had allowed fear to cripple her for too long while her enemies moved about emboldened – that would come to a swift and decisive end now.
Whatever Sabrina thought of her queen’s sudden new outlook on life, she kept it to herself and her tone neutral as she asked, “Alright . . . then what now?”
“Now . . . we teach my enemies a different but similar lesson. We teach them that they should fear my wrath.”
Ileosa replied as she turned back to regard Sabrina. And as she did so, she looked over Sabrina’s shoulder to see the mutilated Eodred from her dreams standing behind Sabrina, in the corner where the moonlight met the darkness, and shared his smile.
Because Session Forty-Two closed out the end of 2014? I'm still thirty sessions exactly behind, thirty-one after tomorrow night's session. :)
Normally I take my time in writing these up, but I've been wanting to get at least somewhat caught up for quite some time, especially now that the game is approaching the end of Book Three (Book One & Book Two each took exactly twenty-one sessions to complete, which was nice, but unfortunately due to my . . . revisions . . . Book Three has taken considerably longer. I wouldn't be surprised if we're pushing Session Eighty before the last bit of it is finally complete.
Gaedran Lamm needed an upgrade to 3.0.
Like I came to the conclusion after reading Mythic rules and like I have read elsewhere on these boards, Mythic is irredeemably broken (although some people on these boards think that Mythic Tiers 1 and 2 might be fixable) (this is also something to keep in mind for Wrath of the Righteous, made worse by the AP as written reportedly under-powering the enemies in later books even from the point of view of a non-Mythic party). I would have liked to see no Mythic and Andaisin instead make it to Phase 3. Both before and dduring this, have her turn most of her wrath on Ileosa when Ileosa gets free -- with her Kazavon-powered regeneration, Ileosa can take it, and even if she goes down, it is only temporary . . . and actually have her take Ileosa down at least once before transforming to a Daughter of Urgathoa and at least once after, so that it's really up to the party to both survive hurt and dish it back out until Ileosa manages to get back up (which they might not even think of as a possibility before it happens the first time, depending upon how they interpret Rholand's past discovery of her regeneration). Don't do Phase 4 -- having Pharasma show up has the same problem as Mythic, only even more obvious. On the Spell Immunity, lose the Scorching Ray or Fireball (probably better to lose the Fireball since it isn't that good against a single very powerful target unless you put Dazing Spell or something like that on it) and instead add Greater Dispel Magic, resulting in an appropriately shocked reaction from Ileosa when that doesn't work (although the failure might not be obvious right away, thus causing Ileosa to waste another spellcasting or two before figuring it out). With these changes, even though they are in on a fight between opponents way over their level, the party doesn't feel like window dressing, because their presence and actions are necessary to tip the balance in Ileosa's favor.
Keep these things in mind if you get to do Curse of the Crimson Throne Anniversary Edition.
Despite the stumble in Session Fourty-Two, this is an AWESOME intro to Book Three! How did the PCs get to see this -- did the use of their shades in Ileosa's nightmare inadvertently cause them to become observers in it?
So, have you looked into a job at Paizo yet?
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Well they were supposed to eventually get to beat down Lamm 2.0, so there he pretty much succeeded admirably. And if you caught the mention of Lamm being afraid of ending up in Scarwall upon his death, then you should know that there's a pretty good chance of him showing up as Lamm 3.0 in Book 5. ;)
The Mythic was there primarily to mix things up and try to cut down on the action advantage held by the party - with mythic Andaisin could spend points to get an extra standard action. Or, as perhaps I should have done, I could have just given her the Simple Mythic Agile template, giving her two full rounds of actions without all the weird stuff like Alter Channel and such (although I wanted her to have that just to mess with Rholand). She was only Mythic Rank 2, and I made sure to avoid giving her any of the really silly Mythic stuff like the feat that forces a non-mythic foe to make a fort save or die if hit (that one also required a ton of prereqs, but still - that would have been silly).
Having Ileosa present for the fight was also meant to give Andaisin another target if things started going really bad. The trick there though is if Andaisin had completely ignored the party it would have likely felt even more than a fight between NPCs with the PCs just as window dressing. It's also really hard for a single monster to threaten more than one person any given round, and PF fights rarely last more than a couple rounds, so you need to make those attacks count if you want to threaten the party (and you usually *do* want to threaten the party with a Book End boss). I could have had Andaisin venting her frustration on Ileosa at different points though.
Also, I picked Shocking Grasp, Scorching Ray, and Fireball because those were the spells that the party tended to cast. Also, it's important to note that spell immunity works by giving you 100% effective spell resistance versus the spell - if it doesn't allow spell resistance, you can't use it. Dispel Magic doesn't allow for spell resistance, so Spell Immunity: (Greater) Dispel Magic doesn't work, nor does Glitterdust (another common attack spell, where Andaisin would just have to rely on her truly ridiculous Will save to protect her).
Basically, these intros are meant to be like one of those "Meanwhile . . ." movie cutaways, where the audience sees the bad guys coming up with an eeeevil plan for our heroes. It was mostly just to let the players know what was going on with Ileosa from book to book, even though their characters had no real way of knowing (Vaz'em sneaking off to watch the Book Two intro was just sort of lucky there). On the other hand, there's no reason that Kazavon couldn't be reaching out to their special PC minds like the other muses he affected before Ileosa, and giving the PCs insight on what's going on with Ileosa at the start of each book.
Not yet - I figured it was only a matter of time before I got a phone call from James Jacobs. Or a cease-and-desist order. ^^
So, before we dive into the craziness of Book Three, let's talk about my intentions for this book.
So the intended theme of this book was basically "Who will you stand with?" Rather than giving them an enemy to directly fight like Book One's "Struggle against Chaos" and Book Two's "Face Down Death", I wanted the party to choose more who their friends and who their enemies are. There's a lot of factions in Korvosa, and mostly where I could I wanted to play those disparate factions up and have the PCs sort through who they wanted to crawl into bed with.
Now my hope was that the PCs would choose of their own volition to stand *against* Ileosa as she continued her slide into madness - and to my great pleasure they did! If they had chosen to continue supporting her, I would have either made her continue to grow more and more insane and intolerable until they *had* finally had enough, or I would have simply shrugged and gone with my back-up plan for Book Four I suppose (and Book Five and Six if their support continued, and we’d have a pure evil party backing the conquest of the world by an evil dragon-god I suppose as the ending. :-p ) My back-up plan for Book Four was to have Domina come back, and have her and Ileosa struggle for control of the throne. Something that I wanted to be an absolute, however, was that despite my players’ arguably justified fears that Ileosa would wake up one day and decide to kill them all, that under no circumstances would she do that *until* they made the first move against her (and she learned of it). After all, they were her friends, and to Kazavon the most useful person was a loyal fool.
That being said, my initial draft of Book Three had the party fighting Ileosa after she killed Marcus Endrin in front of them, and got pissed off when they didn’t immediately show fealty to her (I know players – the best way to get them *not* to kneel under any circumstances is for some NPC to demand it from them).
Ileosa Combat Theme (Primarily so that I could use this remix for their inevitable rematch – yes, that is Kazavon singing along! )
I think it’s safe to say that she would kick the s~*$ out of their level seven asses pretty handily, but she would take them alive. After which she would place a Geas on all of them to go and kill Glorio Arkona for his part in all this (Ileosa would figure out who funded Andaisin via money ledgers that she kept). If they somehow actually swallowed their pride and knelt, then I guess Kroft would have approached them, fed them the line about Vencarlo, and we would have gone on from there.
But then I thought . . . y’know . . . this is stupid. F$+~ it, instead of fitting the square peg of Book Three into this round hole, I’ll just create a whole new peg and hole system! Insanity followed. Speaking of which, let’s get started . . .
Between Book Two and Book Three, I inserted some downtime of roughly a full month. They only got about a week or two in between Book One and Two, and given the typical “You don’t have time to do crafting! The world is going to end TOMORROW!” speed at which things unfold in APs, and that I wasn’t sure myself how much of a break during Book Three nor the Book Three to Book Four transition (spoiler alert: there wasn’t really any transition time), I thought I would give them some time now. Plus it seemed natural that things would be quiet in Korvosa for a while as the wounds from Andaisin’s two attempts to destroy the city (first through Lamm’s Liberators and then through the plague) slowly healed.
So the party got a whole month off, which Gromka, having taken the wonderous item crafting feat (no idea if other crafting feats would be forthcoming), put to very good use. Not sure what she made beyond some sort of item for Vaz’em that gave him a bonus to-hit when he could sneak attack and let him ignore normal (20% miss) concealment! Very nice item, and since it was crafted, Vaz’em got it for essentially half cost. Now I can see why all APs have a “THE WORLD IS ENDING TOMORROW!” pace. :p
In addition to this, we had basically been playing for an entire year, every single week, at this point. While I like the organic growth of characters that happens if you raise them up from level one instead of building a level ten plus murder machine from scratch, sometimes things don’t work out. Or people just get tired of playing the exact same characters for so long. So during this month of downtime I gave all of my players the option to completely rebuild their character from the ground up if they so wished. This included changing classes around if desired, although I would prefer it if characters followed a similar theme rather than something like Vaz’em suddenly became a two-handed weapon barbarian. >>
As far as I know, I believe only Oliver & Rholand really took advantage of the offer. Cid continued on his path as a pure Magus Hellknight, Vaz’em continued being a catfolk Ninja blender, and Gromka remained an OP scarred witch doctor witch.
Oliver decided he’d had enough of dealing with these “useless” dogs (Travis at least did really good work in Book Two as a secondary tank), so he dropped cavalier and went pure fighter. He did pick up Leadership though, and got himself a cohort archer (pretty sure he was a pure fighter as well) . . . named Trevor. And the cycle continues!
Rholand meanwhile, dropped his peaceful hippy beliefs after witnessing the horrors of the plague, seeking to become more in tune with nature than people (swapped Oracle of Life for Oracle of Nature). He also got some fencing training from Vencarlo, who happily offered to train him, so now Rholand was an oracle with a level in fighter instead of a level in sorcerer. He found an abused lion from a circus passing through the city, and thus Flank the lion (whose job was pretty much to do as his name would suggest and pretty much destroy everything in melee because he’s a f*!+ing giant cat, and cats are obscene dps machines for whatever reason) was born.
Something I wanted to do again was have individual intros for each person as they had in Book Two. However, in support of the “who do you stand with” theme of Book Three I decided to hold each intro in its own private session during the weeks in between Session Forty or so and Session Forty-Three (start of Book Three). Obviously, this went with the assumption that the PCs survived the final battle with Andaisin, or were resurrected by the queen afterwards.
Doing it that way the intros didn’t take up the whole session like they did for Book Two, *and* PCs could have their own secret meetings with NPCs if they so wished and didn’t have to disclose that information to other PCs (and the other players wouldn’t have to meta game not knowing). That last part didn’t turn out to be too big of a deal, since this group is pretty tight-knit despite their different backgrounds, and I did NOT actually want party in-fighting anyway, so it was a relief that ultimately all of the player’s goals and choices aligned (survival, heeheeheehee).
Anyway, let’s get the insanity started now. First, the joint intro that opened each character’s introduction.
Joint Intro Music
It is one month after the official end of the plague. The last cases of Blood Veil have been cured, with no new cases having appeared for over two weeks. Here and there, in the sewers and abandoned sections of the city, it is rumored that undead monstrosities still lurk, but they are being systematically hunted down by the Grey Maidens and Hellknights
Contact has been established, of a sort, with survivors' camps in Old Korvosa. Actual communication is still impossible, but the Sable MArines regularly make supply drops to several of the largest camps. Unfortunately what little news has gotten out of Old Korvosa is that society has broken down there - the survivors who endured the plague have degraded into little more than armed camps and gangs, uninterested in co-existing with each other or rejoining society. Thus far, any pleas to Caste Korvosa to rebuild the bridges and return rule of law to the cut-off district have gone unanswered
Likewise, Castle Korvosa has been largely silent over the past month. Queen Ileosa seems to have adopted the tactic of allowing the city to heal from its wounds on the city's own terms, although a memorial to those lost to the plague has been announced. No senaschal has been appointed, and Neolandus has not yet been found. Thus, the day-to-day running of the city has fallen on individual arbiters and district officials, resulting in some bureaucratic chaos. Some portions of the city are being rebuilt, although as with everything else, there does not seem to be any particular overall grand vision due to the lack of word from Castle Korvosa.
The Grey Maidens, hoping to rebuild their numbers after the losses suffered during the plague and Andaisin's attack, have stepped up recruitment. Motivated by patriotic fervor in the aftermath of the plague, and due to promises that the Grey Maidens would ensure something like the plague will never happen again, recruitment into the Grey Maidens is at an all-time high.
The one missive that was announced form Castle Korvosa during this time was that in an effort to "help" Kaer Maga offer aid in the rebuilding efforts, since they didn't help with the plague itself. Tariffs on goods and merchants coming from Kaer Maga to Korvosa, or through Korvosa to other cities through Korvosa's ports, would be now be charged a 25% tariff. Kaer Maga was quick to respond by instituting a 25% tariff of their own, as well as enforcing a one-week quarantine and mandatory search (paid for by the merchants themselves) of all goods and merchants coming from Korvosa to Kaer Maga in order to ensure that "no contamination of the Blood Veil plague" was present. Relations between the two cities have only continued to sour from that point.
The nobility, while somewhat less devastated from the plague due to the isolation of their district nonetheless suffered losses due to the plague. House Carrowyn has been completely wiped out. House Jalento, already overseen by the teenaged Amin Jalento, has slipped further into internal chaos in the wake of his death during an attempted evacuation form Old Korvosa. House Arkona, while believed to be stable and having weathered the plague successfully, is located in Old Korvosa and thus cut off from participation in meetings between the nobility. As could be expected due to one of their eldest members being a Chief Arbiter, House Zenderholm is doing its best to manage rebuilding efforts and coordinate the remaining nobility. But there are growing rumors that what's left of the nobility is deeply unsatisfied with Korvosa's current rulership, and if action is not taken soon . . . further violence may occur.
Other than the occasional undead hunting sortie, the Hellknights have largely withdrawn to their base of operations, Citadel Vraath, which is located some distance away from Korvosa proper.
All that was followed up with a pretty basic question – what has your character been doing over the past month?
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Over the past month, Rholand has been working with Ishani Dharti from the Church of Abadar to hunt down every last trace of Blood Veil in the city. Ishani managed to convince the Church to continue treating cases of Blood Veil “pro bono” in order to eradicate its threat to civilization, and its efforts were largely successful as district after district was methodically swept, zombies were removed, sick people were quarantined and cured, and fungal areas were sterilized. This took up much of his time, although Rholand still found time to get training for Vencarlo, adopt Flank, keep in touch with Wilhelm and the wererats to ensure the peace treaty was still in effect, and visit Ileosa. Unfortunately, every time Rholand did manage to get to the castle, he was turned away at the gates by saying that Ileosa was ill and still recovering from Andaisin’s attack, and that she was not seeing any visitors.
But then one night Rholand went home to discover a squad of Grey Maidens and a carriage waiting for him. The Grey Maidens were short and to the point – Queen Ileosa requested an audience with Rholand, and had sent them with this carriage to collect him. I think it goes without saying that “request an audience” was more a polite way of saying “get in the carriage or things get ugly”. The royal carriage was empty inside, but the seats were fairly comfortable as Rholand climbed in, a grey maiden shut the door behind him, and the carriage set off for the castle. Arriving, Rholand was escorted inside immediately – much of the damage to the castle from Andaisin’s attack had already been repaired, but it was clear from the outside that work was still on-going to the throne room (essentially I had head-cannoned Andaisin’s last bomb still going off in the throne room, demolishing it and giving me a convenient excuse to rebuild the throne room how I saw fit for the later fights in Book Six).
Inside, Rholand couldn’t help but notice that there were a great many more Grey Maidens standing guard or patrolling within the castle – true to rumor, Ileosa had greatly increased the ranks of the Grey Maidens. Rholand was escorted up to the second floor, where he was shown into a room that contained a hot bath, a new silk suit, and grooming stand. The Grey Maidens said that it was for him to clean up before dinner, which would be in about half an hour – until then, if he required anything else, he merely need call out – his two escorts would be right outside. Having had a long day treating the last few patients of Blood Veil, Rholand didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the hot bath, and he didn’t hesitate to get dressed in the fine clothing offered to him that was probably worth more than all of the clothes he owned combined. Satisfied that he was now presentable, Rholand exited the room and asked the grey maidens to take him to dinner – he was famished.
So the grey maidens led him down to a large but empty dining hall, decorated with fine silk tablecloths with Korvosa’s heraldry (crimson and gold highlights). Only one place was set for dining, which Rholand sat down at while the two grey maidens escorting him took up flanking positions at the door and simply watched him silently. A minute later, a servant came in bearing a large silver tray, who admitted that since the chef didn’t know what dishes Rholand preferred, he had made Rholand a little bit of everything. The servant removed the lid of the tray to reveal the five (made up on the spot) dishes, giving the grey maidens a nervous look after he fumbled with the lid covering the tray, causing it to rattle. For Rholand’s sake, the stares of the two grey maidens didn’t bother him, nor did their silence, so after the servant left he tucked into his meal without hesitation. He did start to wonder, though, if Ileosa would be making an appearance or if he was merely getting some royal-quality pampering.
That question was answered a minute later as the doors to the dining hall boomed open and the two grey maidens drew themselves up to their full height, shouting “Her majesty, Queen Ileosa!”
For her part, Ileosa greeted Rholand with a simple question – “Hello Rholand. How is the peasant?”
Planning to answer her, Rholand turned around, getting his first glimpse of Ileosa in the past month, and his jaw nearly dropped at the transformation that he taken place. Determined to really emphasize the difference over the Ileosa now with the Ileosa of past books, I played up her appearance in great detail here.
So, I quote - “Turning, you catch your first glimpse of the queen since the confrontation with Andaisin, and the transformation is STUNNING. The queen was widely regarded as a gorgeous woman, but your dealings with her had never been in the best of circumstances and as a predictable result she had never looked her best, always haggard or ill. That was over now, as she nearly had an inner glow. Her long copper red hair, usually in a mess weaved out of the way around her peculiar jagged metal crown, has been neatly oiled and braided into buns on either side of her head, with small rose buds interwoven with the hair, and while the hair around the jagged crown was still a tangled mess (did she ever take that crown off?) it was largely a background element now rather than the forefront. Her skin now had an appearance akin to polished alabaster, and here and there scars from various inflicted injuries (some of them self-inflicted apparently) had faded or been concealed with makeup. Tonight, she was dressed in an ornate and flowing crimson and black dress, complete with a drape hanging from the crook of her arms (basically a variation on her appearance as drawn in Book Six). And perhaps the most pleasant change of all - she was actually, honestly smiling.”
Following Ileosa into the room, of course, was Sabrina, wearing her expressionless iron mask as usual, although at least she had also recovered from her injuries from Andaisin’s attack. Rholand, moving to stand up at the announcement of her entrance, rose halfway out of his seat as he stopped to stare at the entering queen as he has left his customary blindfold back with his other clothes and was thus able to get a good look at her (at least once she moved within thirty feet – murky vision curse ftw!), who now finally looked like an actual ruler and looked happy rather than worried or angry which was pretty much the only things he had seen on her face before now.
Ileosa’s next question, an inquiry about his joint crusade with Ishani to purge Blood Veil from Korvosa, stirred him out of his shocked silence. As Rholand answered, he pulled out the chair next to his, seating Ileosa while Sabrina went to go be gloomy in a nearby corner. And then apparently reading the situation correctly, Rholand flirted with Ileosa, and even was so bold as to lean in and kiss her on the cheek. Sabrina and the two grey maidens IMMEDIATELY move forward to repay Rholand for his boldness with a good curbstomping, but Ileosa apparently doesn’t mind as she holds up a hand and forces them all back into their original positions with a stern glare.
Ileosa admits that it sounds like Rholand has been very busy, and that she has been busy herself over the past month. She’s reached some decisions, which she wanted Rholand’s input on, but afterwards she hoped that they could spend the evening as just themselves. With Davaulus dead, Rholand was the most knowledgeable healer she knew that was familiar with her new invulnerability, and so hopefully he would be able to help her with a personal problem – although discretion would be of the utmost importance here, as there were enough rumors circulating about Korvosa’s new “Whore Queen”. The implication was that some sort of physical complication had come about from her regeneration or Andaisin’s attack, and Ileosa needed Rholand to examine her again, as he had already done once way back in Book One. Rholand agreed without too much thought, and couldn’t help but notice Ileosa’s relief as he offered her a choice of dishes from his dinner.
Ileosa considered the food for a moment, and then pushed it all away, saying that she wasn’t hungry. And indeed, she hadn’t had much of an appetite at all lately, speculating that it was perhaps related to her “gift” (as indeed it was – Ileosa’s body needed less and less sleep or nourishment as Kazavon continued to make himself comfortable on her head – and her more addicted and reliant on his patronage). Still, she urged Rholand to enjoy his dinner, and while he continued to eat he mixed in some more flirting with questions about what Ileosa thought about where her “gift” came from. Ileosa flirted back, and admitted that she didn’t know where her regeneration and other powers were coming from. But it was certainly a gift from one of the gods – Ileosa speculated Pharsma to balance out Urgathoa’s patronage of Andaisin, but then immediately recanted that as she turned to regard the corner of the room over Rholand’s shoulder.
It was like she was talking to someone else in the room, as she agreed that Pharsma as a subtle peddler of fate wouldn’t make such a grandiose and important gift. And of course, as shown in the Book Three intro, Ileosa was now seeing Kazavon in the guise of Eodred during her waking hours, usually standing somewhere just out of sight or in a back corner as he was doing now. Of course no one else could see or hear him, so this new habit of Ileosa to suddenly turn and address empty air was meant to be rather unsettling. Rholand figured out fairly quickly that there *was* someone there though, he/she just couldn’t be seen by anyone except Ileosa.
Ileosa went on to speculate Asmodeus, but then admitted that it didn’t really matter who specifically this “gift” came from. And that while at first she was scared of it, she had to admit that this trick of invulnerability (demonstrating by slicing her finger open on a knife to Sabrina’s concern, only to be immediately waved off by Ileosa as her finger healed basically instantly, with only a drop of blood on the tip of her finger to show for the injury) had proven quite useful in thwarting the numerous attempts on her life. But this gift was more than simple invulnerability, it was purpose and a sign from the gods that Ileosa was meant to do great things. And now that the veil of grief and confusion from Eodred’s death had lifted, Ileosa had great plans for Korvosa – she could see what she had to do to save her city. But that was for the future – for tonight, the focus was the two of them.
That comment finally gave Sabrina an inkling of Ileosa’s intentions, prompting a coughing fit which distracted Rholand from Ileosa’s obsession with that back corner, and elicited a “you could always take the night off Sabrina” from Ileosa. Rholand’s player debated attempting to cast some sort of spell to detect whoever Ileosa was looking at, but determined suddenly casting a spell right next to the queen in front of her bodyguards probably wouldn’t end well for him.
At this point Ileosa springs up from her chair, grabbing Rholand by the hand and pulling him up out of his own chair. Leading him by the arm, Ileosa explains that it was time for Rholand to take care of her personal problem so they could get that out of the way and return to their evening. Sabrina and a total of eight grey maidens fall into step behind them as Rholand and Ileosa make their way back up to the second floor, and to the room where Rholand had freshened up for dinner.
Ileosa ordered the grey maidens to remain outside the door, and then in a “surprise” move, ordered Sabrina to leave as well. Her expression unreadable behind her mask, Sabrina attempted to argue at first, but eventually acquiesced, bow, and left. Ileosa closed the doors behind her bodyguard, and then cast a spell on the nearby nightstand, causing the air to fill with an audible hum (Silent Table). She explained that now no one outside the room would be able to hear what was going on inside as she sauntered back over to Rholand, stripping off her dress as she explained that her “personal problem” that her bed was oh so lonely and cold of late, and that perhaps Rholand would be able to help her with that? She stopped a few feet away from him stark naked and with her arms crossed, waiting for his answer with a no-nonsense “Well?”
Rholand may be a goody two-shoes, but he’s still only human. So of course he said yes and he started to undress as well. Good thing too – if he had refused after all this I’m pretty sure Ileosa would have had her grey maidens give him a solid thrashing before throwing his ass out of the castle – possibly from the top of the battlements! The one stipulation Rholand had was that could Ileosa maybe take off her crown too, given how prickly it looked? That was nearly a mood killer right there, as Ileosa frowned and told him basically to just deal with it. (Kazavon may not have been able to convince Ileosa to sate her desires in the most bloodbath-causing way possible, but there was no way he was going to let her be separated from the crown for the sake of an amorous encounter.)
Unfortunately while I had a really good theme prepared for this scene, a reread of the lyrics revealed to me that it’s probably better as a theme for the break-up rather than the start of a relationship. So desperate to come up with some musical opening number, I threw this at Rholand.
Now for those of you following at home, yes Ileosa did really love Eodred. But Eodred has been dead for about two months at this point, and since Ileosa essentially capitulated to Kazavon and let him into her soul as part of the Book Three intro, her inhibitions about taking what she wanted, whether right or wrong, were pretty much gone at this point. And after all the kindness and flirting Rholand had thrown her way over Book One and Two, well . . . she was interested in him, so that was that.
And that should give you an idea about how far off the tracks I was jumping this train now – the BBEG of the campaign just *seduced* one of the PCs. And not for the purpose of some sort of manipulation or because she wanted something out of him, but because she actually liked him! I seem to recall a recent post on the CotCT forums saying a PC went and met with the queen, which ultimately led to an amorous encounter as well – followed shortly thereafter by the death and disappearance of said PC. Nothing of the sort was planned here, oh no – I had a far worse endgame in mind here.
As I said above, the ultimate plan for Book Three was that the players would start plotting how to remove Ileosa from power, arguably for her own good, and arguably because the crown was obviously starting to have a stronger and stronger grip on her mind. And of course by the end of Book Three Ileosa would learn of their actions against her, and quite naturally feel deeply betrayed, particularly by her new secret consort Rholand. Given how she had been betrayed already by Andaisin, Davaulus, and others, even discounting Kazavon’s influence she would react badly to this news.
And so because of this deeply personal betrayal by the new man that she loved, Ileosa would run fully into Kazavon’s clutches, and show the entire world the depths of her anger! And thus, her journey to the dark side would be more or less complete, and Books Four-Six would be all about what Ileosa does when she really listens to what Kazavon wants her to do. And it would all be the direct fault of the players – especially Rholand.
Not that they really have a choice, of course – Kazavon was still slowly but inexorably crushing Ileosa’s soul – the crown *had* to be dealt with eventually. It’s just that their actions in trying to deal with it would directly precipitate the rest of Ileosa’s fall. And it was even a logical progression given the sense of betrayal Ileosa would feel! And that’s how you make your PCs start to regret having ever been born. ^^
Anyway, following that rather pleasant evening, Rholand had another dream in his sleep. This was where I finally put out the intro to Book One which I had never gotten around to writing. So you can go back and read that if you want to know what his dream was about. Since no one had seen that intro until this point, learning where Ileosa found her strange crown was very useful information to Rholand. Opening his eyes, he found said crown right under his nose, and now so up close he could make out important details, such as some of the points on the crown were not black metal after all, but some sort of bone – each an intact piece, like a tooth(?) rather than shattered fragments from a larger bone like a snapped femur – one of them with its tip discolored by a bloodstain perhaps?
Unfortunately, Rholand blew his Knowledge rolls, so he did not identify these as dragon’s teeth, although from the dream it was fairly obvious to him now that here was indeed the source of Ileosa’s strange power and nightmares. Over in his corner unseen by all, Kazavon was watching Rholand too, and he was *not* happy about this newest development between his host and Rholand (although he would become overjoyed naturally once Rholand’s betrayal was revealed later in Book Three). Rholand wished he could get a chance to examine the chest that the crown had been stored in, but that would have to wait as Ileosa finally stirred (Kazavon no doubt shouting “WAKE UP!” in her mind now that Rholand was up, and capable of trying to pull the crown off before Ileosa while she was still asleep – an act that wouldn’t succeed but Kazavon wasn’t eager to take any chances at this point).
While they got dressed, Ileosa seemed to be an energetic and as happy as she was last night (if not more so) – and once again I emphasized this as quite the change from the Ileosa Rholand was used to seeing through Book One and Two. Ileosa then asked Rholand if he could provide her with council. She would like him to assume the position of Royal Physician for rather obvious reasons, and no doubt to explain his regular presence in the castle. That was pretty much an offer Rholand couldn’t refuse, which led to Ileosa’s second question – the matter of Senaschal Neolandus’s successor. At this point, it seemed likely that he was dead as he hadn’t turned up despite Marcus Endrin’s search, which had been aided by the rest of the party during Book Two (to the exclusion of all else for a while there, plague or no plague).
The nobles were starting to become increasingly insistent on nominating a successor, and so Ileosa wanted to give them one. There were only two logical candidates – Marcus Endrin himself, who seemed competent and trustworthy but was inexperienced with politics and had made his dislike for Ileosa rather plain from the beginning. And secondly, although he was an outsider, Togomor had stayed around since Andaisin’s attack, and his magical ability and contacts in Magnimar would be invaluable, and Ileosa felt a kindred spirit with him (sensing the presence of Kazavon in the Staff of the Slain which Togomor carries).
Without a lot of hesitation Rholand voiced his support for Togomor, cementing in the AP-as-written announcement at the start of Book Three that Togomor would be the new seneschal. Ileosa agreed that Togomor was her choice as well, but asked Rholand to keep quiet about it until the official announcement was made. Which would be in several days at the Kendall Ampitheater – Ileosa wanted to satiate the nobility’s desire for pageantry. Of course, she hoped that Rholand would also be there, both to fill his official position and to support her.
And after another quick kiss, Ileosa went on her way to attend to all the business of ruling a major city state (and fulfilling all the other evil desires Kazavon was putting in her head as of late). When she opened the door to the room, several Grey Maidens were standing on guard still – but Sabrina was nowhere to be seen (having left to go ball her eyes out in private over her beloved queen picking *another* jackass man to be her lover – instead of, say, her ever-loyal, strong, reliable female bodyguard). Ileosa is surprised for a moment, but then chalks it up to Sabrina following her suggestion of taking the night off (because why would Sabrina be upset over Ileosa spending the night with Rholand?) and leaves with the squad of grey maidens. She leaves Davinia, the grey maiden who Rholand helped save from Andaisin’s dungeons beneath the Hospice, behind to escort Rholand out of the castle.
The two cheerfully greet each other, and discuss matters on their way out to the gates. Davinia is surprised to hear that Sabrina – The Commander – was not with Ileosa, as she usually was the queen’s metal-clad shadow. Which led to Davinia telling Rholand of all the rumors that Sabrina and Ileosa were lovers (putting that idea of why Sabrina would be upset in Rholand’s head), and then laughing it off as tavern gossip meant to get everyone hot and bothered. There were, after all, a lot of rumors about Ileosa, especially given the all-female cadre of bodyguards that were the Grey Maidens.
Davinia also brought up some matters of Sabrina’s background as evidence, such as being turned down from the office of Field Marshall due to her Varisian heritage while Kroft, only half-Varisian, was chosen. Davinia also argued that Sabrina was always cold and professional, and perhaps a little . . . intense, particularly following the fated meeting between her face and a shotgun blast in during Ileosa’s coronation in Book One. As such the idea of Sabrina getting weak-kneed at the sight of Ileosa and her drive to protect the queen came from wanting to get under her skirts was nonsense to Davinia. (Which of course showed just how much the grey maiden knew, given that Sabrina’s relentless desire to protect Ileosa stemmed almost entirely out of blind unrequited love).
With a standing offer to join Davinia in a tavern sometime (when she would be off-duty and thus out of her iconic armor and able to listen to these crazy tavern rumors), the grey maiden left Rholand at the front gates, and Rholand’s intro to Book Three came to an end. Faction Alignment: Ileosa Accepted!
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Being a part of the Hellknights, Cid got a slightly more detailed look at how the Order of the Nail has weathered the plague in addition to the overall joint intro piece. Of the three major organizations in the city – City Guard, Sable Marines, Hellknights – the Hellknights had suffered the fewest casualties during the plague (being able to fly and rain down destruction certainly helped). But that didn’t mean that there were not losses, and to refill the ranks DeVries had authorized a number of Armigers to undergo their final trial – combat with a devil. Most armigers survived. For his excellent work during the plague, Armiger Cid Donary was also nominated to undergo the trial, if he so wished it. Of course he did! It certainly beat what he had spent the past month on – writing new spells and hunting down any remaining undead in the sewers beneath Korvosa.
And so, near the end of the month (as it turned out, the day or so before Ileosa would give her speech at the Kendall Ampitheater) Cid underwent his trial. This involved going down into the arena beneath Citadel Vraath, colloquially known as “The Pit”. In the tunnel leading down into the arena, Cid was met by a Hellknight who instructed him to prepare himself for battle. I also took this moment to point out that there were often traps that a clever Hellknight could use in the arena (although Cid didn’t need them). Cid cast a bunch of buff spells (Shield, Mirror Image, Bull’s STR) and then nodded he was ready.
And so he descended onto the arena floor in the Pit, while about two dozen of the Order of the Nail’s Hellknights watched from the stands surrounding the arena floor about ten feet up. DeVries and Vox were also present, seated on thrones near the front of the arena, along with a Paravicar named Lucius Acillmar, the Director of Signifiers for the Order of the Nail (basically non-Magus spellcasters I guess, but also basically their keeper of records).
It was Paravicar Ancillmar that spoke, addressing Cid and asking him if he was ready for his trial, and before it began if there was anything that he wished to confess before the assembly of Hellknights now. As I explained it, this was Cid’s last chance to confess to any failures or crimes that the Order would not approve of. While he was an Armiger, the penalties were less, and basically capped at Expulsion from the Order. If he survived the trial, Cid would then be an official Hellknight, and the only way a Hellknight left the Order was death (so yes, if you betrayed the Order after becoming a Hellknight, it was pretty much the death penalty for you, no exceptions – keep that in mind).
Cid did admit to associating with criminals in the pursuit of his mission – prompting a murmer through the watching crowd, but the leaders of the Order were not concerned. Ancillmar explained that they were aware of his association with the other PCs, and felt it was a necessary evil, and perhaps Cid acted as a stabilizing influence on them. Nonetheless, once he was a Hellknight, Cid would be held to a higher standard, and that included the company that he kept. And with that, Ancillmar announced for the trial to begin, as a grate underneath the leaders’ dais rose up.
From the dark chamber beyond, a bearded devil emerged. A familiar bearded devil that clearly recognized Cid as it spat “YOU!” Zarzagug the Huntsman, boss from Book One, had returned (since he had been summoned by DeVries, his death there meant basically nothing). Cid thought back over all the information he knew about bearded devils, got a good result on his Knowledge: Planes roll, and so I spilled the beans on Zarzagug. He bombed the perception roll to examine the arena though, so the only thing he noticed was the rack of silver weapons against one wall of the arena, presumably there for any Hellknight who forgot to bring a silver weapon to fight a devil – sometimes the Order shows a little mercy.
As it was in the first book, Zarzagug was only impressive on paper – Cid toyed with him a bit using the various new spells he had picked up – Blade Dash to get close, Blade Lash (trip him), recast Mirror Images after Zarzagug dispelled them all, and finished him off with a Shocking Grasp crit that pretty much did twice as much damage as he had HP remaining (and Zarzagug had like 50 HP left at that point)!
While they (briefly) fought, Cid and Zarzagug exchanged insults with each other, as a murmur roiled up through the crowd of Hellknights – devils summoned to fight were not supposed to know the Armiger they were fighting (i.e. this was a gladiator match, not a grudge match). After the fight was over and Ancillmar announced Cid was victorious, he pretty much said as much to the Paravicar with a “What the HELL was that? I faced that devil before!”
At which point DeVries took over, his voice low and dangerous as he asked Cid how he knew Zarzagug . . . when the only time in recent memory he had summoned his Huntsman was during the trial of Trinia Sabor (DeVries of course knew the answer already, as Zarzagug had told him of cid’s involvement and he had figured it out himself during Book Two).
Cid explained that yes, he had fought the devil back then, as it had attacked *him* while Cid was on a mission. DeVries retorted that he had given Cid no assignments the day of Trinia’s execution, so how was it that he had a “mission”? Or perhaps he was on a mission for someone else outside of the Order? Like Queen Ileosa?
As DeVries jumped down into the arena, Cid tried to argue that as queen, it was her right to make requests of him on behalf of maintaining order within Korvosa, but DeVries was having none of it. He accused the queen of letting the convicted criminal Trinia Sabor escape, a criminal she herself condemned, all so she didn’t have to get her hands bloody, and Cid had helped her do it! And thus, DeVries officially charged Cid with dereliction of duty and treason against the Order! DeVries followed this up with a Greater Dispel Magic, stripping Cid of all his protective magics.
Rather than a fight, which probably would have resulted in Cid getting a beatdown from DeVries, he instead continued to fight with words, arguing that he did no treason against the order. He was following the lawful orders of the queen, who had the authority in this matter, same as any other Hellknight would have done, and since those actions did not harm the order so what was DeVries’ problem?
DeVries’ problem was that Cid had chosen the queen of Korvosa. The Order of the Nail followed the orders of the Emperor of Cheliax – they were merely here in Korvosa as guests. Cid thought that was ridiculous, given that the Emperor hadn’t had an interest in Korvosa pretty much ever, given the city was abandoned by the empire quite some time ago.
Which is when DeVries played his trump card. He had just gotten word back from the Emperor finally. In light of recent events in Korvosa, and the devastation brought about by the plague, the Emperor had made DeVries provincial governor of Korvosa. And as his first act as governor, DeVries was going to overthrow Ileosa by crushing her skull (think rather highly of yourself, don’t you DeVries?).
Cid rightly points out that regardless of whether successful or not, many Hellknights would die as a result – DeVries didn’t care. They were Hellknights! They would be victorious! Unless, of course, Cid was claiming that he was going to defend her? Cid denied that, which prompted DeVries merely to scoff and say that his word meant nothing now. But, if Cid surrendered now, DeVries would give him a chance to earn back his trust, and to prove his loyalty to the Order (probably by killing his friends?). Vox at this point steps forward and says that Cid should probably take the deal – DeVries was rarely this generous. Reluctantly, Cid said that DeVries was his commander and so he would obey – but he didn’t think much of DeVries as he dropped his weapons. Several Hellknights flew down to collect his weapons and place manacles and locked gauntlets onto his hands. Cid continued to rant about the Order betraying him, as he was innocent of any wrong-doing, while DeVries mentioned that there was going to be a public address by Queen Ileosa tomorrow, and he thought it wise for everyone to attend. Then the Hellknights dragged him away to a cell.
A little later, Vox showed up at the entrance to Cid’s cell, wanting to know the full story of what happened the day of Trinia Sabor’s execution. Cid stuck to his story of Zarzagug being out of control and Cid having to put it down. The conversation moved to Trinia’s guilt, and both agreed that she was innocent of the crimes for which she was accused – the queen’s madness was the only reason she was put up on the chopping block in the first place (not to stem the cries of the bloodthirsty crowd, oh no).
That turned to the madness of other leaders, namely DeVries – although when Cid mentioned that DeVries could have arrested him at any time, Vox merely gave a tight-lipped smile. She explained that DeVries every much believed in the rule of Law, and a proper order to things, and had a particular hatred for chaos of any kind. This was likely due to the fact that his family could trace its lineage back to Sarkonis, before the Worldwound obliterated it all those many years ago. The DeVries family re-settled in Cheliax, but they never forgot the loss of their homeland.
And after Cid explained Queen Ileosa’s plan to spare Trinia, Vox thought it all made sense – DeVries saw that as Ileosa trying to skirt her responsibilities. She declared Trinia guilty, but rather than carry out her sentence Ileosa hired the PCs to save Trinia so that her hands remained clean, thwarting the law that she herself enacted by declaring Trinia guilty in the first place! Then when Trinia was getting away, DeVries tried to get the execution back on track with Zarzagug, and Cid foiled that as well – no wonder he hated Cid so much.
While Cid was an armiger, the worst DeVries could have done to punish him was to ex-communicate him from the Order. But now that he was officially a Hellknight, DeVries could have him put to death. And *that* was why he had waited to arrest Cid – he wanted Cid to be a Hellknight first. The only reason he didn’t make it a summary execution in the arena just now was either he wasn’t absolutely sure Cid was guilty of helping Trinia escape, or he wanted to make the case to the other Hellknights so that there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Cid deserved death for what he had done. For her part, Vox would do her best to convince DeVries to give Cid a chance to prove his loyalty instead of kill him as soon as he was done with Ileosa.
Which prompted Cid to ask why Vox cared what happened to him, eliciting a shrug. She liked him, and Cid had done good work so far other than helping Trinia – he had, after all, helped save the city twice now. So Vox saw potential in him, and didn’t want DeVries’s pride to waste that.
At this point, there conversation is interrupted by another Hellknight, who came down to report that a visitor from House Ornelos was here to speak to the Commandant (DeVries). Grumbling about what could be so possibly important, Vox went with the Hellknight, leaving Cid to stew and ponder his likely fate tomorrow. Which is when he heard a faint, thin voice calling out to him from beneath the sewer grate of his cell. Opening the grate revealed the snapped off hilt of a sword, wedged down into the drain beneath the grate.
Since Cid was a Black Blade magus, he needed an intelligent sword, but we hadn’t come up with anything until now. Since he was getting up in levels now where it would start being able to talk to him, I decided to create my own Black Blade for him – this was their first official meeting, as inauspicious as it was. The blade was, as mentioned, snapped off to just a few inches of blade above the hilt, and while it could communicate with him, the sword had no memory of what it was or how it got there. When Cid spent an Arcana point through the sword, however, a glowing greenish steel blade popped into existence, a physical manifestation of the arcane power (and thus making the sword usable since Cid was pretty much always pumping Arcana points into his blade to give it things like a Keen enchant anyway). It would be awhile, but eventually Cid would give his blade a name since it couldn’t remember its own – and thus Retribution was born.
Cid pondered trying to escape now that he had a weapon, but manacled and locked in a cell with locked gauntlets still on his hands to prevent spell casting, he wisely decided to bide his time. He hid Retribution under his cloak, and waited for the guards to come take him away the next day to this announcement by the queen.
Faction Alignment Accepted (Sort Of, even if they rejected him): Order of the Nail Hellknights
So, the original plan for this sword was for it to be broken, and for Cid to have to go around the city finding pieces of the sword to weld back together with Arcana points, and allow it to gain its various Black-Blade associated boosts as each piece was added back on. Ultimately that was too much hassle and things got busy enough that fetch-style side quests for the pieces proved to be a little too difficult to fit into the plot. So it was more of a story point here or there where Retribution began to remember who and what he was, although there has been minimal relaying of this information along to Cid. That will likely change during the Book Four opening, as I’ll finally be in a position to start info-dumping all of the sordid past of Retribution and the Order of the Nail.
What pieces Cid has learned during the course of Book Three, though, I will share as we get to that point in the write-ups.
The genesis of this idea was from this song, which I had thought to use as Cid’s Book Three opening theme, but since he didn’t have Retribution yet it didn’t make a lot of sense. So I moved this theme to be the Book Four opening theme and used the theme that I listed in the intro write-up instead.
Far out . . . Looking forward to seeing the intros for the other PCs.
So, um . . . I'm in a bit of shock right now, as Book Three has come to a sudden and unexpected end (no TPK, don't worry). So because I wouldn't mind some evil brainstorming from the peanut gallery here, I'm going to leap ahead to tonight's session for just a moment here.
So it's getting close to the end of Book Three, the party's enemies have all just come together to give each of them a beatdown and nearly killed them in various ways. It's clear that they can no longer stay in Korvosa, although they still have some unfinished business with Arkona.
I have Zellara herself appear and give a Harrow reading that this is their one chance to save two important people who would be allies to them, and if they don't act now then those two people will be twisted into darkness. Those two people are, of course, the imprisoned Senaschal Neolandus and Vencarlo aka Blackjack.
In a surprise move, the party decided that they couldn't afford to attack Arkona's manor and get bogged down (as they had nowhere safe to sleep now), and they didn't want to deal with him. So they left, and successfully managed to escape the city by using a Feather Boat token to cross the Jeggare river in the dead of night, avoiding the picket of frigates blocking the river under Ileosa's orders.
My epic plans for the end of Book Three, with the party getting involved in the cold war between Vimanda and Bahor suddenly flaring white hot CRUSHED. My plans for future interactions with Vencarlo and Neolandus GONE. My plans for an epic fight through the military blockade on Arkona's appropriate boat SUNK.
So . . . now they're in Book 4. And I intend to make the rest of the AP an unending punishment for their cowardice. I want them to suffer, now more than ever, to the point that if they ever get their hands on a Wish they will Wish themselves all the way back to the end of Book Three so they can do the last three books all over again just to try to avert their fate. And I want you, people of the Paizo forums, to give me your advice on how to do that. I want BLOODY consequences for this failure on their part.
So far, here's what I have - Vimanda kills Bahor, takes over House Arkona completely. She turns Vencarlo into a weapon to use against the party and sends him out to hunt them down along with all the other bad guys that will be hunting them normally in Book Four. She breaks Neolandus for information and gets some useful state secrets out of him, including the location of the Shedskin - Bloodsworn Vale. She will likely go on to become the bearer of the Shedskin now, making her primary villain number six. She eats Neolandus soon after, and thus the party will have no legitimate way of deposing Ileosa from the throne now, nor any information about Kazavon beyond what they'll get from other sources of information that I have already planted in Book Four.
What have you guys got? Give me your worst - no cheap shot is too low to be considered, no rubbing of the nose in this huge inconvenient mess too harsh.
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The way I understand it: the disappointment at the PCs' sudden flight is totally yours, not Glorio or Vimanda Arkona's. Why should they care that the PCs did not invade their manor and took their 'ace in the hall' Neolandus Kalepopolis from them? There is absolutely no need for them to seek revenge for something bad that the PCs did not do to them. In fact, the fact that the PCs did not interfere with his plans, keeps Glorio on course to execute them (his plans, I mean, not the PCs!).
So what would be his goals?
He wants the seneschal to be his puppet, so breaking Neolandus Kalepopolis' will to cooperate or manipulating the man thoroughly until he believes Arkona is his friend is probably high on his list.
Gaining the support of the other noble houses and the common man is important too, because he needs that if he wants to gain the throne once Ileosa is beaten.
He also wants the PCs to succeed. If they can remove Ileosa from power, the way is open for him to step in. So, if anything, he should support them. This is very far from the bloody mess you want him to inflict on the party.
So how would I use him?
The way I would (and probably actually am going to) use him, is this. I'd have him step in the moment the PCs defeat the queen. Have him show up when the ultimate fight is almost over, hell , you might even have him deliver the killing blow, so he can steal the glory (is that why he's called Glorio?) He will immediately try to make a grab for the crown once Ileosa is down. If he succeeds, then you can have him inflict all kinds of badassness on the PCs. If he fails, he still stands for king. His claim will be more powerful if he has Neolandus in his corner. Let your party deal with that! This use of Arkona is much more devious and possibly more epic as well.
On the other hand, if you still want your epic end to part three, you could play the Vimanda card. Her ambitions do not run as high as her brother's. She wants to gain control of the House. The PCs might have been excellent tools to achieve that goal. So, if she still wants to take over House Arkona, she could contact the heroes and convince them to attack her brother with her aid. She will give them Kalepopolis in return. Of course, she will betray the PCs. In spite of her promise to stand by the party in the fight, she will hang back and let the heroes do the fighting. Once her brother is dead and the PCs are low on resources and hit points, she will attack them. Her plans for the seneschal might not be as ambitious as Glorio's, but she could simply trade the man off to the queen, to gain standing and influence at court. After all, who doesn't want to be BFF's with the radiant Ileosa?
Of course, if you do decide to go for the beat the PCs into a bloody pulp, I'm sure I'll have fun reading about it. After all, I do like the way your insidious spectre mind works ...
That's why this adventure has to adapt to off-road driving. Not your fault, but a problem inherent with having players whose alignments apparently don't fit the Good descriptor (and in at least some cases not the Lawful descriptor either) very well . . .
Whichever of Vencarlo and Neolandus dies should show up as Ghosts (Revenants would work if only they weren't so stiff-lipped), and encounter the party that way, with enough memories intact that the party can get a picture of what happened that is complete enough to see what their absence is done, but still incomplete enough that they have only a general idea of what they are facing.
In addition, as Ileosa goes more insane, she decides that she needs to tie up loose ends. Of course, as part of her advancing insanity, she has another nightmare that somehow partly leaks to the PCs as in the previous nightmare in which apparitions of the PCs were torturing her.
Of course, it wouldn't hurt (or rather, it should be quite painful indeed) for the PCs to run afoul of a powerful crimelord who is tied into the schemes of some of the non-Ileosa villains in Korvosa, so Ileosa is NOT the only one trying to find them. This might be made easier if said crimelord got hold of the escaped Trinia Sabor.
Edit: Just remembered that Cid, a full Hellknight, is one of those who jumped town. Can you say HELL TO PAY? See below for a possible way to use this.
For that matter, have some of the non-Evil movers (in particular Kroft and Sabrina and maybe even Vox) in the city realize they are in really doop peep if they can't get the PCs back, and they mount their own effort to at least get a message to the PCs. (Don't necessarily have this be accusatory -- "We hope you've just had to lay low for a bit, but . . .".) If Vox is one of these, the message could even include a mission that would be crucial for getting Cid off the hook from DeVries. Nonetheless, even if Cid technically gets off the hook, DeVries is going to be REALLY MAD (probably even madder if Cid technically gets off the hook, due to being foiled from taking immediate revenge -- make this be just short of blatantly obvious).
Going WAY back in this thread: For a Hellknight Magus archetypee, Myrmidarch Magus (with recent errata that I haven't yet gotten to see) VMC Fighter sounds worth keeping an eye on.
PM to you isn't an option for some strange reason; anyway, if you need a bit of a break to get yourself jump-started, here's a new challenge for you.
* * * * * * * *
If you REALLY want a challenge (unfortunately no prize in it), do for Rasputin something sort of like what you did for Ileosa, but backed up by an article on the actual Grigori Rasputin.
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Interesting! Not sure why your PM didn't go through - is there some sort of "private" settings that auto-rejects any PMs or something? In any event, I'm not much good with statblocks, particularly high-level statblocks (ah, f&&@ it! Give 'em all 18s and 16s!) so I don't think I would be very good at this challenge. :/
Now let's see if I can keep working towards catching us back up to the game in-progress so we can have more regular evil plotting sessions. >:)
But first - let's talk a little more about my version of Glorio Arkona.
So first, let's preface by saying that I did *not* give Glorio the Ileosa treatment. He is still a rakshasa, a physical embodiment of arrogance, selfishness, and evil. But . . . there was something I decided to change about Glorio, which is something so subtle I'm not sure it's even really possible to present in a noticeable way - instead most players will just see it and think "huh, there goes Glorio trying to pull a fast one". And maybe, indeed, Glorio is simply trying to pull a fast one - not even I'm entirely sure what is artifice and what is genuine with him anymore.
But after witnessing Andaisin's rampage and the dramatic negative impact the plague had on Old Korvosa, Glorio had an epiphany. He finally "gets it" - that his ambitions and actions have gravely wounded Korvosa and directly led to the situation he now finds himself in, and Korvosa balancing on a knife's edge over complete destruction at Ileosa's hands. He loves Korvosa, not with a true self-sacrificing love, but the sort of love a man might hold for a prized possession - and that is still love of a sort. This revelation therefore convinced Glorio that he needs to have a change of heart (or at least delude himself until such times as he has a change of heart back to his old self).
The point of all this is that Glorio is a monster, a rakshasa. Even if he intellectually *wants* to change, he *can't*. I found this idea of a very intelligent being struggling against his nature, and failing, made Glorio a more interesting and poignant figure than just "liar rakshasa lies". At the same time, as I said above I think I will be the only one to ever notice or appreciate this inner struggle - the difference, after all, between a rakshasa lying through his teeth to the PCs and a rakshasa reflexively embellishing the truth without meaning to because lying is an ingrained instinct is NOTHING. They will only ever see "shady dude being shady again" (which is pretty much the party's opinion of Arkona, to the point where they'd rather flee the city alone and abandon Vencarlo/Neolandus rather than try to cut a deal with Glorio).
Having this inner struggle also motivated me to play Glorio as more of an affably evil, friendly but untrustworthy ally of necessity for the party. Making Glorio somewhat more sympathetic also was intended due to my slowly percolating plans to have him play a greater role in one PC's life. More on this later. ;)
So, originally, my plan was to expand Book Three's content with various side quests and additional scenes to pad out the book. Because as-written, Book Three is rather threadbare - you go to Vencarlo's, fight some Red Mantis, go kick Pilts' Swastel's arse so you can talk to Salvator Scream and learn Glorio has Neolandus, go kick Glorio's ass and retrieve Neolandus, roll credits.
So I added a bunch of side content . . . and as it turned out, due to the party talking their way out of things, ignoring Pilts, and fleeing the city without rescuing Neolandus despite knowing Glorio had him . . . Book Three was more or less 100% Inspectre-generated content. ^^ Which is why it's so f$!%ed up, as I'm sure you will agree once I manage to actually find time to write it all up for your viewing pleasure!
@PM not working: it wouldn't even give me the option to send you a PM, even though I could send a PM to somebody else in the same session.
Edit: Just tried again and same problem. Wonder if it is because you didn't create a Profile?
If you want your players to have a chance to appreciate your change, have them stumble upon a Detect Thoughts Scroll or Potion just before they get a chance to observe him struggling with his issues.
@Additional Book Three Notes: If you haven't already, check out my "Shadows of Book Three" Spoiler 3 posts above yours.
This has been a great read. I am working on a similar slow leveling Curse of the Crimson Thrones campaign with more emphasis on the various noble houses in Korvosa and their own machinations.
I am working on a similar slow leveling Curse of the Crimson Thrones campaign with more emphasis on the various noble houses in Korvosa and their own machinations.
Sounds great. I'd love to hear more about it when you get that far.
Just checking in to make sure we're still on the air . . . .
Hey - just wanted to post something that we're still going and I'm still here. Just been busy scrambling to keep things going into Book Four, which my players are making difficult by bypassing all of the encounters that I've made available for them to participate in over the past couple sessions. That, and I've been sick as a dog (had to cancel the game last week) so that hasn't helped matters any. Hopefully we're back on an upswing, and as I find time I'll get back to posting here as well.
^Ouch -- get better soon.
Before this happened, any luck in backdooring the Book Three events back in?
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Let's see if I can keep limping along here while still struggling to keep my head above water in preparing Book Four (didn't help that I've been sick, resulting in the last TWO weeks going without a game session! >< )
Vaz’em spent his month of downtime getting back in touch with his underworld contacts, those that had survived the plague at least. Of particular instead were his nominal boss Boule, guildmaster of the Cerulean Society, and good old Devargo. Vaz’em learned that with Old Korvosa still cut off from the rest of the city, Devargo was stuck in Eel’s End. However, he was running one of the gangs that had established themselves in Old Korvosa, so he was still doing “alright” for himself. Boule, like the rest of the Cerulean Society, was based out of the Azure Den in Old Korvosa. But unlike Devargo the Cerulean Society was undergoing an exodus from Old Korvosa using rowboats and the sewer system that ran underneath the canal separating Old Korvosa from the rest of the city. With the Hellknights having pulled back a bit (Vaz’em hated all Hellknights except Cid – yeah it’s weird), business was actually pretty good for a thief/assassin.
In fact, around the same time as the rest of the PCs’ intros were going on (but a day before Rholand’s), Vaz’em was contacted that someone was looking to hire him for a job. They wanted to meet him at the Three Rings Tavern, a popular and upscale drinking establishment where the party had met a number of people before (including Adonis Kreed). Arriving there tonight, Vaz’em finds the queen’s “handmaiden”, “Elliana” (remember this was actually Ileosa with an Alter Self from the crown running) waiting for him. Although I called her Mariel for some reason during this private session – I can’t even keep my own names straight! ><
Hilariously, Vaz’em greeted the handmaiden with a “Sleep well?” question, which was prophetic given that Ileosa had just had the Book Three intro dream sequence. When discretely asked about it though, Vaz’em’s player just confessed that Vaz’em liked to ask odd questions sometimes to throw off a mark or client. Oh, if only he knew how apropos his commentary was this time though.
“Elliana”-“Mariel”-“Whatever Name Ileosa Felt like Using” was understandably a little confused by this question, particularly from a ninja who theoretically could have been spying on her all along. She’s done enough manipulation in her day though (even without being super evil b@+#+) to play it cool though, and reply she’s sleeping well right now, and even the queen seems to be sleeping more soundly now, although she does have a problem that Vaz’em might be able to help with (and no, it’s not the same problem Rholand fixed, get your mind out of the gutter!)
Obviously, Andaisin had financial supporters, and while they had covered their tracks well Ileosa believed she has located one of them by following some of Dr. Davaulus’s old business dealings. The evidence is a little . . . circumstantial, and this suspect was the only link to the greater conspiracy. After a dramatic pause, the handmaiden leaned over and revealed the suspect’s identity – none other than Percival Jeggare, head of House Jeggare, the wealthiest noble house in the city and long-time supporter of the crown! (I think it was supposed to be Mercival, maybe? But at this point, whatever, I’ve butchered enough names that one more really isn’t going to break the bank!)
So due to it being Percival Jeggare, the queen can’t just accuse and arrest him – the public outcry would shake the city apart. (And since she doesn’t have contact with the Red Mantis just yet) Ileosa needs this to be handled discretely, and only Vaz’em is discrete enough. She wants the ledger to House Jeggare found and acquired to attempt to track down the other conspirators. And then she wanted Vaz’em to KILL Percival Jeggare.
Vaz’em questioned this decision, not out of any hesitation on his part but due to the questionable nature of his guilt and the impact that Jeggare’s death, discrete assassination or not, would have on the city. This irritated Ileosa, who slammed her hands down onto the table and went on a tirade about how heinous a crime he had committed by supporting Andaisin, and even the suggestion he had funded her meant he should die, along with anyone else that is implicated (massacred is the word she used).
She sealed the deal by stating that if Vaz’em didn’t want to get involved, then Her Majesty would figure out a way to contact the Red Mantis to solve her problem instead. *That* got Vaz’em’s acceptance of this job, as he hated anyone trying to muscle in on “his” city and assassination business, even a world-famous organization like the Red Mantis. From there discussion turned to how the queen wanted Jeggare to die (messy), payment, and how Vaz’em would deliver the ledger (drop it off at the castle front gate, letting the grey maidens there know he found the “rare candle” that Ileosa wanted).
With that, the meeting was concluded, and Vaz’em set off to find his quarry. And we kicked off Vaz’em’s theme for Book Three, which given he was about to get some assassin-style justice, seemed rather appropriate for the moment.
Unfortunately . . . Vaz’em botched his knowledge local roll about Lord Jeggare, so he knew virtually nothing about the man himself nor where he lived. Fortunately, being the most famously wealthy noble in the city, it was pretty obvious where he lived – in South Shore with a majority of the other nobles. In fact, his estate was only a few blocks down the street from where the Carrowyn Manor sat, and so Vaz’em had a (DM-gimme) easy time locating his target to scope out.
I had considered a full-on Assassin Creed style infiltration (or low-level guard slaughter) of the Jeggare Mansion, but pressed for time and being lazy/tired, I opted for a simpler solution. Shortly after Vaz’em arrived to case the manor, Lord Jeggare emerged to clamber into a waiting carriage along with a half dozen guards. Their destination that Vaz’em *conveniently* overheard? Carrowyn Manor, newly purchased by Lord Jeggare for renovations (yet another reason why he had to die, stealing the party’s new pad!) Arriving at Carrowyn Manor a few minutes later, two guards wait outside while Jeggare, the contractor fixing the manor back up, and four guards enter.
Vaz’em tries to clamber over the hedge fence to get into the backyard, botches both a Climb check and an Acrobatics check, and that “nasty” fence takes its toll, rolling max damage . . . for 6 damage total. If Vaz’em was still first level that might have been the end of his little assassination attempt right there, but given he’s got a few levels and HP under his belt now it’s naught more than an annoyance. Not wanting to deal with the sad sight of a catman ninja feebly scrambling to get over a seven-foot hedge fence or deal with some low-level guards, I just handwaved that Vaz’em got over the fence unnoticed, but did cut himself on the rusty fence beneath the hedges.
Sneaking up to one of the windows looking into the manor, Vaz’em is able to see into the dining room, and from there via the still-unpatched hole that Rolth’s flesh golem had left, into the entry hall where Jeggare was talking with someone. Things went sideways a moment later as Vaz’em watched the contractor attempt to flee, only to be grabbed by Jeggare’s guards, who promptly snap the man’s neck! Intrigued more than horrified at whatever was going on, Vaz’em decided he wanted to try to hear whatever Jeggare was saying now. He wasn’t able to hear from his current position, but the back door to the manor was right there and conveniently unlocked (I mean, it’s not like anyone was expecting someone to climb the DEADLY hedge fence . . . and even if they did, there wasn’t really anything of value to steal and the manor was already a dump after Jostilina’s assault.)
So Vaz’em slipped inside to find himself on the back porch, and from there he was able to inch into the dining room without being seen and listen in on what was happening on the other side of the golem-induced hole in the wall. The conversation was between Jeggare and a woman with an audible chill to her voice (Cinnabar! \o\ \o/ /o/ ) – Jeggare claiming that he had already destroyed all pages from his ledger that connected him to the woman’s boss (Glorio Arkona obviously), so she could relax. The woman retorted that her employer knew Jeggare wasn’t so stupid as to have the ledger be his only connection, so that Jeggare had leverage in the event of a double-cross. Jeggare grumpily agreed that he did indeed still had some evidence to use to guarantee his safety, in the event the woman’s employer got it into his head to murder him. Which is when Cinnabar cheerfully revealed that they weren’t here to kill him – they were just here to watch VAZ’EM kill him, so that they could report back that the job was done. She then called out to Vaz’em, asking if he was there, and if so, that they were ready for him now.
Both Jeggare and Vaz’em do a double-take, which is when the screaming from the lobby starts, along with the sounds of a brief, one-sided fight. This prompts Vaz’em to sneak still closer, at which time he peers through the hole to find Jeggare’s four guards all dead, slain by a pair of men in strange red insectoid masks standing over the bodies. And of course, Cinnabar sans mask, starring at Jeggare with her dead grey eyes. At this point Jeggare finally gets it into his head to run, but Cinnabar trips him and wrenches an arm behind his back to hold him still, almost bored with the whole thing now. Again she calls out for Vaz’em to come out – she just wants to talk, while Jeggare still thinks they’re alone. Cinnabar doesn’t appreciate Jeggare giving his own opinion on the situation, nor calling her a crazy b*%@&, and nearly twists his arm out of his socket while commanding him to stop. Talking.
Vaz’em decides he might as well confirm his existence at this point, trying to throw his voice (and flubbing the roll – the start of a hilarious precedent where Vaz’em can’t accomplish anything when he’s by himself out of the sight of the other PCs). Vaz’em asks what business the Red Mantis has with them, Cinnabar replies that they have an offer for him that he might find beneficial, and Jeggare decides now would be a good time to start screaming for help. Cinnabar jabs some fingers into his throat, silencing him with pressure point ninjitsu, and dislocates his shoulder for good measure before leaving him crumpled on the floor, silently trying to scream. The Red Mantis leader then goes on to say that the Red Mantis would like to extend an invitation to join them – Lord Jeggare could act as a “signing bonus”.
Vaz’em then makes a knowledge roll for the Red Mantis, and for once the dice do not betray him. So as it turns out Vaz’em is quite familiar with the rumors – that the Red Mantis are the premier organization of assassins in the world. Once hired to kill someone they do not stop, ever, until their target is dead. They were the insectoid mantis-like masks as their badge of identity as much as to conceal their faces, and judging by the almost ritual-like quality of their assassinations, they are rumored to be the remnants of some sort of religious order. Although assassinations aren’t the only thing they do – they occasionally take other side jobs . . . like murdering an entire city with plague.
Vaz’em counters with the argument that he prefers precise strikes rather than wholesale slaughter like the Red Mantis have engaged in as late. Cinnabar argues that the Red Mantis generally don’t like messy weapons like the plague either, but they are a weapon and do as they are told by whoever is paying them. As it turns out, even their current employer came to regret using Andaisin, as she proved to be too unstable for his needs (little late now Glorio!) Regardless, Cinnabar explained that their employer now wished for his part in the plague to fade away – but that the rest of his conspiracy paid the price for what they did. It was his way to atoning for what happened to Korvosa (and making sure no one could squeal on him).
Vaz’em was rather territorial here, as he didn’t like other assassins butting into “his” business, so he said that he would consider the offer, but he did things his own way, and that the Red Mantis would leave Jeggare here for Vaz’em to deal with.
Since Cinnabar was mostly interested in making Jeggare dead and recruiting Vaz’em, this suited her very well and so she agreed to those terms. As she and the other Red Mantis left though, she stopped, and pulled several pages torn from a journal which she dropped in front of Jeggare while asking him if those were his insurance. Apparently the Red Mantis had already found Jeggare’s insurance against their employer – sucks to be you Jeggare! And with that, the three Red Mantis operatives left Vaz’em alone with Jeggare, who was slowly regaining his voice.
He of course begged for his life, offering to pay Vaz’em double, that the city needed him, blah blah blah. He did give Vaz’em the Red Mantis leader’s name – Cinnabar – and explained why the man who had been the crown’s biggest financial supporter would turn against the city. Apparently he didn’t like how Ileosa was draining the treasury, even when Eodred was alive. But again, aiming towards making Ileosa at least somewhat sympathetic, she wasn’t siphoning this money off for herself. Oh no, due to living on the streets before Andaisin found her, Ileosa had been trying to get Eodred to start more programs for the city’s poor – the “dregs of the city” as Jeggare called them, the leeches who would suck the city dry and give nothing back. And that was pretty much Jeggare’s epitaph, as Vaz’em stepped forward and slashes open his throat. The old, fat nobleman flailed for a few moments before lying still, quite dead.
Searching the nobleman, Vaz’em doesn’t find much of interest, save a piece of paper with a number of strange markings on them. Holding them up to the papers that Cinnabar left behind, however, Vaz’em surmised that it was a key of sorts, highlighting specific transactions from the ledger pages that Jeggare thought were important (no doubt transactions with his co-conspirators – minus the Red Mantis employer which Cinnabar kept to herself). Featured prominently in them was some sort of merchant group called “Joint Concorde Merchantile Group".
The last thing of note Vaz’em found was a small note tucked in amongst the papers Cinnabar left behind. It read simply, "The Red Mantis are interested in speaking with the queen. Perhaps you could arrange an introduction for us?"
In a somewhat surprisingly move, rather than turn these pages over to the queen, Vaz’em decides to keep these pages of information to himself for now, along with the Red Mantis request to meet. And thus the party’s undermining of Ileosa’s rule begins, given she asked Vaz’em to get Jeggare’s ledger for her – and these pages were clearly what she really wanted, evidence of Jeggare’s co-conspirators.
And that’s where Vaz’em’s intro ended, minus a comment that several days later, word gets out that the queen was planning to announce a successor to Senaschal Neolandus at the Kendall Amphitheater, and Vaz’em had a standing invitation to attend the event. Given it was an honor to be invited to attend, and all of the city’s major movers and shakers would be here, it would not be wise to skip the event (and presumably Vaz’em would like to participate in the next actual joint session of our game).
So basically, I wanted everyone to get their own organization to play with and be tempted into siding with during Book Three since that was the central theme of this book – deciding who you would stand with. (Obviously I expected the party to side with each other in the end, even if it met going against the rest of the world). The Red Mantis were an obvious fit for Vaz’em, and getting to introduce a major player in the Red Mantis who has a lot of backstory but almost zero screen time (Cinnabar) was a major plus in my book. Cinnabar also wanting to meet the queen was also meant to be the plot point explaining how the queen gets use of them for Book Four onward – they basically are tired at this point of Glorio, and want to “defect” to his rival Ileosa. They know which way the wind is blowing, and it’s definitely no longer in Glorio’s favor. (Plus given their no kill policy on royalty, I imagine they are most comfortable working for actual royalty anyway).
This was meant to be the initial thread of an important plot point the party was to unravel, revealing that an alliance of Arabasti and Porphyria nobility based in Kaer Maga was also part of the conspiracy. Given that the Korvosan branch of House Porphyria had been wiped out by the Korvosan branch of House Arabasti, there was a great deal of bad blood between the two houses in general so both of the Kaer Maga branches working together would be quite a shock. It would also convince Ileosa in her increasingly malevolent state that Kaer Maga was plotting against her, and she would lash out by sending in the PCs to teleport in to Kaer Maga and assassinate everyone involved in the conspiracy. Obviously assassinating major nobles in their own homes would be unacceptable to Kaer Maga, and war would pretty much be inevitable at that point.
Sadly, they never really got around to investigating this stuff, in part because Vaz’em has a terrible habit of holding back any and all information that he receives. *facepalm* Also, when the queen did figure this out, and asked the party to go kill some Kaer Magan nobles, the party was pretty far alone in their “let’s not help the queen anymore” rebellious phase, so I guess she’ll have to do that part herself – via her new Red Mantis allies. Given the party is heading there in Book Four, perhaps the Red Mantis will be sent to do a full sweep of Korvosa’s new enemies . . . mwahahaha.
Get better soon.
No - Vaz'em's player has a bad habit of playing his cards a bit too close to his chest, so the party rarely has any idea what's going on with the plot thread that he managed to step over. They often don't even know they exist, and when they ask him about them he sometimes continues to be evasive *sigh*. Players. Fortunately, I *did* manage to bring back around some pieces of Book Three's end that were left dangling by their sudden skip out of town, which conveniently also pulled triple duty in giving the PCs something to do on the road, and wrap up Vaz'em's unanswered questions from Book Three/serve as his "I'm special!" little adventure that I wanted to do for each PC during Book Four. (Basically they're exploring the Arkona "summer manor" located near Harse. I'm pretty sure there is a mention of such a manor in the Guide to Korvosa but no other details, which is just as well since I'm making everything up as I go along now pretty much anyway!)
So, something Oliver has been working on over the course of Book One and Two was establishing his own little gang, using the downtime rules to pick up a unit of thugs/cutpurses, and having bought his own small home (complete with lavatory, which was hilariously valuable during Book Two as it gave him a +2 to all of his Fortitude saves . . . somehow). Ideally, I think the intent was that Oliver wanted to take over the void left by Gaedren Lamm, and become king of the underworld (or at least owner of his own turf, which he more or less accomplished by the start of Book Three).
I didn’t discourage this goal of his, although knowing what was coming in Book Four in the form of a mass exodus from Korvosa (although I still had my doubts about going through with that just as yet) I wasn’t as supportive of the idea as I probably could have been. As such, while I tried to steer Oliver in the direction of continuing to work on his crime lord dreams in his private scenes during Book Three . . . they didn’t really work out. But for lack of something really inspired to do with Oliver for Book Three other than trying to climb the criminal social ladder, that’s what I went with anyway. (Fortunately I’ve twigged onto a couple more exciting ideas going forward with Oliver now that we’re in Book Four, so hopefully that’s going to change).
Anyway, for Oliver’s Book Three intro I gave him the bog standard briefing about how Korvosa pulled itself back together in the month following the plague – or not, in the case of the nobility, Old Korvosa, and the relationship with Kaer Maga. Rolling for infection during Book Two after the fact, I informed Oliver that one of his men had gotten deathly ill during the plague, but narrowly managed to pull through. Unfortunately I’m not sure that I ever found an intro theme for Oliver’s Book Three – if I did it’s not included in my notes. :/
When asked what Oliver had been doing during the past month, he replied that Oliver has been uncharacteristically sober. Instead of going out whoring and drinking every night as he was wont to do previously, he’s stayed mostly sober and at home (which he cleaned up in who knows how long), not really talking to anyone but his own small gang. The plague apparently shook him up a bit, and he was trying to clean up his life a bit – outside of running his own little gang anyway. Which he has also reigned in a bit – while they’re still thugs and thieves, Oliver tried to instill in them a bit of discipline and a code of principles. This was actually interesting to me because one of the conflicts that I did want him to have was either to continue building his underworld criminal empire, or be pulled towards the side of law and order via Kroft (who he definitely was interested in).
During the downtime Oliver also received a letter from Dodger, informing him that he and his sister were safely living in Harse now (need to remember to have them show up at some point now that they’re in Harse in Book Four). Oliver sent a short letter back to let him know that he was glad to hear Dodger was safe, but he did not get a reply at any point during Book Three.
To start the actual intro session off, one day almost exactly a month to the day following Andaisin’s defeat, his men told him that he had a visitor. Someone had come to the front door of his abode asking to speak with him – Guildmaster Boule himself! While focused on cleaning up his act, Oliver hadn’t become a complete hermit, so he had his men let the cerulean society leader in to see what he wanted. They exchanged pleasantries at first – Boule asking Oliver how he was doing, Oliver asking how Boule’s son was (it really tickled me that Oliver’s player remembered saving Boule’s son back in Book One from Lamm). Oliver replied that he was rebuilding, and Boule replied that his son was fine, although he had recently had to move him out of Old Korvosa along with most of the Cerulean Society as Old Korvosa had collapsed into complete anarchy following the quarantine and isolation (no surprises there).
Boule then switched to business and the reason he came here – he wanted to offer Oliver a job. To which Oliver responded that he was no assassin, prompting a chuckle from the guildmaster who agreed. If Boule needed someone dead, he already had Vaz’em – no, what he needed now was entrepreneurs, ambitious new recruits to fill the ranks of the battered Cerulean Society. While “small time”, Boule saw potential in Oliver and his gang of cutpurses, and so he was hoping that Oliver would ally himself with the Society. The fact that he was regarded as a hero despite his moral “flexibility” also made him quite useful to Boule.
Oliver’s first question was what Boule thought about men like Gaedren and Devargo (it should be clear by now what Oliver thought of Gaedren at least). Boule confessed that he hated Lamm, and had only worked with him during the time that he had his son as a hostage. As for Devargo, he was a nuisance and someone who could become a problem given that he saw himself as eventual king of Korvosa’s underworld, but he wasn’t stupid enough to cause problems for the Society yet and so it wasn’t worth the bother to wipe him out, especially given the state of Old Korvosa. (I planned on Devargo being alive and kicking in Old Korvosa as a third-party to the war between Pilts’ Empire of Old Korvosa and the Arkonas, but alas, the players never went to go see him again. Guess he’s gonna have to take over the whole city by Book Six and overthrow Ileosa as BBEG, mwahahaha!)
Which is when Boule revealed his enticement – because the Society was interested in filling the vacuum that Lamm had left, and they wanted Oliver to fill that hole, Boule had purchased the old fishery Lamm and Yargin Blanko had used (and where Oliver had grown up before being sold into slavery as a child). It was Oliver’s if he wanted it.
Oliver’s response was classic Oliver (particularly given his initial assessment of how to assault the place in the very first session of the game) - “I'll be happy to take it off your hands if you'd like someone to burn it to the ground." Boule was nonplussed at this – if Oliver wanted to go to the trouble of arranging a controlled burning down of the building, and then salt the scorched earth left, what he did with his new property was his own business.
Oliver’s next question was on the expectations placed on him by this arrangement – in other words, what sort of cut the Society wanted from him now that he was a happy and enthusiastic member of the Society. Boule was evasive on the exact cut that the Society expected, but pointed out that membership did have its benefits – namely that Oliver would have the backing of the entire Cerulean Society if he needed it, and that no one would mess with him if they knew he was part of Korvosa’s only thieves guild. And Oliver didn’t need to make a decision on whether or not to accept Boule’s offer immediately – he had time to sleep on it.
Which is when Oliver hit Boule with another zinger, pointing out that he was curious how Boule could call the Cerulean Society the only thieves guild in Korvosa with loose cannons like Lamm and Devargo running around. Or Oliver himself for that matter, who was already making a tidy profit without the Society’s help, thank you very much.
Boule’s response was that unlike Devargo or Lamm, being the only sanctioned thieves guild in Korvosa (as mentiond in the Guide to Korvosa!) he didn’t have to look over his shoulder every time a city guardsman showed up at his door. And right on cue as if conjured, Oliver’s men called out that some city guard were headed this way! Which is when Boule took that as his cue to leave, reminding Oliver one last time that he would come back some other time in the future to hear Oliver’s final answer.
A minute later, Kroft sees herself into Oliver’s homely abode. Kroft mentions that she hasn’t heard any reports of Oliver getting into any drunken fights lately and if he was feeling alright? Oliver explained that after all of the plague business (being “alternately cored by nausea and fondled by priests”) he’d had his fill of madness for the moment. A sentiment that Kroft could agree with, given the anarchy of Eodred’s death and the horrors of the plague – not that putting the city back together after those twin events was not also draining, if not quite as sleepless-night inducing.
Which is why Kroft was here, actually – she wanted to ask Oliver to dinner, in an attempt to return things to normal a bit by hearing from him anything he had heard in the city’s underworld. It was starting to feel too quiet again to Kroft, like something else was building up to explode in the city’s face. Oliver thought this was a splendid idea, although then he made the mistake of asking if her brother Silas would also be dining with them, prompting a wince from Kroft.
Kroft then went on to explain that she had caught her brother doing something stupid – again – selling fake cures to the plague during Book Two. She had caught him red-handed, and now he was languishing in Longacre (again) while the arbiters decided on an appropriate punishment for him. As she had after the first time Kroft locked her brother up (years ago), Mama Kroft wasn’t speaking to her.
At which point Oliver sort of stuck his foot in his mouth, prompting an interesting discussion on law and crime (the whole crux of Oliver’s Book Three really – thanks Oli!), saying that Silas’s plan was a foolish scheme, but it wasn’t easy to turn your back on family over “arbitrary” laws. Kroft got offended by that, arguing that what her brother had done – both times – was reprehensible. Sure, perhaps the first time when he was just beating people up and taking their money might not be seen as so bad by *some* people with a less “arbitrary” code of conduct, but this time people had DIED because of the fake cures he sold them. All because he wanted to impress his new Scarzni friends with a quick money-making scheme.
Oliver countered that perhaps Kroft’s perception of him was rather clouded, given their past cooperation with each other to save Korvosa. Kroft sighed and agreed that was probably true, or perhaps she was merely hoping that deep down there was something more than a self-serving scoundrel standing in front of her. But, so long as Oliver didn’t do anything to endanger the lives of Korvosa’s citizens, he would avoid sharing a cell with Silas and would stay on Kroft’s good side (despite, y’know, the whole “running a gang of cutpurses thing”. Nice hypocrisy there, Field Marshall!).
This prompted Oliver to wonder that he seemed to be taking credit for the actions of a much less reprehensible person lately, and that stabbing a person (Andaisin) to death hardly seemed heroic. And as such, the citizens of Korvosa seemed to be settling for a second-rate savior if they were putting their faith in Oliver (dawww, it’s not your fault Oliver. Muderhoboing your problems away is what most adventurers do! Of all alignments!)
Kroft offered a cold sort of comfort by stating that she doubted anyone was holding it against Oliver for stabbing that particular person to death. Which immediately brought a note of regret to her voice as she realized that saying “murdering *that* person is okay” is probably not what the captain of the city guard should be saying. On the other hand . . . it *was* Andaisin, and the world probably was a much better place now that horrid woman was out of it, right? (Meanwhile in Scarwall, Andaisin screamed and screamed and screamed to no avail as her soul was torn apart and brutalized over and over by horrors beyond imaging – but that’s okay because she deserved it, right?).
From there the conversation moved back to dinner – would tomorrow be alright? (It was). Kroft asked if he remembered where her house was East Shore, and Oliver played coy and said he did. (Without mentioning that he’d had one of his thugs keeping watch on it all this time – stalker alert!) With that, Kroft left with a smile, leaving Oliver to ponder the future.
We then fast forwarded to the next night, since Oliver said he didn’t have any other plans that he wanted to play out right now. Oliver arrived at Kroft’s house at the appointed hour . . . to find no dinner waiting but another guest present – Marcus Endrin. Marcus took the lead while Kroft stared very intently at the wall, refusing to make eye contact now that her deception was laid bare (bait and switched again, Oli!). Marcus apologized for the deception, and stated that it was his idea to meet this way.
Oliver was surprisingly cool about this unexpected dinner guest, although he did point out that Korvosa had a functioning mail service. Marcus replied that this matter required some discretion, and that while Marcus was sure Oliver was capable and willing of acting in the city’s best interests when necessary (or they wouldn’t be having this conversation), when the topic of said conversation was the city’s ruler Marcus thought it paid to be careful. Here, Kroft joined in with her own opinion, stating that Marcus was being paranoid in a tone that made her opinion of this business *quite* clear. (Apparently, her earlier fears about Queen Ileosa had been mollified by the fairly decent job she did in managing during the plague – not so with Endrin.) I also lampshaded the hell out of the AP’s original plot that Ileosa was behind all of this by Kroft accusing Endrin of still believing in the conspiracy theory floating about that Ileosa has arranged EVERYTHING, including Andaisin’s repeated attempts on her own life. Oliver also joined in with his opinion that Ileosa definitely had nothing to do with Andaisin’s actions – woman was b!&@&&! CRAZY.
Marcus backpedaled before Kroft’s anger, explaining that while Ileosa may have handled the plague well enough, she was horribly mangling the situation with Kaer Maga, pushing Korvosa towards a war. And as Korvosa’s military commander, Marcus wasn’t confident in his chances of pulling out a victory in this next war given Korvosa’s current state.
Oliver changes the subject back to dinner at this point, as he had been promised a meal out of this (might as well make the most of it now that he knew that was all he was getting from Kroft tonight). Kroft sheepishly admits that she had nothing on hand for dinner, given that it was just a set-up for Marcus to talk privately. Oliver good-naturedly sighs, teasing Kroft that she’s awfully deceptive for the captain of the guard. Kroft sheepishly offers to go to the nearby Bailer’s Retreat tavern and pick up some food – so long as Marcus and Oliver promise to behave while she’s gone.
Exasperated, Marcus states that he just wants to talk with Oliver. Satisfied, Kroft gets up to leave, while admonishing Oliver not to go peeking into her dressers while she was gone. Oliver casually mentions that there was no need – he already has them regularly searched. *That* brings Kroft to a halt, staring at Oliver, uncertain whether this was a joke or not. She eventually decides either way to treat it as a joke, and leaves for the tavern. At which point Oliver confirms to Marcus that he did know more about Kroft’s dresser than he probably should (oh Oliver, you so creepy). That got a laugh out of the Commander, who confesses that Kroft was always overly sensitive of her personal life, and that she had been thinking of offering Oliver membership in the guard, a sergeant’s position with command of his own small squad. Marcus had no idea why Kroft thought Oliver would say yes to such a thing – Marcus was under no illusions about what Oliver was. Marcus didn’t care about Oliver’s flexible view of the law, but he did care that Kroft thought she could bring him over to her side of law and order, like she had tried and failed with her brother. And he stated in no uncertain terms that if Oliver hurt Kroft or took advantage of her apparent blind spot with him, Marcus would personally see to it that Oliver regretted (big talk for a dead-man-walking, Marcus!) Oliver assured the commander that while he might have his faults, a lack of loyalty was not one of them.
Kroft returns a minute later, carrying several large covered trays of food, to the surprise of both Marcus and Oliver. Apparently she had fibbed a little bit again, as she had made arrangements at the tavern to put together three meals from whatever they had on hand. She had, after all, promised dinner, and she always kept her promises (said while looking at Marcus). Oliver is a bit mystified at why Kroft didn’t just send a boy to go get it (because she wanted to give Marcus privacy if he needed it to speak his paranoid delusions to Oliver, duh! Or the DM was just making this up as he went along and forgot Kroft was flustered about dinner, apparently having forgotten her pre-made arrangements. >> )
The three of them eat in silence for a while, and then Marcus returns to business again. He had heard that Ileosa was planning an announcement regarding Korvosa’s seneschal, or rather lack of on. Marcus had, of course, did his best to search for Neolandus, but had come up empty-handed. Save for what the party learned and told him, of Neolandus escaping his captors, only to become a prisoner of the wererats, and then eventually in turn escape them into the sewers where the trail went completely cold. It seemed likely that Neolandus had died down there, his body consumed by the sewers’ countless scavengers.
Ileosa had thus far refused to declare him dead, however, which was quite convenient for her as without any seneschal there was no legal way to remove her from power. (Again, for hilarity’s sake, I went with the idea that Marcus was a conspiracy theorist, and believed Ileosa was everything that the AP as-written made her to be. Instead, of course, in my CotCT game, this was just another sign of Ileosa trying to do the right thing and hold out hope that Neolandus still lived – a belief Kazavon was happy with since it *did* fortuitously mean nobody could legally challenge his growing puppet’s control.
Marcus then reveals that he believes Ileosa intends to announce a new successor, and that by all rights, Marcus himself was the logical successor to Neolandus. He wasn’t sure he wanted the job, but having somebody in the senaschal’s seat was better than no one. He was curious, however, about the timing of the announcement. Ileosa had a tendency to be . . . erratic, and Marcus was having a hard time getting a good read of her and her intentions. Which is the real reason Oliver was here – to tell Marcus what he knew of the queen, and what his sense of her was.
Oliver confessed he didn’t know the queen especially well, having not spent a lot of time unrelated to business with her. (At this point Oliver asked if he knew about Rholand’s downtime . . . activities, to which I replied that he did not as yet. As Oliver just thought of Rholand as her unofficial physician, justified why they spent time occasionally alone with each other (plus their relationship had technically just gotten “steamy hot” the same night this conversation was going on, or thereabouts.) So Oliver didn’t really have any answers for Marcus – he didn’t know nor really care what the queen was thinking. Not a very satisfying answer for Marcus, but the only one he was getting.
At this point, it was getting late, so we wrapped up with Kroft indeed offering Oliver that membership in the city guard, to which he politely declined. Which led to the second invitation, which was for Oliver to be attendance with the city guard and Sable Marines down in the Kendall ampitheater’s arena, front and center for the queen’s upcoming major announcement (and the starting point for our next joint session).
The whole thing with Silas was an expansion of the Lavender event in Book Two, which was going to be the Scarzni trying to muscle into Korvosa during the plague by selling fake cures, using Lavender as a front-woman. They might have even had a low-level cleric of some minor god – can’t remember which one I was going to use now, maybe a Varisian cleric of Desna? – tied up somewhere to a potion making bench to make real potions of Cure Disease to mix in. Anyway, the party would have smashed the whole plot, killed most of the Scarzni who would be too stupid to surrender, while Silas sat there in the middle of it with his hands up, quite aware of what the party was capable of and wanting no part of it. Alas, they never investigated that plot thread, leaving it to Kroft to clean up).
So - that takes care of the Book Three intros. Whew, that took a while! Methinks it's fortunate that I don't have such detailed notes/chat logs from every session or this campaign write-up would have taken forever to get anywhere. I also have an intro from Gromka, but sad to say, the player once again parted ways with the group, this time by flaking out without even the courtesy of announcing that they quit. >< Serves me right for ever allowing them to come back, I guess. But Gromka's part might be interesting so I will try to do a more condensed write-up of Gromka's Book Three intro for next time. (I have a session log for that one, but seeing as how Gromka's gone most of her plot is little more than "oh, well that would have been interesting" at this point).
Great work on the personal stories, there. I love it.
I do wonder, though, how do you justify the extended quarantine of Old Korvosa. Two months is a long time to leave the Old Korvosans to fend for themselves. Is the plague still running, for if it isn't, why isn't the quarantine lifted?
UnArcaneElection - Meh. Alice disappeared and the group never bothered to look for her (of course we know what really happened was she ran off to the Shingles by herself and got eaten by the imp/choker duo.) Since I wasn't sure whether Gromka was going to come back or not, I never did anything with the character until it became clear the player wasn't coming back (they grew increasingly flakey as Book Three started). So Gromka disappeared, and the group never bothered to look for her. I like to think that she and her daughter had a random encounter with a Grue somewhere outside of Korvosa, and both got eaten. But that's just my bitterness talking. :-p
MrVergee - Basically there was some interaction, in the form of the Sable Marines doing air drops of supplies now and again, and people could go back and forth through the sewers (the wererats were actually running a very profitable side business). The main issue was that the bridges were all destroyed - including the big stone bridge that in the AP as-written was left intact. So there was no way for most people to get over there and help/restore order. For Old Korvosa's part, the citizens are largely organized themselves into gangs for mutual protection/zombie removal, and those that were left presumably stayed there because they either liked the Mad Max-style anarchy, were unwilling to leave their homes, or were unable to do (those few elderly and crippled who *didn't* become zombie food). There was pressure on Queen Ileosa to do *something* about Old Korvosa, but the troubles with Kaer Maga also diverted their attention, and Ileosa pretty much spent the entire past month as a shut-in, going crazy off of Kazavon (as mentioned in the Book Three intro, where she finally gave in). So basically it was just a "yeah, we know this is a problem and we're working on it when we get around to it. Bridges take time to build, y'know?"
MrVergee - Basically there was some interaction, in the form of the Sable Marines doing air drops of supplies now and again, and people could go back and forth through the sewers (the wererats were actually running a very profitable side business). The main issue was that the bridges were all destroyed - including the big stone bridge that in the AP as-written was left intact. So there was no way for most people to get over there and help/restore order. For Old Korvosa's part, the citizens are largely organized themselves into gangs for mutual protection/zombie removal, and those that were left presumably stayed there because they either liked the Mad Max-style anarchy, were unwilling to leave their homes, or were unable to do (those few elderly and crippled who *didn't* become zombie food). There was pressure on Queen Ileosa to do *something* about Old Korvosa, but the troubles with Kaer Maga also diverted their attention, and Ileosa pretty much spent the entire past month as a shut-in, going crazy off of Kazavon (as mentioned in the Book Three intro, where she finally gave in). So basically it was just a "yeah, we know this is a problem and we're working on it when we get around to it. Bridges take time to build, y'know?"
The delay in opening up Old Korvosa could definitely fit in your campaign as a sign that Kazavon's influence on Ileosa is increasing, rendering her too preoccupied at the moment to rule properly. I just asked because my players would wonder about such a delay.
In my campaign the PCs helped someone at the Leroung university procure ingredients for a cure, but as long as the cure hasn't been mass-produced, Old Korvosa remains locked off. And, of course, once the cure becomes available, Old Korvosa will be the last district to receive it. This gives me the timeframe to play out Escape from Old Korvosa. I always have to come up with reasonable explanations for things happening, or my players (notably one of them) will have trouble suspending their disbelief.