{. . .}
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?"
This summons thoughts related to New Jersey . . . .
It pretty much is indeed meant to be a sign that leadership has broken down in Korvosa. I did mention in the "mission briefing" portion of the personal intros that Queen Ileosa saw *no one* for pretty much the entire month after Andaisin's defeat - this included Rholand until she booty called him over. She still issued a few decrees, but they were mostly stuff like the tariff on goods from Kaer Maga - hurt far more than they helped. To be fair to her, though, this was about the point where Kazavon stepped up his game, and pretty much every time Ileosa closed her eyes she was getting tortured, so she was operating on basically no sleep until she finally gave in and started to become a monster as seen in the Book Three intro I posted way back (and at which point she couldn't really give a damn about those peasant a~!%&$+s in Old Korvosa).
There was also a thought that I kept in the back of my head, that while Ileosa might not even be conscious of it, Kazavon was aware of Glorio Arkona's involvement somehow in the conspiracy that led to Book One and Book Two. And now that he had served his usefulness, Kazavon would crush him. This started by isolating him from the rest of the city, and thus most of his powerbase. Of course Ileosa didn't know of his involvement at this point, else the Grey Maidens would have crashed into his manor long before the end of Book Three when the bottom pretty much fell out for everyone not willing to serve Kazavon.
Anyway, with the queen not speaking, that left the rest of the government to try to function, without a skilled seneschal to manage the day-to-day affairs. The nobles were all wrapped up in their own affairs - House Jalento and Carrowyn being wiped out during the plague, Jeggare trying to save his own ass (failure there), House Arkona cut off, House Ornelos watching and biding its time (and its head secretly reveling in the human misery), and the other houses too small to really do much. And being a Lawful society, below the queen and nobility Korvosa was pretty much managed by a vast bureaucracy, which meant f*#~ all ever got done without strong leadership *forcing* the issue.
So yeah, a major project like the bridges would require too much organization and resources for anyone to manage during the past month, especially with all the damage to the rest of the city.
Also, I had it in the back of my mind although I don't think I ever mentioned it (too much stuff going on), but I imagined that any crew working on making a bridge probably kept getting sniped from the other side by the Emperor's men or just plain crazies, trying to keep Old Korvosa isolated and their own post-apocalyptic playground.
And now for something completely fun (and different). As usual, this is spoilers for another AP, so don't open it if you don't want to hear about Kingmaker.
I've already written about several of the other APs, and while I don't have a fully clear idea in my head about Kingmaker, I'm pretty sure I would include a lot of the basic suggestions made on the board at least - Irovetti as clockwork king, introduce Nyssra early and often, get Brevoy and the other nearby nations involved in the goings on.
I also thought one person's idea of including the Red Hand of Doom in there somewhere to be a brilliant idea, so I'd probably ram that in somewhere between Book Two and Three(?).
Anyway, that's about all I had for Kingmaker at the moment, save that I've been stumbling across a number of songs on the radio and elsewhere that I immediately thought - that would make a great character theme for someone in Kingmaker! And they all sort of have the same musical theme, that of kingship and such (or at least mentioning kings and thrones and crowns and such in the song). So here's what I've got so far on that.
Main Theme - Heavy is the Head by Zac Brown Band
The Stag Lord (Book One villain) - Hail to the King by Avenged Sevenfold
(The Stag Lord sees himself as a king, at least.)
Hurgurka (Book Two villain) - Coming for the Throne by Otherwise
Vordakai (Book Three villain) - You Were the King, Now You're Unconscious by Atreyu
(Mostly because I thought the title was hilarious, and appropriate for a slumbering lich that wakes up only to immediately get beat down again by our heroes)
Armag (Book Four villain) - Premonition of Pain by 3 Inches of Blood
Irovetti (Book Five villain) - ??? (Something techno maybe?)
Nyrssa (BBEN - Big Bad Evil Nymph) - ??? (Definitely some sort of female vocal symphonic metal. I know what I want but a specific song hasn't come to mind as yet. If she was Winter Court fey then Ice Queen by Within Temptation would probably be perfect.)
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So as with everyone else, Gromka was basically regarded as a hero by the people of Korvosa – people would praise her on the street, offer to buy her drinks, etc. Gromka hated that given that she wanted to be FEARED, not respected, but too bad for her. Shortly after Andaisin’s defeat, she got contacted by the Shaoti, which she had learned from Dr. Davaulus’s notes had come and spirited her daughter away from his clutches after pretty much threatening a diplomatic incident (the Shaoti burning the Hospice down after taking everyone but Davaulus out of it).
So, of course, she was quite interested to hear they wanted to speak with her, and hustled over to East Shore where the last of the Shaoti were still camped. Now that the quarantine was lifting, however, virtually all of them were packing up to leave Korvosa, quite possibly for good (until they came back to sack the city, anyway). Unlike the rest of the citizenry, the Shaoti were respectful but distant, favoring a nod to acknowledge what Gromka did but no more, which she found more to her liking. She was directed to the house of their unofficial leader, Thousand Bones, and arrived to find the elderly Shaoti sitting with her daughter, Pilka. They it if off pretty well, him wearing tattoos of a skull and bones, her being a scarred witch doctor, and both of them valuing family.
Pilka, being twelve, is completely overjoyed to see her mommy again (don’t ask me how they got separated in the first place, as I don’t know that the grey maidens would have been able to pry a plague-sick Pilka out of Gromka’s grasp even if they wanted to, and she came to Korvosa in the first place to look for her daughter). Despite that, Gromka was one of those mothers that believed in “spare the rod, spoil the child”, so she was rather firm that Pilka behave herself and compose herself with no emotion in front of strangers. So much for a tearful reunion between these two! Gromka then went on to ask Thousand Bones why he went to so much trouble to save her daughter.
He explained that he had already felt the pain of loss due to the death of his grandson, and that he wished to spare a parent that pain. But more importantly, he had received a vision in one of his dreams – a varisian fortune teller (Zellara of course) had told him that he needed to find “the half-orc” whose help was vital to saving Korvosa but whose own life was about to be cut short by plague and treachery. At the time he had assumed Pilka was the half-orc, but now it was clear that Gromka was the one he had been sent to find.
The two discussed Gromka’s potential role to play in the coming storm, for Thousand Bones sensed that the storm was far from over, and Gromka believed she had been sent to Korvosa with a purpose. That being said, they both agreed that the best place for the Shaoti to be was somewhere else. But . . . Thousand Bones did have one request that he hoped Gromka could fulfill before he left. Since she was such a big hero of the city, and presumably saved the queen’s life, would it be possible for her to arrange for Thousand Bones to be given a tour of Castle Korvosa? No Shaoti had set foot in the castle (or the Grand Mastaba it was built upon) for many, many years but Thousand Bones would like to see it if the queen was amiable to such a request from Gromka – and if the queen said no, so be it.
Happy to repay saving her daughter’s life with such a straightforward and simple request, Gromka left with her daughter and went forthwith to the castle. She found the gates barred with a small but angry crowd outside the gates, badgering the grey maidens standing guard outside with demands to speak with the queen as airing grievances before King Eodred had been a fairly regular event. The Grey Maidens frankly didn’t give a damn, and while the crowd parted around Gromka as people recognized her and shouted out that she was one of the city’s saviors (prompting a disgusted sigh), the grey maidens didn’t give a damn about her either. At least, not until one of them recognized her as the one who helped them fend off some of Andaisin’s undead horrors in the courtyard (a reference to when Gromka left the battle against Andaisin in disgust as her will was so high she laughed off every curse, hex, and spell that Gromka could throw at her – and instead went looking for some random undead she could destroy alongside the grey maidens).
With a polite request to wait here while she saw what she could do, the grey maiden slipped inside the gates and fetched Sabrina who invited Gromka and her daughter inside the gates so they could talk privately. There was a discussion of Sabrina’s scars, and that her armor had been polished and cleaned since Andaisin’s attack. I also went for a little bit of a heartwarming moment as Sabrina showed she had a soft spot for kids – she removed her mask to let Pilka see her scarred and ruined face, and said these told the world that she and her mother (Gromka is a scarred witch doctor) are tough, and not to mess with anyone important to them. Which seemed to set Pilka more at ease, as she had been intimidated by Sabrina’s armor and mask until she saw that Sabrina was just like “Mommy” – a scarred badass.
Always one to stick to those of Chelish heritage (remember that Sabrina’s varisian heritage got her denied the post of Field Marshall, going instead to the half-varisian/half-chelish Kroft), Sabrina thought allowing the Shaoti access to the castle was a *splendid* idea. She would handle the necessary arrangements for Thousand Bones to be given a tour, along with a small contingent of bodyguards – would Gromka and Pilka also like to be part of the tour? Well, Pilka was beside herself at the thought of that, and Gromka was a half-orc, not an ogre, so she agreed as well.
A few days later, Gromka received word that the tour was to be held soon, and gathered at the appointed time alongside Pilka, Thousand Bones, and two young Shaoti braves. As they all walk to the castle, Thousand Bones pulls Gromka aside and explains the real reason he wanted a tour. When they invaded, the Chelish thought that the Grand Mastaba was a religious site of great import to the Shaoti – why else would they die to the last to defend it? But it wasn’t, it was a place where they stored dangerous items that they feared (Fangs of Kazavon, anyone?) Unfortunately that was about all Thousand Bones knew – the defense of the temple and details of what it was guarding was the duty of another tribe of Shaoti, and they were, to use a Chelish word . . . a~~&*!$s. And thus kept their secrets to themselves – nonetheless, Thousand Bones worried that perhaps these items were related to the doom still creeping up on Korvosa (and he was, of course, right in that belief). So, he wanted to go on this tour so that as some point he could slip away, sneak down the secret passages into the crypts of the Grand Mastaba, and see if these items had been disturbed.
Which, of course, led to Gromka asking how he planned to slip away, unless he was some sort of geriatric ninja (spoiler: he’s not). Thousand Bones held up a small pouch attached to his belt, which he explained was an illusionary dust that would render him invisible, while at the same time creating an illusion of himself that would continue to follow the tour (handy! Good thing the player didn’t try to nick this DM bullshit magic dust and go on a crime spree or anything >> ). He also extended an invitation to Gromka to accompany him if she wished, both to confirm the sincerity of what he was saying (totally not trying to murder the queen like everyone else has!), and to see what she would need to deal with since she was staying in this city and since Thousand Bones was leaving, dealing with it would indeed fall upon her and her . . . acquaintances (read: other PCs).
Gromka tells Pilka to stay with the two Shaoti braves, who vow to protect the young half-orc girl with their lives (as if Gromka *wouldn’t* kill them if anything did happen to Pilka on their watch). They wait until a good moment during the tour of the ground level, and then Thousand Bones uses a pinch of powder from his pouch, and he and Gromka slip away from their grey maiden escorts. He swiftly finds a hidden passage for them to use down into the guts of the castle, and the ancient pyramid below, ending up in the castle’s treasury. From there he accesses the secret room, only to find the empty box that the fangs had been stored in.
Disturbed by this discovery, Thousand Bones pulls out a piece of chalk, scrawling sigils on the floor, while asking the spirits for guidance. Using a tindertwig, he ignites the chalk, summoning a ghostly wolf to speak to. The wolf, to Thousand Bone’s increasing horror, is not friendly . . . indeed, its translucent skin peels off in front of their eyes, while the spirit taunts the Shaoti with the failure of his people. “The Fangs have been beared! And now your world SHALL BURN!” The spirit promises as it leaps out of the magic circle at them – and, due to the DM not having time or inclination to make a solo encounter, and it just being a simple divination spirit spell, the spirit wolf just melts away into nothing as soon as it leaves the burnt remains of the chalk circle.
Thousand Bones is understandably shaken to see his spell backfire so spectacularly, noting that apparently something had twisted the spell – some lingering evil from whatever had been locked away – and was now loose. The two then rejoined the tour with no one the wiser, and Thousand Bones basically wished Gromka the best of luck and that was the end of Gromka’s personal session. Also, with a mention that I wanted Pilka to have made a friend at some point while inside the city – I teased that it was going to be Alice, Gromka’s old character, who somehow survived the choker. Of course, that was not my plan, but as it turned out none of it mattered since Gromka flaked out shortly thereafter this point.
So, technically Pilka made two friends while away from her mother. The first was some nobleman’s brat daughter that was attending the Acadamae. I was planning on making Gromka’s next private session about meeting this friend with Pilka, only to arrive just as a handful of thugs were approaching to kidnap the girl. Gromka would easily deal with a couple low-level thugs, but hopefully she wouldn’t disable all of them at once – so that I could have Pilka use a witch spell of her own (I think was going to use Contagion Touch, or whatever the first-level spell is called that gives a person a horrible disease/made them sick was).
Pilka was *not* taught such magic by her mother, and indeed technically using witch magic is not possible without some sort of patron. It never came up who Gromka’s patron was, but I knew who Pilka’s was! The same being responsible for her surviving the Blood Veil plague instead of dying in the hospice several days before Thousand Bones arrived – the leukodaemon held down in the basement – “Lord Bile” as he came to be called. Delirious with fever and with a witch’s bloodline already in her, Pilka had called out for someone to save her . . . and the daemon was the only one who heard her plea. Amused and unable to free itself, it decided to snub Andaisin one life at a time and agreed to form a witch’s pact, making Pilka a twelve-year old first level witch and Bile her eternal patron.
Presumably, Gromka wouldn’t like her daughter being owned by a NE daemon, and either would have hunted Bile down to break the pact somehow (not so easily done), or when the party eventually crossed paths with the daemon (as since the leukodaemons don’t have plane shift, he couldn’t escape Korvosa without help), he would bring it up as leverage to try to swing Gromka towards being in favor of his various proposals.
Also, all in all, Lord Bile would prove to be a rather friendly and agreeable sort for a daemon, as the party would cross paths with him later, and wanting no part of the party’s bad side (and feeling as indebted to them as a daemon gets for enabling his escape from Andaisin’s clutches by killing everyone beneath the Hospice and then leaving before facing him), made an agreement with them that proved beneficial to both sides. Thus far, it hasn’t bit the party in the ass yet, and while I’d love to have Bile somehow return to twist things around to screw them, frankly their dance card is already full of so many bad guys at this point, and certainly unless Lord Bile digi-voles into a more powerful form he pretty much won’t even be a road sign to their high-level selves, let alone a speed bump. So he might just take the win of a surviving two encounters with PCs (well, one almost encounter and a pre-fight business proposal meeting anyway).
THERE! Now we can finally move on to Book Three, and Session Forty-Three, properly.
^And this brings up the (almost) perfect lead-in for converting Gromka (and Pilka) into NPC villains . . . .
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And now, we’re finally at the first explosive (snicker) session of Book Three!
So, the session opened with everyone gathering at the Kendall Amiptheater. I made a fairly expansive map for this one, to try to give a bit of grandeur to the proceedings (although I did not fill the seating with tokens as that would have greatly increased the time it took to download the map with very little gain. Nonetheless, I did set up some ranks of Sable Marines with their griffons down in the arena portion of the amphitheater, although with some city guard, and a line of Grey Maidens surrounding the stage that had been set up in the middle of the arena. Off to one side I placed the leaders of the various churches, and behind all of the assembled guards I placed several small thrones for the heads of what noble Houses remained. I made it a point to label each throne, and then leave the seats of House Jeggare, House Arkona, and House Jalento empty (House Carrowyn didn’t even get an empty chair).
Gromka and Vaz’em started up in the stands, way off to one side of the proceedings. Oliver was down standing with Kroft and Marcus. Rholand was up on the stage with Ileosa, Gwen, Togomor, and Sabrina. Cid, of course, was not there yet, but flying to the amphitheater shackled between two hellknights.
Now if I remember the order of events correctly, the session started with Queen Ileosa giving a speech that I made up as I went along. Mostly patriotic fervor – Korvosa survived the plague, but only barely and the wounds were still there, Ileosa would do her best to fix the city, Kaer Maga was a bunch of a#!&*@+s for not helping them in their time of need, etc. etc. Before she got too far into a (Kazavon-inspired) rant about Kaer Maga, Ileosa turned her attention to what this speech was really for – a happy moment.
She announced that a suitable replacement had been found for the treacherous Dr. Davaulus, and she was happy to present one of their heroes, Rholand J’Skar, as the new Royal Physician. Taking off the magical necklace that projected her voice across the amphitheater, Ileosa handed it off to Rholand, who gave a very brief speech about how he was happy to serve (snicker) and that he would do his best to see not just to the queen’s continued health by all of Korvosa as well, or some crap like that.
At this point, the Hellknights arrived, a large unit of them led by DeVries and Vox, with Cid in the middle as a prisoner, finally arrived and landed in the middle of the arena. The sudden arrival of the hellknights sends the crowd into a nervous murmur, that only increases as DeVries steps forward and up onto the stage. Rholand and Sabrina both position themselves to block DeVries’s path to Ileosa but she motions them back as DeVries stops in front of her, towering over even the tall queen.
He announces that he had received word from the Emperor of Cheliax, and he had come here to fulfill his duty. He draws a large, wicked looking sword from his back . . . and then kneels in front of Ileosa and offers her the sword, balancing it on his palms. DeVries then announces that he was here to make Ileosa an honorary member of the Order of the Nail, and its official leader – rather than a distinct organization separate from Korovsa, the Order would henceforth be under the direct command of the queen, just like the Sable Marines and City Guard (say WHAT!?) Everybody is confused at this point, especially the Hellknights who had come here expecting that they were going to kill Ileosa, not make her their new boss! Ileosa graciously accepted the sword, and then the scabbard from DeVries, sheathing the blade and slinging it across her back with confused gratitude.
Noticing Cid standing amidst the hellknights as some sort of prisoner, Ileosa made her first official order as the new Order of the Nail commander to release Cid – he would serve as Ileosa’s liaison to the Order (being friends with royalty has its benefits). DeVries’s anger finally leaks out, as he argues against such a thing, citing Cid as a traitor (to his new boss, hah!) but Ileosa hears none of it and repeats her order. And thus Cid gets a stay of execution, even as some more bombshells are dropped.
Ileosa moves the proceedings along by announcing the new seneschal – Togomor. Marcus Endrin explodes at this point, as while he had not been looking forward to being the new seneschal, he was willing to do it. And if Ileosa had picked someone else that Marcus respected, like Chief Arbiter Zenderholm (who was also in attendance as House Zenderholm’s representative), he would have understood that. But for Ileosa to pick an *outsider* like Togomor was too much. He starts shouting insults at Ileosa, she replies in kind, and as always Rholand tries to get in between them and play peacemaker.
Which is when Ileosa delivers her final blow, announcing that henceforth, she was re-organizing the defenses of the city. No more would there be the Order of the Nail, the Grey Maidens, the Sable Marines, and the city guard. No, from now on there would be only two organizations – the Grey Maidens, charged with internal security and protecting the queen, and the Grey Guard, charged with defenses against external threats – the Sable Marines and City Guard would be merged into this new unit, effective immediately. The Hellknights, for now, would remain a separate organization, but would eventually be merged as well at a later date. Both Grey Maidens and Grey Guard would report directly to Sabrina Merrin.
Nobody thought this was a good idea, lest of all Marcus Endrin who now suddenly found himself answering to a Varisian (Sabrina), and losing the historic autonomy of the Sable Marines. So he went berserk, shrieking that Ileosa could not do this, that she was overstepping her bounds as sovereign (which she technically was but nobody was in a position to argue with her at this point). The argument grew more heated, to the point that Marcus tore off his badge of office and threw it directly into Ileosa’s face. Stunned, Ileosa called for the Grey Maidens to seize him, and Rholand hopped down from the stage to confront Marcus. At this point, several things happened at once, as Marcus drew a hand crossbow from under his jacket and shouted something about putting down tyrants (a reference to the original Korvosa who founded the city giving the original Endrin a crossbow with a bolt of slaying (human), stating that if he ever became a tyrant Endrin was to use that to put him down. Rholand tripped Marcus with his halberd, holding the axe head down to the man’s throat then, or at least that’s what the player wanted to do. But since I was typing this all out, I decreed that it happened too fast for Rholand to stop – he managed to trip Marcus, but not until after he fired.
The bolt struck Ileosa directly in the temple, prompting a collective scream from all of the assembled people matching – a scream that only grew as Ileosa calmly reached up and tore the crossbow bolt out of her head. Now it was Ileosa’s turn to jump down from the stage, as she approached the treasonous Marcus with murderous fury in her hands, blood-dripping crossbow bolt clenched like a dagger in one hand.
Now it was Rholand’s turn to defend Marcus, as he stood to block Ileosa’s way and tried to talk her down. Snarling, Ileosa commanded him to move (using the dominate Person power of the crown) but yet again Rholand went and made his Will Save (the crown never could do jack shit to Rholand >< ). But since it was a cutscene, Ileosa simply shoved Rholand out of the way with surprising strength and stabbed the bolt into Marcus’s shoulder. The man gasped and went pale, shriveling immediately as the necrotic energies held within the bolt were finally released (Ileosa probably should have counted as human enough to trigger the arrow of slaying, but it made for a good hint that she was no longer human, just like taking a crossbow bolt to the head hinted that Ileosa was not going to be something the party could just muderhobo away like all the other bad guys).
The assembled citizenry screamed and prepared to run as Ileosa stood up from the body of Marcus – even she had been shocked at his sudden death (she had wanted to hurt him, but she didn’t know about the arrow of slaying so technically it was an accidental murder still. She had activated the same power she had used on Andaisin though, and so Marcus’s soul was damned to join Andaisin in Scarwall). But Ileosa quickly recovered her composure, and played it off as if she had meant to kill him. Addressing the crowd, she gives a “thus always to traitors” speech, and demands that if anyone else wants to oppose her authority, now was the time to step forward and receive their just reward. But if they were loyal and obedient citizens of Korvosa, then they would kneel!
Without hesitation both Togomor and Sabrina kneeled, with the Grey maidens, hellknights, and most of the citizenry following suit. Kroft notably remained standing, too shocked to react really as she simply stared at the withered body of Marcus in disbelief. So Ileosa focused her attention on Kroft when she repeated herself “I said, KNEEL!”
I thought maybe the party was going to argue on the point (no PC ever likes bowing down to an NPC, any NPC, no matter how superior the NPC is to them at present), but Oliver and Cid grudgingly took a knee, and vaz’em and Gromka were too far away really for Ileosa to notice one way or the other. The only one left standing at this point was, predictably, Rholand. It really was hilariously a lot like this scene from the Avengers. Worse yet, beyond just disobeying the queen’s command to kneel, Rholand began speaking against her, lecturing her about how childish this was (while he still had the necklace on, projecting his voice throughout the amphitheater).
Looking over Rholand’s shoulder, Ileosa began to urge him to kneel in an increasingly panicked tone, while drawing her rapier from the pocket of her dress. He continued to refuse, and picking up on her distraction (looking at the ghostly form of Eodred/Kazavon screaming at her to “KILL HIM”) demanded to know who she was looking at, who had control over the queen of Korvosa? At this point, Ileosa’s face went cold, and her focus locked onto Rholand as she quietly said “I am the queen of Korvosa. There is no one in control of me.”
And she was about three seconds from plunging her rapier into Rholand’s chest when the stage exploded. Yes, you read that correctly, the stage exploded – somebody had set us up the bomb! (You didn’t really think I was going to just flat-out kill a PC by DM decree did you? Well, I’m certainly capable of it but I had anticipated this.)
I had Rholand, Oliver, and Cid make Reflex saves as they were right next to the stage when it went up. Oliver passed his, and I believe Cid did as well. Rholand failed his, and so he was knocked unconscious and didn’t participate in the carnage that followed. Smoke and screams filled the ampitheater’s arena, as the citizenry fled and the guards down in the amphitheater pretty much died. Vaz’em and Gromka leapt down into the arena, as of course being PCs they run towards danger instead of away.
They found Cid and helped him up – being on the periphery of the blast most of the Hellknights were winded but mostly suffered minor injuries. The Sable Marines and city guard, being front and center though, had sustained severe injuries and there were dead and dying guardsmen lying everywhere amidst the wreckage. Vaz’em got out his CLW wand and started patching Cid up, when out of the smoke the draconic form of Gwen emerged, staggering drunkenly towards them before collapsing. A great piece of timber jutted from the dragon’s side. “Help.” Was the only thing Gwen managed to say before she fell unconscious and started to bleed out. Vaz’em immediately went over and started spamming CLW from his wand into her (surprisingly generous given Vaz’em’s standard self-serving neutrality, but then everybody likes Gwen). That was enough to stabilize her and for the healing magic to push the piece of timber back out of her, so she managed to wake up and be ambulatory again, if a little weak. Satisfied with his work, Vaz’em starts sneaking through the smoke while Cid, Gromka, and Gwen try to help survivors on the periphery of the blast.
Meanwhile, Oliver wakes up to find himself on the ground in the midst of all the devastation and destruction. He starts shouting people’s names, and quickly finds Kroft, also up and about and trying to help some of the wounded guardsmen. Hoping to get someone who has healing magic (and heck, the Heal skill) up and around to help with the triage, Oliver moves on to try and find Rholand.
He finds Rholand and the queen near the ruins of the stage – Rholand out cold with Ileosa draped over him – she had sheltered him from the blast with her own body (she just can’t stay mad at him! ;) ) At Oliver’s approach she pushes herself up onto her feet, groaning in pain as she reaches around to pull several fist-sized pieces of metal out of her back. Oliver helps her with removing the last one stuck up near her shoulder blades. Despite her considerable injuries, as soon as the shrapnel is removed Ileosa’s wounds heal, and in seconds she is pretty much back to her old self. She commands Oliver to get Rholand out of her sight, as she still didn’t know what she would do the next time she saw him. And with that, she wandered off into the smoke – looking for Sabrina, although she doesn’t explain that to Oliver.
Vaz’em finds Ileosa a few rounds later, kneeling over the body of Sabrina. The queen’s bodyguard had her head tilted in an unnatural direction – Sabrina was definitely dead. Ileosa straightened Sabrina’s neck back out, and bit into her finger, dribbling a few drops of blood into Sabrina’s open mouth. Immediately the grey maiden commander came spurtering back to life – Vaz’em actually didn’t really think anything of this, except that dropping blood into your mouth seemed an odd material component to cast Raise Dead (oh Vaz’em, you so silly sometimes).
Togomor showed up about this time – the real Togomor, as the one up on the stage that got blown up was predictably a projected image (and this of course wasn’t suspicious to anyone because he already had a habit of doing that *evil DM grin* ).
So the party got back together, told Togomor what happened, and continued to help with the triage as the smoke finally began to clear out. Ileosa emerged from the smoke with Sabrina, and ordered the party to find out who had done this, why, and to make them pay. She saw Rholand, although things were clearly awkward between the two of them, but Ileosa proved her threat, for the moment at last, was an empty one. Togomor then cast Teleport, removing himself, Gwen, Ileosa, and Sabrina from the arena.
The party immediately started investigating, Vaz’em discovering a fragmented metal shell underneath the stage – all that remained of the bomb. Vaz’em had another contact in the city, a dwarf alchemist and weapons dealer that he could consult with, so he offered to take the bomb fragments to him for analysis. But first the party went back to Zellara’s house, their standard gathering place, to debate what the heck just happened! There was certainly quite a lot to discuss, and Zellara predictably appeared to give them the Book Three Harrow reading. This one wasn’t as good as the other two had been, as the cards were a bit disjointed (kinda like my plans for Book Three at this point, which were all over the place and being made up as I went along mostly). But basically, they got a lot of cards and readings hinting at all of the people they would encounter in this investigation – those who wanted to hide the truth, those from afar who might be allies (Laori), and that they were basically heading into a tangled dark mess where few people were what they seemed.
They also hilariously drew the Foreign Merchant for the third time in a row, so he showed up afterwards to give them each a card that they could tear up to summon him if they needed to do business (now that they’re out of Korvosa I suspect they’ll actually use these cards – they’re already debating using one in Arkona’s summer manor).
And that was pretty much where we left the session, if I remember correctly!
So, obviously I played things from Ileosa’s speech pretty closely to how they are given in Book Three (albeit this was all supposed to happen off-screen, probably so Ileosa doesn’t just kill the party when they raise a fuss). I debated letting them save Marcus Endrin but decided against it, particularly since the hothead probably would have gotten himself killed anyway. I tried to play off the confrontation between Marcus and Ileosa as more of an argument that simply grew too heated rather than Ileosa deliberately luring Marcus out and then killing him, although Ileosa was more and more willing to resort to violence and death to achieve her ends now that she had accepted Kazavon’s presence – more or less anyway.
I had two previous versions of the opening in my mind – the very first one was to include in the Book Three intro Marcus’s assassination attempt on Ileosa as an actual pre-meditated act with him breaking into the queen’s chambers alongside DeVries to put an end to her, only for them both to meet their end – DeVries to Red Mantis assassins and Marcus to a crossbow bolt shoved through his eye. So basically, off-screen from the PCs. Boring!
The second one was to follow Book Three pretty damn closely – everyone meets at the amphitheater as given above, and predictably the party doesn’t bow down to Ileosa’s demands. Which leads to a fight between her and them right there and now. I had even had theme song for the fight picked out and everything. Obviously, this was a fight that the PCs would lose – even though PCs can always pull out surprising victories, and the villain can always roll a 1, I’m pretty sure a mythic level 16 bard (Ileosa wasn’t done leveling up from the crown just yet) with something obscene like DC 30/Epic & Regeneration 50 (Serithial) would just laugh off everything they could throw at her – the only thing that might even scratch her was a crit from Cid. And even if she somehow started to lose, she could always pull out the level 6 bard AoE spell that forces every enemy to make a Will save or immediately be rendered helpless by her great magnificence. After the fight, Ileosa would revive them and bind them with a Geas – they were to go into Old Korvosa, and assassinate Glorio Arkona – and then set them loose.
This would let the party more or less follow the as-written plot of Book Three, but there were a whole lot of problems with it. Even assuming nothing went wrong with the capture -> Geas process, and my players didn’t hate my guts for DM-fiating them into this, they still would have been forced to fight Glorio instead of interacting with him (dangerous given how powerful he is anyway), and they’d have probably made a beeline for that instead of exploring Old Korvosa, dealing with Pilts, etc. etc. So I said “f@%~ it!”, and just went with what happened above, and let things develop more naturally. Now if the PCs went and killed Arkona, or tried to kill Ileosa, or whatever, it was all on them and their choices which was the whole theme of Book Three – who will you stand with? What will you stand for? (Rholand certainly wasn’t standing for any of Ileosa’s supreme leader BS!)
Still, I needed some way to defuse a potential confrontation between Ileosa and the party, especially when she kills Marcus in front of them and goes all tyrannical super villain in front of them. So I came up with a new threat to divert everyone’s attention – including Ileosa’s – from the difference of opinion between Ileosa and the party, and to allow time for Ileosa to cool off (I mean, she did just take a crossbow bolt to the head. That’s likely to give anybody a headache and make them cranky, super freaky regeneration or not). I thought about using the Hellknights as that “new enemy”, but decided I wanted to drag out that plot point a little longer and thus settled on a mystery – someone tried to blow up Ileosa and her new government.
In original planning for this, there was also some question as to whether Rholand’s player would continue to play Rholand, or play some other new PC. If he had gone with a new PC, my plan was to continue the Rholand x Ileosa relationship as planned – and then brutally kill Rholand with the bomb. Ileosa would be found cradling his body, trying desperately to bring him back to life with her blood and failing while this song played. It wouldn’t work like it did with Sabrina because Rholand’s soul would be claimed by Qui Zhong and protected, keeping him free of Kazavon’s corruption and a damnation to Scarwall for all eternity as awaited Sabrina (I need to figure out how to give her a happy ending if the PCs try to get it for her). Or, you know, Kazavon though losing another lover would be “good” for Ileosa’s soul and refused to bring Rholand back, even if it meant getting to keep him as a plaything for all eternity. I think it goes without saying that every single person at the amphitheater would be motivated to find the person who did this, likely with single-minded intensity by the PCs. Given the ideas that I had for who was in fact responsible for the bomb, it was very good that this plan didn’t get activated.
I suspect this was largely due to the fact that I announced prior to starting Book Three that everyone was entitled to a full respect of their character, so long as it was within the previously displayed capabilities of their character (I would have been annoyed if Vaz’em had become a wizard, for example, but rogues, rangers, inquisitors, any sort of melee-based sneaky type was certainly fine). So Rholand took advantage of this and made some modifications to his character prior to Book Three. The changes everyone did are already detailed way back when first discussing Book Three back on page 3.
So, if you remember Cid’s intro, DeVries had heard back from the Emperor that given the chaos in Korvosa, Cheliax was willing to annex its old colony back, and DeVries was given the authority to do so in the name of the Emperor (he probably really didn’t give a shit, but it got DeVries to stop bothering him since he’d be provisional governor and would be making his own decisions then). So DeVries had boasted that he was going to kill Ileosa, and then kill Cid, in front of everyone at the amphitheater (good luck with that DeVries – you have only marginally better chances than the PCs would have).
Then during the actual session, he had a sudden change of heart and rolled over onto his back and pissed in the air like a good dog for Ileosa, a complete reversal of his previous behavior regarding Korvosa’s new queen. This still is a mystery to the party and it’s sort of fallen away in light of all the other things Cid has since learned about his organization.
If you recall, when Vox was talking to Cid at the end of his private intro session, she got called away because someone had come to see DeVries. That someone was the current head of House Ornelos, Vladimir (I think I called him Vladimir?) Ornelos, a young man who nonetheless had House Ornelos under very firm, very quiet control. He met with DeVries, and while you may be thinking some sort of magical domination or other mental whammy, Ornelos didn’t need any sort of trick. He simply told DeVries the truth about the Order of the Nail (leaving his own involvement out of it, since that would have given away his real identity as Lorthract, exiled Duke of Hell). I’m not going to spoil what Cid learned of who actually runs things in the Order of the Nail just yet, but basically DeVries got told what to do and say, and he grudgingly obeyed by surrendering nominal control of his order over to Ileosa.
I wasn’t entirely sure yet who bombed the amphitheater at this point. Glorio or Melyia Arkona were potential suspects, but I decided that was ultimately both too predictable and counterproductive to Glorio’s efforts to distance himself from this whole “conspiracy against the crown” thing that had thus far backfired so spectacularly with Lamm and Andaisin. Melyia would have done it just to screw Glorio over, but a gigantic bomb is not really her style.
The main target of the bomb was, of course, Ileosa, but rather than an assassination attempt I decided it should be more was more to confirm what she was – a Bearer of one of the Relics of Kazavon. That meant it could have been Laori Vaus or some other Brotherhood of Bone agent, but I decided to leave them out of this as well, as then the players would be trying to kill Laori on sight and I really wanted them to get the full experience of being friends with Laori because Laori is HILARIOUS.
The next main suspect was Lorthract, seeking to confirm that someone had indeed found the Fangs and that his work in returning Kazavon to life was nearly complete (they were old buddies, and Lorthract’s support for Kazavon was likely why he got kicked out of Hell and is now on the run because there’s only room for one supreme evil overlord and that’s ASMODEUS!) That was the one I had settled for as we held this session, with Ornelos/Lorthract seeking the additional benefit of framing Glorio Arkona for it so the queen destroyed House Arkona for him and pretty much made House Ornelos the last great House standing. Meanwhile, he would ingratiate himself with the queen now that he knew Kazavon was coming back through her, and the party could try to thwart this by discovering and revealing the truth. Still, there was the little problem that if the party pushed too hard, they’d have a pissed off Duke of Hell to deal with at level 10 (while Lorthract himself is like CR 25).
Ultimately, since the investigation of the bomb never really actually got off the ground because the party kept getting distracted with other things (and I didn’t exactly have a clearly delineated path for the party to follow to discover the perpetrators), I eventually brought the whole bomb thing back as a throw-away line by Togomor when he was revealing the depths of his evil to Rholand near the surprise sudden ending of Book Three (when the bottom fell out for the party). He is a Bearer of a Relic of Kazavon too (the Staff of the Slain), and wanted to confirm that Ileosa was indeed a Bearer as well, someone who he had been searching for for a very long time. Plus, since his usual tactic was Projected Image everywhere, nobody would suspect that he conveniently wasn’t in the blast radius. Gwen was an unfortunate potential casualty, but it’s not like blowing her up was the worst thing he’d ever done to her (far, far from it).
So . . . not exactly a satisfying resolution to the explosive opening the Book Three, but it’s what I ended up going with so that I had someone instead of a lingering mystery.
So we picked up pretty much right where we left off last session, with the group just receiving their Harrow reading from Zellara. Vaz’em’s player was not in attendance on this night, so the ninja kept to himself as the group left to part ways (hardly different from usual really! :-p ). As the group left Zellara’s a dark shadow detached from the rooftops to land in front of them – Blackjack.
The party had a love-hate relationship with the vigilante, mostly hate but they had found common cause in saving the city from its various disasters. Tonight Blackjack was even gruffer than usual, as he cautiously felt them out about how they viewed the queen’s new method of rulership. The party was fairly lukewarm to Blackjack’s statements that Ileosa had to be removed from power for the good of the city – they had seen firsthand what she was capable of, and it didn’t seem likely to end well for anyone opposing her.
Blackjack revealed that he was still looking for Senaschal Neolandus, for what good a legal challenge to Ileosa’s authority would do (Ileosa says “no, I’m not stepping down.” Now what – who’s going to make her?). He came to them for help, but after the day they had the party wasn’t really receptive to taking the first step towards revolution, which only frustrated Blackjack more (he was already cranky due to Marcus getting killed). The conversation turned more hostile as it went on – I can remember Blackjack saying something like “You want a shoulder to cry on Cid?” “Yeah?” “Well don’t look to use mine. Suck it up.”
Eventually he gave up on trying to convince them, and simply left, stating that he had a lead to follow-up on in the search for Neolandus (the painter Salvatore Scream who patched Neolandus up after he floated out of the sewer, although he didn’t give the party a name). He also said for the party to check-in with Vencarlo if they ever started to give a damn, as Blackjack would leave word with Vencarlo of how the search was going. Unfortunately, they never went looking for Vencarlo, and just sort of went “Huh, that’s weird – Vencarlo disappeared on us.”
From there, the group parted ways to get some sleep – it was going to be a very long next couple of weeks. We then had another round of individual scenes, which pretty much ate up the entire time of the session – an unfortunate habit that would be repeated several times throughout early Book Three, and likely one of the reasons why it seemed to drag on forever as very little got done in those sessions besides one scene per PC.
Anyway, next morning Oliver went to Citadel Volyshenek to check on Kroft – I can’t remember if it was his idea or I hinted at him to do it or what. Regardless, to Citadel Volyshenek he went, to find the city guard busily tearing down the old banners and replacing them with those of the Grey Maidens/Grey Guard. There weren’t a lot of familiar faces – apparently a good portion of the city guard had simply up and quit rather than being rolled into another organization – a sentiment the Sable Marines largely echoed. Oliver found Kroft in her office, sitting on the floor and quite drunk – she hadn’t gone home all night, but instead had stayed here drinking and reminiscing about Marcus and her time as Field Marshall.
The drunk Kroft revealed that she had resigned her post – Sabrina was gracious and it wasn’t about being below her former friend and rival. Kroft just couldn’t do it anymore, not after watching Marcus killed in front of her – she just couldn’t serve a woman like Ileosa anymore, city be damned. Oliver and Kroft share a drink, Oliver doing his best to be supportive instead of a uncouth a%+~$+~, and he asks Kroft what she would do now. Surprisingly, Kroft said that she had considered hitting the roads as a wandering adventurer - seemed to have worked out well enough for Oliver and his friends. As an added bonus, it would get her far away from Korvosa, as it was feeling less and less like her city, and she didn’t want to see what it would become under Ileosa’s new policies.
But, Kroft had also come through for the party one last time – as a parting gift she had put together another aid package of supplies – she figured the stockpiles could handle the loss, and it wouldn’t be her worry to keep curative supplies high for the troops’, so f#@~ it. She handed over the stockpile of items that she gives per the book – a bunch of potions and a couple wands. They would certainly come in handy – this group tends to go through healing like water, especially now that Rholand is no longer an oracle of bullshit (life). Considering that Vencarlo was a complete nuisance during Book One while Kroft was going through the difficulties of the rioting, one would expect him to be here to comfort Kroft on the loss of her friend. But nobody noticed or commented on his sudden and inexplicable absence (*sigh*).
Meanwhile, Cid started his day out by going to the nearby tavern to his inn and getting drunk. It was the beginning of a character trait, given how often he would find himself in a bar drinking over the course of Book Three. Then again, given the glee at which I kept hammering poor Cid with horrifying revelations one could hardly blame him for seeking solace in drink. He was just sitting down to enjoy that drink when a familiar face sat down next to him at the bar, to the angry mumblings of the other drunkards starting out their day. Willhelm Ratface, nominal leader of the wererats, sits down and cuts to the chase without much preamble.
He was wondering if he could hire the party to go and kill the hell out of some guys for the wererats, given how good the party was at killing the hell out of people they don’t like. Apparently their business of escorting people through the sewers for a nominal fee was suddenly in danger – someone or something was snatching up whole groups - guides, guards, and customers all. They knew most of the sewers, and while hardly a safe place to live the upper levels weren’t usually so dangerous that an entire group of people would just up and not arrive. Whatever it was, it could handle several wererats at a time, and that certainly made it dangerous – so Wilhelm wanted the party to go kill the hell out of it. And the wererats would pay, of course.
He also had some other cheery news that he had heard through the underworld grapevine – somebody had put out a hit on the party. They were paying top dollar for someone, anyone, to hunt the party down and kill them. Wilhelm hadn’t heard of anyone taking up the bounty yet, nor had he learned who had painted the target on the party’s back. But he could spread some of the money that the wererats had collected as a reward for the party for dealing with their problem to loosen tongues – it would mean less coin as a reward, but possibly valuable information on who was coming after them *now*. Cid agreed that was a good deal (and the other players agreed OOC to go with the less reward, more information approach). Vaz’em’s operational paranoia was rubbing off on them nicely – or perhaps everyone had just learned by now that I was a rat bastard DM who wasn’t afraid to sucker punch them with daggers, so they should pay attention when they learn someone was trying to hire people to kill them.
We now switched to Rholand, who found himself back in the castle. I can’t remember if it was his own idea or if he was “helped” there by some Grey Maidens who showed up at his door. Anyway, he arrived at the castle to find a man in cleric’s robes arguing with Sabrina – this was Valdur Bromethan, a cleric of Sarenrae and while technically not the head of House Bromethan as he had chosen a life of the cloth rather than luxury, he still tended to be the house spokesperson. The two of them were having a rather heated argument over the fate of Marcus Endrin’s body – Bromethan wanted to be given the body so it could be given a proper burial, and Sabrina was pretty much just coolly enjoying ruffling the man’s feathers, who obviously had been a close friend of the would-be queenslayer. Rholand did his usual peacemaking, although I would say that he leaned towards Sabrina in that he made some empty promises about looking into it and then told Bromethan to scram. Sabrina confessed that she didn’t know what happened to Endrin’s body either, but she wanted to watch the hotblooded man lose his cool so she was uncooperative.
Regardless, Rholand then got shown to see Ileosa, and pretty much Bromethan and his problems were forgotten and never mentioned again. Rholand found Ileosa in the baths, the water stained cloudy and red from all of her own blood she had washed off. Now in private, Ileosa was much friendlier (certainly not on the brink of killing Rholand) although she was clearly hurt that Rholand had publically humiliated her like that, lecturing her in public after refusing to obey one of her commands. If he didn’t obey as the royal physician, why should anyone else do as Ileosa commanded? Rholand likewise was a little less antagonistic in private than he had been, trying to explain that he had been attempting to show her what she was doing was wrong. He also cracked some sort of joke that Ileosa should have told him she was bathing and he would have joined her.
Ileosa was somewhat mollified, and if nothing else calmer than she had been, so she turned the conversation towards Rholand’s duties. Emerging from the pool, Ileosa showed him the new wide scars crisscrossing her back – left there by the shrapnel she had pulled out of her back yesterday. The wounds had sealed instantly as usual, but also as usual hideous scars had been left behind where her flesh had knit itself back together. The wound on her temple had likewise sealed itself shut into an ugly puckered scar, although she would likely be able to cover it up with a clever hair style. I can’t remember if Ileosa complained of still having some pain at this point or not, nor if they talked of anything else as Ileosa got dressed.
In any event, as Ileosa moved to leave the baths, she suddenly screamed in agony and collapsed. Rholand rushed over to her side and examined her, determining somehow through Heal skill that there was still shrapnel in Ileosa’s back – small fragments that had been driven deep into the flesh and then had the wound seal shut behind them. Now they were floating around in Ileosa’s back, cutting into the flesh over and over and causing a mind-numbing amount of pain. This was originally meant to be an ongoing problem for Rholand to solve, as there were some serious problems with operating on Ileosa to just remove the fragments – cutting open her back only for it to seal shut a few seconds later being the first.
In any event, I never got further than that for planning, as Rholand decided the solution was to operate immediately. He came up with some idea of working a dagger into her back and then leaving it in the wound so that it couldn’t close, sliding his fingers/tools down the side of the blade to enter the wound to get inside. Ileosa hardly liked this plan, but she liked being crippled with the back ache from Hell even less, so she ordered Sabrina to get Rholand whatever he needed. Ultimately what happened was Ileosa ended up screaming non-stop face down on a table, with half a dozen grey maidens stoically holding her down while Rholand repeatedly cut into her back to extract pieces of shrapnel. I wasn’t entirely sure that this would completely fix the problem, but Rholand rolled *really* well on his Heal checks to remove the shrapnel (he always rolled well when Ileosa was involved *roll eyes* ). So I just decided that this problem was solved for good – it wasn’t meant to be a plot-defining issue anyway, really, so whatever. Obviously after enduring that, Ileosa needed to rest and Rholand was sent on his way.
That night, he dreamed he was back there, operating on Ileosa again. And looming over the table opposite of him was the leering face of scarred Eodred, who screamed in his face “NOW WE ARE THE SAME!” (i.e. now we’ve both tortured Ileosa) before Rholand woke up in a cold sweat.
And that was pretty much all we had time for this session!
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Some great development in the story, I absolutely love it.
+1 on that, and I totally agree with your judgment that certain things as written are probably too contrived (even without seeing the AP itself, I did get this complaint from a player in an otherwise excellent Curse of the Crimson Throne PbP that is unfortunately now defunct, about the much earlier rescue of Trinia (which you also changed); of course, the AP as written also differs in having Ileosa (from the start) be nowhere near as interesting.
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Just remembered that one of the things that Rholand talked to Ileosa about was the creation of the Grey Guard and dissolution of the city guard & Sable Marines. He expressed his concern that this would lead to many of them losing their jobs as they would not want to work as part of the Grey Guard. Ileosa sighed and agreed on further reflection that perhaps that really wasn’t the best of her ideas after all, but it was too late to go back. Kroft had already resigned, along with half the city guard, and the changeover was already in motion. To reverse it now would likely be ineffective and just make her look indecisive.
(Interesting tidbit – the party finally had a name now, thanks to Andaisin. She kept calling them the queen’s “Grey Thugs” throughout Book Two, and the name sort of stuck. They’ve since debating picking a new name for themselves to distance them from the old “loyal to the crown” party in Book Four).
So we start next session with Vaz’em getting his own personal scene, which took place the night of the speech, rather than the next morning like the others. Vaz’em goes to speak with his explosives contact, a dwarf who went by the name “Boomhammer”. Boomhammer takes a look at the bomb fragments Vaz’em was able to recover, and manages to deduce that these fragments were the outer casing for the bomb. Basically there were three components to this bomb – a compact inner bomb – probably something really powerful from Numeria, these fragments that formed a shell around the bomb that were designed to break apart into a hail of razor-sharp shrapnel, and an outer bomb that was just a bunch of black powder to make noise, fire, and try to conceal that the main bomb was an expensive import from Numeria (basically, someone bought some C4).
Also of note was that this fragmentation shell that got turned into shrapnel was made of many different kinds of metal – silver, cold iron, adamantine. Usually someone used only one special material, and only then if they knew it was going to be effective against their target. The fact that someone had just thrown the kitchen sink of materials at this was really weird (testing to make sure Ileosa wasn’t some sort of fey or lycanthrope, which also have freaky regeneration as the source of their DR).
Boomhammer offered to reach out to his contacts and try to find who smuggled the exotic explosive in. Vaz’em urged him to be careful – these people were clearly dangerous and wanted to stay hidden (plus Vaz’em was always – and rightly – paranoid). Boomhammer gave a gruff affirmative and then Vaz’em went on his way.
On his way home, Vaz’em encounters a girl dressed in paupers clothes singing a haunting but beautiful song while playing a crappy and somewhat out-of-tune fiddle. Several passerby drop coins into a threadbare hat at the girl’s feet – mostly copper. As he gets closer and the young woman stops playing, Vaz’em recognizes her – it’s Cinnabar, the Red Mantis leader (mostly I threw in the pauper singing bit for flavor and to hint that she was a master of disguise).
Cinnabar greets Vaz’em, asks him if he had considered the Red Mantis offer and if he had talked to the queen on their behalf (he hadn’t, and wouldn’t for quite some time, Vaz’em being Vaz’em). She also mentions that she had wanted to speak with him (as if she had somehow predicted that he would be passing by on this exact street corner – gotta give Vaz’em his paranoia fix somehow ;) ) about the bomb at the amphitheater. She wanted to make it clear that the Red Mantis – nor their employer – were involved in the bomb. Bombs are inherently chaotic and imprecise tools – the tools of an amateur. The Red Mantis did not use such methods when making surgical strikes – unless of course the task at hand was to cause chaos or widespread destruction, in which case they will use something uncontrollable like the plague then and only then.
Cinnabar also had wanted a meeting to give Vaz’em a warning – the resources of House Jeggare were considerable, and Vaz’em had been sloppy. He hadn’t disposed of Lord Jeggare’s body, and while it was not in good enough condition for a Raise Dead (Vaz’em had basically torn his head off when he tore out his throat), preparations were being made to use a Resurrection spell on his body. Given Jeggare had seen his face (Vaz’em, being a catfolk, was awfully conspicuous of an assassin in human-centric Korvosa) Vaz’em was going to be in an awful lot of trouble once Jeggare was alive again.
Fortunately for him, the Red Mantis were willing to offer him a little bit of assistance – Cinnabar provided Vaz’em with a Disintegration Shroud (I think that’s the name of it. Consumable wondrous item that destroys a body it’s placed over). She also knew that he was being raised by the Church of Abadar, and that they would be performing the rite in three days or so, after the last of the diamonds necessary for the Resurrection had been purchased. The rest of it was up to Vaz’em – the Red Mantis cleaned up their own messes, and so Vaz’em handling this was up to him. Vaz’em thanked Cinnabar for the information and help, and went on his way. We’d handle his infiltration of the cathedral and destruction of Jeggare’s remains in Vaz’em’s next personal scene.
And with that we were back up to the present, the afternoon of the next day, when everyone got together to discuss what they had learned. Nobody was particularly happy that some dumbass was trying to kill them AGAIN, but there wasn’t much they could do about it save have the wererats look into it. Which meant doing the job that the wererats wanted done so Wilhelm would start spending the money set aside to pay them.
So they went down into the sewers to see Wilhelm to tell him that they had accepted the job, and to learn anything else he might know what where these disappearances were taking place. Unfortunately I did not have a map prepared for some reason, so I ended up recycling the old sewer map that I used for Lamm’s hideout (which my players recognized and mocked me for, the jerks! The one time I pull a Dragon Age 2 and they call me on it. >< )
Anyway, they get to the wererat lair, talk to Wilhelm, and learn that a new band has just gone missing today – he would show them the route that they had been expected to take, and perhaps the party would be able to find something. Sure enough, the group did find something, as when they came to an intersection in the sewer tunnels the faintest signs of a struggle were picked up by Vaz’em. Looking around, Vaz’em discovered the faintest sign of tracks, on the ceiling of the tunnel of all places – some sort of odd set of four circles set at regular intervals along the tunnel’s ceiling – footprints left in the filth by some sort of creature. Vaz’em wasn’t able to identify the creature, nor was anyone else (chokers – the circular depressions were left by the tips of their four tentacle “fingers” on each limb).
It was at this point that the party was treated to another very strangle sight – an elven woman came strolling into view from another passageway, walking without a light source and singing to herself as she walked along, twirling a spiked chain. Yes indeed folks, here she is at last, the one, the only, Laori Vaus!
The party was . . . surprising nonplussed about seeing this woman down here, but then they had seen a fair bit of weird stuff so far thanks to me so I suppose that’s to be expected. They were more curious than paranoid, but given that Laori wasn’t taking any threatening actions and greeted them warmly (she recognized them, since of course by this point pretty much they were celebrities) that’s not too surprisingly either – the party tended not to be suspicious or aggressive with someone they didn’t know until it proved warranted.
Laori was a little light on the details, but explained that she was down here hunting for a poet by the name of Imon Vernell. This was the man who had created the creepy children’s poem the party had heard being sung back in Book Two regarding Kazavon – unlike in the book (surprise, surprise!) I had left alive at least some of the other artists like Salvator who had heard Kazavon’s maddening whispers from the Grand Mastaba before Ileosa took up the crown. But most of them had met unpleasant fates already, leaving Laori Vaus a trail of bodies to follow as she tried to confirm that it was indeed Kazavon now rising up once more. Imon Vernell was the next person on Laori’s list, although the only thing she told the party was that she was a . . . fan of his work.
For their part the party just shrugged when Laori asked if they wanted to team up, without asking much more in the way of questions (surprising given Vaz’em’s standard paranoia). Together they followed the tracks as best they could through the sewers, to a set of stairs leading downward. Wilhelm at this point freaked out a little bit, as he recognized that these stairs would lead down into the Vaults, the tunnels below even the sewers. The wererats didn’t go down there, and Wilhelm wanted no part of this anymore, so he left. Laori seemed excited to go somewhere *actually* dangerous, and the party was used to heading into “certain” death, so they went down without much debate.
The stairs led down to another tunnel of worked stone, which they followed to a small filthy chamber with a door set in the north face. Since I didn’t have the main encounter of this subplot prepared yet, I decided to have a door guard. From the filth in one corner arose a gigantic and disgusting otyugh! Even by otyugh standard it was filthy and ugly (Plaguebringer Otyugh, CR7)! It managed to land a couple tentacle attacks, nearly infecting Flank the lion (Rholand's animal companion from now being an Oracle of Nature. Flank would prove to be BADASS, but that's typical for cats in Pathfinder - they're all crazy DPS machines) with its disease, and then the party tore it a new one with pretty much no effort whatsoever. :-/ Stupid otyughs – they are way over CR’d, because every time I’ve used one in this game they’ve pretty much gotten curbstomped with the party barely even noticing them. Oh well – the door guard did its purpose of eating up the last of our time for the evening, and so we stopped there with the party about to break into the lair of the evil kidnappers! It was very nearly the last thing any of them ever did.
Kavazon must really hate Rholand, interfering with Illeosa, making his saves vs the crowns power
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MrVergee & UnArcaneElection – Thanks for the kind words as always. Knowing that you two are still here and enjoying what you’re reading helps keep me going with these write-ups, given that I still thirty-five session backlog to slog through.
I appreciate hearing from everyone else too! I very much enjoy hearing people comment on what’s happened in my version of the AP. Even if you think it’s shit, please post and let me know that! I’ll be the first to acknowledge some of this could have been handled or planned out in advance better. But I’m learning as I go along, and my players still seem to be a very happy and involved bunch, and that’s all that really matters.
Nathan Monson – Oh yes, Kazavon has a special place in the hole that was his heart for Rholand. (No seriously, the first time he died was because a hero of the gods cut out his heart, and Zon-Kuthon locked it away in his big Vault of Doom. Sort of an “Eighth Relic of Kazavon”, which if my players *really* want a Book Seven, I will probably bust out so they can have one last, final showdown with Kazavon.)
I haven’t yet really had the opportunity for Kazavon himself to express just how much he hates Rholand, but I will be sure to keep an eye out to do so. In the meantime, Rholand continues to have nightmarish dreams now and again, and Togomor screwed him rather badly at the end of Book Three so I guess that sort of counts. Regardless, the feeling is very much mutual – Rholand hates Kazavon just as much for what he’s done to Ileosa, and he’s at least expressed a willingness to do *whatever* it takes to destroy him. But first he’s gotta live through his exile from Korvosa.
So we start this session right as the party kicks open the door to the sewer kidnappers lair, and this time with a week to prepare I’m ready for them. On the other side of the door they find an expansive room that likely was some sort of sanitized Thassilon ruin as they’ve discovered a few times before now (Lamm’s final hideout was in a similar former Thassilon alchemy lab). Whatever purpose this room had before, however, it has been stripped away and replaced with a butchery.
Cages line the west wall, within which are several people and a wererat – the last survivors of the latest kidnap group. To the east is a massive gaping pit, at the bottom of which are dozens of slain and mutilated bodies – the remains of the previous kidnap victims. On the opposite, northern wall was some sort of faintly glowing column of energy, which if they had stepped into it would have levitated them up to the balcony high on the north wall. And from the ceiling overhead, came five gangly monsters that swung down on long, stretchable tentacle-like limbs. The party recognized these as they are natives of Korvosa, and sometimes these creatures are a threat up in the Shingles – Chokers. Only these particular Chokers have been eating their Wheaties, as they are considerably larger and more muscular than the typical half-starved Shingles monster (Advanced Chokers – CR4 - with one or two minor modifications).
True to their nature, Chokers aren’t there to talk and so battle is immediately joined. The Chokers each have a barbed net that each hurls at someone before they rush into melee, but the nets aren’t particularly effective against the battle-hardened party. So the Chokers close to melee, where they are surprisingly more effective with a combination of good rolls and simply sheer number of attacks (they each got 2 tentacle arms, with Improved Grab on a hit, and while grappling you they, well, choke you, which does constrict damage and prevents you from spellcasting unless you have Silent Spell metamagic).
Of a bit more concern is that the Chokers have a single-minded fixation on rendering their targets helpless – after grabbing their victim they always attempted to pin the victim, pulling leather cords from around their waists with one hand while the other continues choking the victim into submission. Once pinned, a victim was swiftly and tightly bound with the leather cords, leaving them completely at the choker’s mercy – this was how they managed to subdue the groups of refugees and wererats so swiftly and efficiently. It didn’t go as well for them against the party as it did the surprised and vulnerable refugees though, as most people broke the grapples before the Choker could manage the Pin -> Tie Up combo (which took basically three rounds - Melee Attack to Grab, Pin next round, Tie-Up third round).
Still, the damage from all the attacks and Constrict damage *was* adding up – to be honest I was expecting Gromka to be here with the party to CC some of them into oblivion while the last couple stragglers were gutted by Cid and Vaz’em. But that didn’t happen – not sure if the party was having an off night or what, but the Chokers all stayed up a surprisingly long time. Long enough that there were still several standing when a voice called out from the balcony several rounds into the fight, demanding to know what was going on here!
The Chokers fell back, and for a moment there was a lull in combat (we paused the initiative order) as a man and a derro appeared up on the balcony above. The man introduced himself as Ezram, and explained that he was a servant of Rovagug the Rough Beast, the inevitable destroyer of the world. He had come to cleanse this city and prove that entropy was unstoppable. Meanwhile, the derro shrieked strange insults at them – i.e. “Warden’s pawn!”
(Due to their connection to Rovagug, these guys at least had some inkling that Ileosa was bearing a Relic of Kazavon, one of the former guardians of a Star Tower within Scarwall, one of the vital anchors to Rovagug’s prison. Suffice to say, they hated everything to do with Kazavon, so cleansing this city of life in Rovagug’s name was how they planned to serve him. The party had no idea what these guys’ beef was, and considering they were cultists of Rovagug, they didn’t really need to know any more than that to want to kill them).
Ezram started on a speech about how entropy was inevitable, they were fools for trying to oppose the inevitable decay of the universe, blah blah blah standard nihilist cultist stuff. The party pretty much didn’t let Ezram finish before the mocking started. What was really hilarious about it was that even *Rholand* got in on it, pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing dramatically before dismissing Ezram as just another crazy. Ezram didn’t take the party’s lack of respect very well, and commanded his servants to destroy them. The derro – Varrelo – leaped into the column of energy from the balcony and descended towards them with a maniacal, eager shriek, while three more chokers charged out of the hallway behind Ezram and leapt down to join the fight as well.
I thought that the party was going to be okay against these odds as they had certainly pulled through worse messes before, but they had taken a worse beating than I realized at the time. This was emphasized when Ezram’s initiative came up on the next round when he and the new arrivals officially joined combat. Pissed off, he dropped a Chaos Hammer on them – Oliver and Rholand were fairly indifferent to it, but Cid and Vaz’em, being lawful, were absolutely devastated by it (to be fair, 4d8 damage and Staggered is nothing to laugh at). Badly hurt already, Cid went down and Vaz’em was at critical health. So Vaz’em did his usual hiding trick and just stayed hidden for a while, as Oliver and his archer cohort Trevor, Rholand and his animal companion Flank, and Laori Vaus struggled against the remaining bad guys.
Vaz’em pretty much stayed hidden for most of the fight, not wanting to get hit by another AoE which would have dropped/killed him. He did use a wand of CLW or something on Cid to get him back up into the fight though – Cid likewise tried to stay out of it from then on so as not to get pelted with another Chaos Hammer (of which Ezram had plenty of, being an 8th level Burned oracle).
Oliver met Varrelo’s charge, and swiftly discovered that the damn derro was a buzzsaw – he had improved two-weapon fighting with two kukris, and a bite attack as his face dissolved into a horrible mass of teeth and fangs as he got into melee (Varrelo was my first experiment with Alternate classes – 7th level bloodrager!) Although the derro didn’t hit with many of his attacks, and his attacks weren’t *that* damaging individually, even Oliver was starting to become battered. More obnoxiously, the derro’s blood was both simultaneously sticky and formed a layer of crystalline armor as it dried – so every time Oliver hit him he had to make a Reflex save or his cutlass got stuck to the derro, and the derro get another point of AC.
Rholand solved the increased AC problem by casting Shatter on the derro’s blood armor – I ruled that it worked because it seemed like a cool use of the spell and a way to counter the stacking armor buff – it only reduced the armor bonus back down to +0, didn’t harm Varrelo, so essentially it was kinda wasted action on Rholand part. Oliver solved the “sword getting stuck” problem by trying to ignore Varrelo in favor of chopping down the remaining chokers that were getting up in Trevor’s grill and choking the shit out of him, making him effectively useless (ranged specialist getting Grappled – BAD BAD BAD!).
Flank went down at some point, choked out by one of the chokers ruthlessly grabbing hold of the lion’s throat and refusing to let go. Ezram switched up his attacks from Chaos Hammer after the first one (good thing too!) to single-target fire spells, pounding Oliver with Scorching Rays until the tough as nails warrior finally went down. Then Ezram got preoccupied with dropping Flaming Spheres on Rholand, who kept making his Reflex saves and taking no damage (damn good thing too given he was almost the only one still standing and fighting at this point).
Getting desperate as well, Laori pulled out her wand of Cure Moderate Wounds, and started slamming it into the side of oliver’s head! “WAKE UP!” She shouted, and surprisingly this was effective! Oliver went down a second time I believe, and Laori got him up yet again. Then one of the last Chokers grappled her, and in a series of surprisingly good rolls managed to get her pinned. Oliver did his best to drop the thing before it could finish its work, but sadly it remained up for the last turn it needed to pull the elf cleric’s hands behind her back, loop the leather cords around her wrists, and pull the knots savagely tight (Laori’s CMB was *just* below the Chokers, so she was effectively Helpless now). Meanwhile, the Choker on Trevor finally managed to choke him out as well, tying the man up just for thoroughness’s sake.
Things were looking really, *really* bad for the party at this point, so I decided a little bit of DM’s mercy was in order since I clearly didn’t take into account the changes to the group when designing this encounter (no more Gromka to CC everything, no more Rholand able to spam a truly ridiculous amount of AoE healing as an oracle of Life). So, since Laori was covered in spikey armor, I decided that she was able to free herself by slicing the leather thongs apart on one of the bladed spikes. That wasn’t going to turn the fight all that much though, given Varrelo was still quite healthy and the party as a whole was on its last legs. So on her following turn, Laori used her Darkness Domain 5th level spell (as given in the AP) to cast Summon Shadows up on the balcony . . . dropping 1 single Shadow in Ezram’s face. Which missed on its first attack upon being summoned *sigh*. Not quite the impressive reversal I was hoping for, where 3 shadows popped in and instana-gibbed Ezram.
Nonetheless, even a single Shadow is TERRIFYING when you only have around 10 STR, and the thing can kill you in two good hits (1 shadow drains 1d6 str on a hit! And if you hit 0, you DIE and become a shadow yourself). So Ezram immediately backed off and started screaming for Varrelo to come save his ass, and the derro obeyed. Ezram disappeared into the hallway, the shadow streaming after him, and the derro chasing after them both. With the two leaders out of the fight, and only like two chokers still standing, the party managed to barely eek out a win – or perhaps it would be better to call this one a draw, as Ezram and Varrelo didn’t return, apparently having escaped via another tunnel from that upper balcony.
This was also sort of the plan all along, as Ezram would flee once the battle turned against his forces below, as I figured I would make the cult of Rovagug (or the “Worm Within” cult as they called themselves) an ongoing threat in Book Three until the party hunted them down in their base in Old Korvosa. As it turned out, the cult of Rovagug would go on to become the main villains of Book Three, so I guess it’s good that they got introduced early, and go introduced by thoroughly kicking the party’s ass. I did find it hilarious that after mocking him, the party got utterly destroyed by Ezram – sometimes you’re better off mocking a corpse than the bad guy to his face guys, especially when you haven’t even fought him yet!
Laori helped patch the group up – mostly by jabbing her wand or fingers into the wound itself, and telling the person to “suck it up” when they cried out in pain. Surprisingly, they found this behavior to be hilarious rather than annoying, and Laori was fast on her way to becoming most entertaining and liked NPC in Book Three. Which was my hope, but you never know how your players will react sometimes.
Anyway, the party freed what few people had survived, awaiting sacrifice and being given to the Chokers as food. That was enough to get the wererats to pay up their 5,000 GP reward, and Wilhelm to promise to look into who was hiring people to kill the party. Laori, meanwhile, found Imon Vernell alright – the poet had already been sacrificed to Rovagug, although that was no biggie! She’d just take his skull back home with her and use Speak with Dead to try and find out what she needed to know. And with that, Laori Vaus stepped out of the party’s lives – for now, although their paths were fated to cross again.
As he would report shortly thereafter – I think it was the next session or so – he still didn’t know who had put out the bounty, but he learned that someone had, in fact, taken on the job. A group of adventurers from Palin’s Cove named the Palin’s Cove Punishers – evidentially they had a beef to pick with the party from when they Teleported into Palin’s Cove to “save” Togomor and the thousands of gold in magic items of plague-fighting aid that Magnimar had sent. Presumably they felt that the party had been trespassing on “their” turf, so now they were here in Korovsa, the party’s turf to return the favor – by killing them all. They were already here in Korvosa, although Wilhelm wasn’t able to find out where they were staying. The party would just have to watch their backs from now on . . .
^Like I said, you need a job at Paizo.
Only problem from the last episode is that when reading of the "Palin's Cove Punishers", I can't get this thought unstuck from inside my brain that they're actually from Alaska . . . .
Heeheehee, yeah my players got the "sports team" motif as well. I'm not great with names, but I do seem to recall that I was aware of their name giving that feeling and kinda liking it. Each settlement has its own team of adventurers then that way, right? Just gotta watch out for those Harse Hucksters . . .
No session update tonight, but while randomly trawling through YouTube I found this song.
Based on the lyrics I think it would make a great piece to use as theme music during Book Six, as that will be when Kazavon is at his closest to awakening once more in earnest. Alternatively, it could work well as theme music for one of Kazavon's minions, crawling out of the woodwork now that the master calls out through his dreams that his return is very, very close.
Not sure who that minion in particular would be, however. Possibly Zarmagorf? I am planning to make him Kazavon's son, born during his last life 600 years or so ago (I think that's when Rivenia got "saved" from the orcs, anyway). He will be one of Kazavon's last surviving descendants, making him a dangerous adversary indeed. Instead of a pathetic CR 13 or so speedbump to a level 16 party, that is further castrated by Sabrina sabotaging him.
^Now THAT is a gòod soundtrack. Now you've gotten me thinking of soundtracks for APs . . .
And if you ever end up doing Wrath of the Righteous and need soundtracks for that, make a beeline for the WarCraft II soundtracks. (And the Orc soundtracks work fine for any campaign where you have a fight involving a major Demon.)
(And while I'm at it, the WarCraft III Undead soundtracks are just right for Carrion Crown, and a subset of the WarCraft III Human soundtracks would work for this also; however, DON'T try the WarCraft III Orc soundtracks for this purpose. Blizzard REALLY needs to bring back the people who did the WarCraft II and StarCraft 1 soundtracks, for both of its RTS franchises. Come to think of it, StarCraft 1 Zerg soundtracks are pretty good for Wrath of the Righteous as well, and some of the StarCraft 1 and maybe even 2 stuff might be good for Iron Gods.)
Inspectre: You have an awesome campaign going here. I wish I'd found this thread earlier. CotCT is my favorite AP although we've never run since my group is more kick down the door types and I think the great role playing opportunities in the AP would be missed.
Keep up the great write ups. I and many others enjoy them!
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Thanks for the kind words Vaellen! As requested, here's the next session and some random side-plot ideas someone could sprinkle into Book Two and even a murder mystery that could fit in Book One, Two, or Three! Sadly, I never got to run any of this stuff so who knows how well it would have worked out even in my crazy game. Ah well!
So the session following the Rovagug beatdown on the party, we had another entire session taken up with individual scenes. This was somewhat of a pattern for the first part of Book Three – session of individual scenes, then combat session, then individual scenes, etc.
We started with Cid, as he returns to the tavern to meet with Wilhelm again and collect the party’s reward. As previously mentioned in last session’s write-up, they got quite a bit of gold from the wererats for their trouble (something like 5,000 GP total, intended to be 1,000 GP each but well Gromka didn’t show up for that session so they decided not to tell her about it given they all nearly died for it). And, of course, Wilhelm also alerted Cid that the Palin Cove Punishers had taken the job to kill them all, so they should watch their backs going forward (individual personal scenes notwithstanding – while someone getting jumped alone by the entire team of Punishers would have been classic adventurer tactics, I didn’t actually want to kill anyone in such an unfair manner when they didn’t do anything to bring such a thing down on themselves. Nonetheless, my players were understandably nervous during this session!)
From the tavern, Cid actually went to report in to the Hellknights – they had taken over a tower within the city to use as their forward base of operations. I probably could have made it the named tower from the Guide to Korvosa, the one that is currently the tallest building in Korvosa, but I’m pretty sure I just left the tower unidentified. In any event, Cid ran into Mistress of Blades Vox, who unlike DeVries was still on speaking terms with poor Cid. In fact, she had been looking for Cid to introduce him to the young but stern-looking man standing at attention next to her – an Armiger who was almost as much of an outcast from the Order as Cid himself.
The man tripped over his formal address, but eventually managed to introduce himself as Armiger Cyrus Almson, brother to the traitor hellknight Xerxes Almson that the party killed in Book One (and gunslinger assassin-for-hire Darius Almson) and grandson of Darcen Almson, the second-in-command to Lictor Leo Astares, the founder of the Order of the Nail, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances after Astares’ own disappearance and Queen Domina’s death in the fire that consumed her bedchambers, also under “mysterious” circumstances.
So basically everyone in the order, at least, blamed Darcen Almson and believed he killed both his commander Leo and Leo’s open-secret lover Queen Domina before fleeing Korvosa. That sort of stain on a family doesn’t tend to go away, likely one of the many reasons why Xerxes said “f!@# it”, and why Cyrus is now just one mistake away from getting thrown out of the order. Which is why Cyrus is a huge fan of Cid who’s managed to spit in DeVries’s eye on several occasions and yet somehow keep his head on his shoulders, and why Vox thought the two of them should meet.
I try to play up Cyrus’s stiff focus on protocol, which naturally only ends up making him look awkward – hence why Vox wants Cid to mentor him so the kid loosens up a bit before he gets himself in trouble. While Vox wanted Cid to mentor the lad, Cyrus nonetheless still had duties to fulfill, which Vox reminded him off and told Cyrus to get to it. After he left, Vox confides to Cid that Cyrus had applied to take the trial to become a Hellknight of several occasions, and each time he was denied the opportunity. Nonetheless, eventually one of his requests was going to get through, if he didn’t get thrown out of the Order first, and Cyrus was not ready for that life-or-death struggle. In short, if something didn’t change in his life, Cyrus was probably going to be dead soon, and Vox would prefer not to lose an Armiger like that, hence the mentoring from Cid.
Cid reluctantly agrees to do what he can (although as it worked out, Cid had relatively little interaction with Cyrus in future personal scenes, although that’s largely due to ALL THE OTHER STUFF going on from here on out).
Meanwhile, Oliver returns home with Trevor to find that someone on the street had shoved a note into his pocket while he wasn’t looking. It read simply that he was to come to Longacre prison, and that it was about the bombing. Not especially eager to play detective (although he might have been fine with playing Jack Bauer on some unfortunate bad guy), Oliver nonetheless goes to Longacre to see what this is about (and he had nothing better to do).
Arriving at the prison, Oliver is immediately shown down into an interrogation room by the guards – apparently he was expected. Waiting for him inside is Silas Kroft, greeting Oliver with a devilish smile. They make a bit of small talk, mostly about his sister and how he was doing in prison (quite well at the moment, given he knew how to work the system), and then they get down to business.
Silas, quite understandably, wants out of prison although that is not something even his influence can arrange – as is, he’s just narrowly avoided the executioner’s block for his role in the fake plague cure. But Oliver is a hero of the city, and he has a very powerful friend (Ileosa) who can pretty much pardon anyone she wants. While Silas is not quite asking for a full pardon, he did want Oliver to at least try and see what he could do, and in exchange Silas would put his own underworld contacts at work on seeking out who was responsible for the bombing. An attack like that required preparation and resources, and Silas believed he would be able to find something for the party to follow-up on.
Oliver had been humoring Silas during this conversation in his typical exaggerated friendliness way, that was just one step above openly mocking the man. Nonetheless, he did go and talk to Chief Arbiter Zenderholm about Silas’s case. Zenderholm was managing the case because she had taken a personal interest in it, and had been pushing for a more severe punishment than simple imprisonment (death, basically). However, due to a request from Cressida Kroft to show some small amount of leniency to Silas (she, at least, didn’t hate her brother despite his many sins) Zenderholm was settling for keeping Silas locked up, most likely for the rest of his life.
Oliver came up with a pretty hilarious idea here, as he requested that Silas not be released, but instead be given an opportunity to make amends to the city. Namely, that Silas be put on a work gang of prisoners that was put to use in rebuilding the city – like the bridges leading into Old Korvosa. In return Silas would get a somewhat reduced sentence and get to be outside instead of rotting away in the darkness of Longacre. Zenderholm was intrigued by the idea and admitted that she had not thought of that, and was willing to look into setting up a work release program. It certainly beat the alternative of Oliver going to Ileosa and getting her to sign another full pardon, which Zenderholm grimly admitted was an option for Oliver – although it seemed he had no interest in that option either, potential information on the bombing be damned.
However, in return for this favor, Zenderholm wanted Oliver to do her a favor of his own (isn’t that how this always works? A favor for a favor for a favor for a favor?) There was a Shaoti man by the name of Naj Skycaller who had been imprisoned in Longacre for suspiciously being found at the site of several murders during the riots. He was a whittler by trade, selling small wooden carvings, which combined with his presence at the murders got him labeled as “The Midpoint Carver”. Zenderholm wasn’t sure Naj was actually guilty of the murders, as the investigations were inconclusive so he wasn’t charged yet, but his presence at every single murder site was damned suspicious so she had him brought in for questioning. During the plague, he disappeared from his cell, having escaped the prison somehow. Having news of yet another prisoner escape from Longacre was not something anybody wanted to get out, so Zenderholm needed someone to discretely investigate this for her.
Oliver said sure, he’d look into it – and then like all PCs, he promptly forgot about it entirely in the scramble that followed. Oh well – it was rather hard to keep track of every single plot point that I was madly throwing down for the party to explore at this point. Thankfully, things started to slow down and become more focused in another couple of sessions as I finally stopped trying to weave an entire campaign setting/AP book out of thin air, and started feeding things to the party one or two issues at a time instead.
Vaz’em’s personal scene was, predictably, all about dealing with Lord Percival Jeggare’s body awaiting resurrection within the Cathedral of Abadar. Again, I considered having a long involved assassin’s creed style building crawl, but being lazy and Vaz’em being a high-level ninja who could just disappear from sight via Vanishing Trick whenever he wanted (several time a day at least) I just handwaved it and said he managed to sneak past all of the low-level guards down into the morgue where Jeggare’s body was kept.
He did have one challenge waiting for him though – Ishani was standing, or rather sitting, guard over Jeggare’s body, and the cleric was smart enough to notice Vaz’em slipping in through the door. After debating what to do while Ishani gave several challenges to the “empty” room, Vaz’em appeared in front of him (giving Ishani a bit of a shock, but then Vaz’em always had a bit of a sadistic side to him – it was only natural for a cat-man). From there they had a surprisingly rather civil conversation about why Vaz’em was here and why Lord Jeggare deserved to stay dead.
Ishani admitted that he couldn’t stop Vaz’em from doing whatever he had come here to do, but rather than just destroying the body and fleeing Vaz’em explained what Jeggare had done to Korvosa, why he had killed him, and why Jeggare should stay dead. Ultimately, Ishani reluctantly agreed to keep Vaz’em’s appearance here tonight a secret, along with the rest of the information about Jeggare’s recent actions (which would have torn the city apart) and why his body had disappeared under Ishani’s unofficial watch (he had been worried someone was going to try something, although due to not being on guard at Archbishop Tuttle’s request it wasn’t like Ishani was going to get in trouble).
So Vaz’em draped the shroud over Jeggare’s corpse, said the command word, Jeggare went poof, and then Vaz’em got out of there.
And finally, we came to Rholand’s part in this session. He returned to the castle to find Sabrina in a bit of a rage. Taking Rholand aside, Sabrina angrily explained that one of the servant girls, Isabella, had been assigned the task of cleaning up the fairly copious amount of blood that had been left in the room where Rholand operated on Ileosa and removed the shrapnel from her back. She had done the job as asked, but she had also committed treason by filling several vials with the blood (it hadn’t all congealed into a syrupy mess yet, okay? :-p ) and then disappearing, not reporting in to work today.
Which meant most likely that she was somebody’s spy, and now she was going to give her master several vials of the queen’s BLOOD, which could be used for all manner of unsavory things, scrying magic being just the least worrying possibility. Or selling it to the highest bidder, whichever. So Sabrina needed Rholand’s help (hey, technically he was the one who decided to operate on Ileosa, so it was his mess to clean up) to go find Isabella before the blood got out of her hands and into someone actually dangerous. And rather pissed off at this betrayal and threat to his love, Rholand was rather motivated to go find Isabella – but due to time constraints and the likely need for the rest of the party to be there given Isabella might have dangerous friends/masters that she was meeting with RIGHT NOW, we ended the session there. Next session – the hunt for the maid is on!
So, since the party never followed up on this I never got the opportunity to flesh this plot point out. But basically my notes are that the party gets hired by Zenderholm to discretely investigate the disappearance of a man from Longacre - a Shaoti man by the name of Naj Skycaller. Naj was a wood carver who had been mysteriously found at the scene of several murders, and between Naj not speaking Common or Chelish very well, and perhaps being a bit addled in the head, he was unable to explain why he was there. Once was an unfortunate coincidence, but showing up to several grisly murders was just damned suspicious, and the city guard weren’t the only people starting to notice his presence.
The people had started calling whoever was killing these people “The Midpoint Carver”, on account of the fact that the bodies were all found in Midpoint, and all of them had strange symbols and pictures carved into the flesh. Given his penchant for whittling that was another strike against Naj, who occasionally put similar strange flourishes on the carvings that he made. The last straw came when the guards found Naj at the latest murder, *carving* those symbols into the body. So he was definitely the one desecrating the bodies, and it seemed obvious to most people that he was the one responsible for the murders as well. Disappearing from his cell somehow during the plague only made him more guilty.
If Gromka had still been around at this point, she would have gotten approached by Naj’s Shaoti brother, who would have urged Gromka (and hopefully the party through her, although Gromka might have just not shared this bit since Gromka was just a straight-up a+!%##% like that) to bring Naj to him instead of the city guard. The Shaoti would take Naj out of the city when they left, and so he would be no longer a threat to the city, and while Naj was disturbed his brother did not think he was capable of murder.
What’s really going on: Like Salvatore, and the handful of other artists within the city, Naj has had his mind warped by Kazavon’s faint touch from within the castle. When Ileosa picked up the crown and that voice suddenly went silent, rather than falling into despondency like the other artists Naj became panicked. While only dimly aware of the Shaoti’s history with Kazavon, he nonetheless was filled with an existential dread, especially when he discovered that he still had a psychic connection to the *real* killer. No idea who the real killer was, but some nutso derro that had also been touched by Kazavon and was pissed off about losing that connection was the most likely suspect. Through their shared imprint, Naj knew where and when the derro would strike, and although he always arrived too late to stop the murder, he feared for the murdered one’s soul (the derro was killing people trying to get Kazavon’s attention again). So he covered their bodies in the strange warding symbols that he saw in his dreams – and were, in fact, very similar to the ancient wards that the Shaoti put on the box that previously held the Fangs of Kazavon.
His “escape” from the prison was, predictably, the derro nabbing him and dragging him down into the Vaults through yet another secret tunnel they had into Longacre (place is probably the *least* secure prison in the world, given how many bolt holes the derro have chewed in it). So the party would have gone down into the depths, “chasing” Naj, killed a bunch of derro including the chief nutter, and rescued Naj.
From there they could have either returned him to Zenderholm, or the Shaoti. Zenderholm probably would have arranged for Naj to be placed in some sort of special insane asylum given his condition, and paid the party well for their time. Given Naj over to the Shaoti would have allowed him to leave the city with his people, and Naj would have gifted the party with a few simple wooden carvings covered in those strange runes. If they kept those items all the way to Book Five, I probably would have had them turn into some sort of protective consumable that they could use against the horrors waiting for them in Scarwall.
Taking about Naj reminded me that I don’t’ think I ever talked about all the sidequests that the party didn’t do during Book Two – the siege of the Grey District, the Acadamae Lockdown, the body disposal, and the fake plague cures. I already mentioned the fake plague cure – Scarzni-backed plot with Lavender as the front woman.
The body disposal was pretty much as written – Ramoska’s vampire spawn bodyguards running amok in the toy maker’s home, feeding off the dumped bodies, some of the guards that came to dump the bodies, and anyone else that got too close. This would have given the party the chance to deal with these guys before they were recalled back to Ramoska’s side (since they didn’t do this quest, that’s why Gromka found Ramoska and four vampire spawn waiting when she went off by herself and opened up a door, prompting the whole party to flee before Ramoska could get in a word edge-wise).
However, there were some additions to this “simple” plot point – first, Blackjack would have shown up, mentioning Gio –whatever his name is was an old friend of his. I would have given some subtle sign like Blackjack looking down and flexing his one hand while doing so, given a hint at the fact that it was an artificial golem arm, animated by Gio as a favor to Vencarlo (which is how Vencarlo fooled the party – Vencarlo only has one hand and a wooden fake one, but the fake is actually a golem hand built by Gio that can be turned “on” and then functions as a normal hand, giving his alter-ego Blackjack two hands to use).
Second, from the Guide to Korvosa it mentions that Gio has a secret – he has several animated soulbound dolls that serve as his daughters/assistants. I was planning on having at least two – a “good” one and a “bad” one. The good one would have come crashing into the fight inside of the shop, doing whatever good she could have done against the couple vampire spawn in there in an effort to avenge her father (she had remained in her hidey hole where Gio left her before the vamps got him). She then would have asked the party to help her track down her sister, who had fled the shop in terror. As they would learn, once the terror wore off, the doll was going on a killing spree, adding to the death toll of the plague. Just to make things even more complicated, the doll was more crazy than evil, traumatized by the process of coming “alive” by Gio trapping a human soul and shoving it into a golem body. When the vamps came in and murdered Gio, she just snapped, and went on a killing spree due to a combination of terror at the outside world (Gio’s “daughters” were pretty sheltered given he didn’t want his dirty little secret getting out) and fury over her father’s murder and the city’s indifference to it (because, y’know, everyone else was too busy dying of the plague to check up on an old, unsuccessfully toymaker).
The Grey District was going to be a fulfillment of Kyra Nightshade’s comment back in Book One that sooner or later, they were going to break into some old Shaoti mass grave, and a swarm of undead were going to come pouring out. Well, that’s basically what happened – the church had accidentally opened up a route into a Thassilon tomb complex, and a veritable army of undead has rushed out to attack. The Pharasmans were completely pushed back to their cathedral and the walls, and as they usually did during an undead uprising, they holed up and waited to grind the undead down over the next week, while the rest of the city got swarmed by Blood Veil zombies.
If the party had investigated, they would have participated in the relief efforts by trying to strike at the source of the undead, sealing up that tunnel they were all pouring out of. Going there to seal it up would have revealed a curious sight – the undead working to seal the breech back up themselves? If they had investigated even further instead of just shrugging and “helping” the undead wall themselves back up, they would have found my planned new resting place for the Sunken Queen, guarded by a considerable force of undead left behind by Sorshen to protect it and who simply wanted the complex to be left alone until her return.
Finally, with the Acadamae lockdown I was planning on the party trying to figure out a way into the Acadamae to see what was going on with them. Which was nothing, really, just Toff being an uncooperative jackass and wanting to protect his students and his own bottom line by holing up instead of helping solve the plague. With the Acadamae’s legendary defenses in place, the party would have had to try and circumvent them by going down into the sewers and coming up from beneath the Acadamae, essentially literally crawling up through the university’s drainpipes.
Not sure what I would have had waiting for them as complications – probably a few magical traps, maybe a golem, some gelatinous cubes and the like that served to clean up all of the Acadamae’s waste by eating it. I was debating them also finding some really hinky stuff going on inside of the Acadamae – probably not the entrance to the hell demiplane of Belzergera, but maybe an imprisoned angel they were periodically torturing and harvesting for parts before letting him/her heal back up. Something that Toff would have offered to pay some real money to keep quiet, and established that the Acadamae was not a good place despite the pretty “Harry Potter” face that it was trying to put on all the time.
Session Forty-Seven: See The Midpoint Càrver.
And about the Acadamae: Hogwart's wasn't exactly all Good either . . . .
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So the party didn’t waste much time this session, as Rholand assembled the team and let everyone know what had happened. Of course, no one called him out on spilling the queen’s blood all over the place so anyone could pick it up, oh no it’s all the NPC’s fault. :p
Since this Isabelle was an employee of the castle, the grey maidens knew where she lived – a ramshackle apartment in the Shingles . . . hrmmm . . . much like another certain girl hired by the late King Eodred to create a painting . . . In any event, expecting a whole lot of trouble the party went into full dungeon crawl mode – the party stood guard over the front door while Vaz’em slipped over to an adjacent building and tried to peer in through the dirty window. Not satisfied with this, Vaz’em eventually clambered over to the apartment complex, opened the window, and slipped inside Isabelle’s apartment.
I don’t recall anything being particularly unusual about the apartment – no one was home, nothing was out of place, and no incriminating evidence (or anything that would point to where Isabelle was now). While the party was waiting outside for Vaz’em to open the door, however, a young woman exited an adjoining apartment, freezing upon seeing the assembled adventurers ready for battle. They had a bit of a discussion after it become clear that they weren’t here to murder people, and the woman took a liking to Cid for whatever reason (hilariously he was primarily the face of the party during this discussion if I recall).
The lady explained that she was a friend of Isabelle, and that she was probably hanging out with her strange boyfriend, or whatever he was. There was some strange man, face concealed by a cowl and cloak, that came and went to Isabelle’s apartment and all hours of the day and night, so her friend assumed they were lovers or family or something. Anyway, the important bit was that one night this friend followed Isabelle, due to being worried about her with this guy, and Isabelle went to a small warehouse along the docks. That seemed really suspicious and out-of-character to Isabelle’s friend, but she never confronted Isabelle on it because how could she then explain following her?
Anyway, that was pretty much the only lead that the party had, and it seemed like a winner, so they all headed to this warehouse along the docks immediately. A set of rickety stairs led up to a small second-story shack (where Isabelle went), while the lower portion of the building seemed to be some sort of shop. Vaz’em started heading around the side of the building, hoping to clamber up onto the first-floor’s roof, and peer inside the large window that made up the northern wall of the second-story shack. Meanwhile, the rest of the party headed up the stairway, while Flank stayed down on the ground.
Cid listened at the door, and I believe he heard a muffled scream, so he immediately kicked the door in without waiting for the rest of the party to set up around the shack. Probably a good thing he did, although it ruined the element of surprise. Inside the shack was Isabelle, this mysterious cloaked man – who had slitted pupils like a cat . . . or say, Vaz’em - and . . . a gigantic constrictor snake! A giant snake which was currently crushing the life out of Isabelle and starting to lock its unhinged jaws around the poor maid’s head. Seeing the rest of the party right behind Cid, the cloaked man decided he wasn’t going to stay and fight it out. Shouting a command in Vudran at his pet, the man leaped through the thick pane glass window, completely unharmed by the shards of glass flying everywhere, landing on the roof.
For his part, Vaz’em failed his first climb check, making a lot of noise and prompting the owner of the first-floor shop to come out and start badgering him. Rholand and Flank moved around the side of the building after Cid started shouting that their quarry was getting away, and was now on the first-floor roof. Oliver sighed and started trudging back down the stairs with Trevor, while Cid went and played hero by engaging the giant constrictor snake. I’d like to say it was a fight between the snake and Hellknight, but this was a poor CR 5 snake versus a level 7 magus. Cid ran up, smacked the snake for good damage on his turn, the snake stopped trying to eat Isabelle in favor of biting Cid, but missed (so much for biting and grappling *him* instead!) And then Cid crit or some shit and cut the thing’s head off – fight over. >>
Meanwhile, the actual bad guy was hopping down into the street right in front of Rholand and Flank. I can’t recall if Vaz’em caught up and managed to throw an attack at their mysterious cat-eyed stranger, but I do know that Flank got in a Pounce-routine on him. Although the lion rolled high on its attacks, including a critical, none of the damage got through save a tiny bit of the critical damage (DR 15/Holy and Piercing baby!), and the lion failed to knock the man prone (thankfully, otherwise this would have been the shortest chase ever . . . and this guy – Avindexu who is actually a Rakshasa working for Glorio - probably would have made mincemeat of the 7th level party once he gave up on running and started fighting).
At this point, Avindexu casts Expeditious Retreat, and dashes away from the party at a 60’ move – nobody could touch that, and rather than even try, they just gave up and let him get away. Which was also a little disappointing as I had set up a brief chase sequence through a bazaar (where Avindexu would throw a bag of coins to create a flash mob), along the docks (Avindexu tosses an elemental gem into the sea, summoning a Large water elemental), and then right past the stunned Palin’s Cove Punishers who were just walking along a nearby street until they see the party chasing this guy, until finally he gets to his parked wyvern on the roof of another building, hops onto it, and flies away in the direction of Old Korvosa.
So, with this guy getting away, the only source of information they have is Isabelle herself. Fortunately for the party (unfortunately for her) the woman is still clinging to life (at like -8 HP), and Rholand heals her back up to consciousness. They decide that the middle of a rundown building that was just the site of a chase scene was not the best place to run an interrogation. Isabelle desperately pleads with the party not to take her back to the castle because they would kill her, but in a vengeful mood Rholand hears none of that, and drags her back to the castle. Where she is immediately arrested by the Grey Maidens, dragged down into the old dungeon beneath the castle, has her wrists painfully chained to the ceiling, and then Sabrina (in a bloodthirsty mood herself) goes to collect torture implements to use.
The party puts a momentary brake on the whole torture thing by demanding to interrogate Isabelle herself – their collar, their right to ask questions first, or so they argue. They manage to convince Sabrina to let them have first crack at the terrified former maid, and Cid decides to lead the interrogation efforts. To everyone’s surprise, rather than showing off his own sadistic streak Cid is rather calm, and simply tries to talk to Isabelle rather than immediately going for sadistic punishments (as most Hellknights would use as their first and only option). Indeed, when Isabelle asks for some water to drink, and a grey maiden brings back a pail of brackish water only to dump it over Isabelle’s head, Cid yells at the Grey Maiden, calls her an amateur, and throws her out of the room.
Through just talking calmly to Isabelle, and treating her like y’know, an actual person instead of a filthy traitor deserving of horrific punishment, Cid manages to learn everything the maid knows in fairly short order. It’s not much – she had been contacted by someone shortly before Eodred’s death, who offered to pay her money in exchange for hearing an insider’s perspective on what’s going on inside the castle. Of course, things rapidly went downhill from there, with her contact/handler appearing at all hours of the day or night, waiting for her inside her apartment when she came home, and threatening her and her family (parents, relatives) with death if she tried to back out. She had hoped that by giving her handler some of Ileosa’s blood, that that would be enough to earn her freedom. Which it did, of a sort – the freedom of death as her handler tried to kill her. The handler had gotten away with three vials of Ileosa’s blood, and his name was Avindexu. The party understandably did not recognize this name, or did they or Isabelle know what was up with his strange cat-eyes, although presumably he was some sort of catfolk like Vaz’em?
Indeed, if you look through Book Three’s writeup of Arkona Manor, you will find a rakshasa named Avindexu (perhaps spelled differently :-p ) that has a thing for snakes – hence the giant constrictor snake he had with him. While he normally appeared human like the rest of the Arkonas, while out on missions he liked to leave his eyes cat-shaped in order to intimidate his victims.
At this point, the party learned very little else from poor Isabelle. Sabrina was chomping at the bit to get in there with some scalpels and pliers, at this point more to start the process of slowly torturing Isabelle to death, as was the usual punishment for treason in Korvosa. She took Isabelle’s betrayal of Ileosa rather personally, and perhaps the crown was having an effect on her own mental state like it was having on Ileosa – and really I just wanted to make it clear how bad of an idea it had been to bring Isabelle back to the castle. She was *not* lying when she said that it would end badly for her.
So, here Cid did something surprising for a Hellknight yet again – he drew his sword and skewered Isabelle through the heart, mercy killing her before she had to endure days or weeks of agonizing torture before she was finally allowed to die. Killing a helpless prisoner isn’t exactly a good act, but in this case it was the honorable move from the ones left open to the party now. It was also the start of Cid’s hatred for the Arkonas, and Avindexu in particular, as he led him responsible for having to kill Isabelle. And finally, it was a clear sign that Cid was starting to move away from the Hellknight teachings, as most Hellknights would have merrily joined Sabrina in peeling the flesh off of Isabelle’s bones.
We ended the session there, and like I did at the end of Book Two when they were about to enter the hospice, I loaned the party the last couple thousand XP that they needed to hit Level Eight. Knowing what was coming up, I figured they would need that extra level.
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No surprises on the party’s level up to level 8 – Rholand took oracle, Cid took Magus, Vaz’em took Ninja, and Oliver took Fighter.
So, the next session started with the party leaving the castle after Cid interrogating and mercy-killed Isabelle. They didn’t really have any leads on who had Ileosa’s blood now, nor where to go next to pick up the trail. Which is when I hit them with a (just) previously introduced plot point.
As they left the castle gates, a man in a courier’s uniform came walking up to the party. He asked if any of them was Rholand Jskar, and when Rholand spoke up the man handed Rholand a letter. The courier then stood there expectantly until Rholand flipped him a gold piece, tore open the envelope, and started to read. The party all blew their Sense Motive checks, and while we had a brief argument over whether or not Rholand scanned anything that someone handed to him with Detect Magic (it was unlimited uses and at-will after all), we decided that Rholand – until now – had no reason to do that.
Theme Song – Fire Mountain by Two Steps from Hell
But it would be assumed that he did that from now on as he learned his lesson here – the message, to quote the Order of the Stick, simply read “Good thing I prepared Explosive Runes this morning!” BOOM. Rholand took 20-some damage, no save, and I think Vaz’em or someone else also took some damage from the blast radius but halved it due to a successful save. The explosion was a signal, as the “courier” whirled, twisting his arm in a very specific way to send a concealed dagger shooting into his waiting palm, which he then hurled into Rholand for another 20-some damage on his surprise round (Underhanded rogue talent FTW!) At this point Rholand’s player remarked that he was glad he had taken that Fighter level – without it he probably would be down on the ground bleeding out right now.
Which was a good warning for me, as the rest of the Palin’s Cove Punishers appeared from invisibility nearby as they launched their own part of the surprise round of attacks. The sorcerer of the Punishers cast Haste on the punishers, the wolf lord druid sicced his three wolves on the party and cast a spell as thunderclouds gathered overhead, the monk drank a potion of Enlarge Person and became Large, and the ranger with a shout of how much he hated Hellknights, unleashed a Multi-shot into Cid’s gut (to the dismay of the rest of the Punishers as their goal was to kill Rholand, the healer, straight up – but I as the DM felt the ambush had already gone quite well, and it wouldn’t be much fun if Rholand just up and died in the surprise round with no chance to defend himself. Plus Cid was damn scary and obnoxious to deal with once he had all of his spells running – and the fight ultimately bore out that Cid was the biggest threat to the Punishers).
So now that the brutal surprise round was over, it was time for initiative, and the battle between the Grey Thugs (as Andaisin mockingly called them) and the Palin’s Cove Punishers began. Fortunately for the party, none of the Punishers’ heavy hitters got very high in initiative. And unfortunately for the Punishers, session forty-nine was Gromka’s very last session, as the player showed up after an extended absence (and then never came back the following week >< ).
Gromka opened up with a Blindness spell on Gregory, the ranger – and he failed the save, pretty much making him useless. :( Rholand’s turn came up, and he used Stone Shape to cause the street’s cobblestones to rise up into a 10’ high wall, sealing off the pack of wolves and the party from the Punishers. Now, I’m not so sure that Stone Shape is nearly as effective at making barriers as I’ve let Rholand get away with, but honestly, without Gromka around the party has *no* CC other than these occasional Stone Shape walls, and Rholand hasn’t done anything particularly exploitive with the stone shape (i.e. no hemisphere over an enemy to asphyxiate them). So I let him get away with it here, and in future encounters.
This is about the point that I, and the Punishers, realize that I had not given them gear to counter Blindness or walls of stone – given how little money most NPCs have to purchase gear with (so the PCs don’t get it and double their wealth), this is hardly surprising. So they decide that now would be a good time to get out of here since they were Hasted – Robert the giant Monk picks up the blind Gregory under one arm and starts running down the street at Haste speed, Quincy the courier Rogue and Jean Luc the sorcerer right behind him. Hemlock the druid meanwhile turned into raven form, and Natural spell his Call Lightning down onto one of the party – Cid or Gromka I think.
While Rholand patched himself up and Oliver and Vaz’em slaughtered the wolves (they were mostly just there to get in the way and give Quincy and Robert flanking buddies), Cid cast fly, Gromka cast Haste, and the party jointed decided to run these sons of b$##$es down. I probably should have just turned this into an impromptu chase and thumbed my nose at the PCs, but instead caught off-guard at the idea of them trying to run down Hasted people (with Gromka here this was probably easier than expected) I continued to use round-by-round movement. With Cid and then Gromka flying over the city streets, and the Punishers forced to run down the twisting streets on a meandering course that I designed round-by-round, they started to catch up to cut the Punishers off.
Meanwhile the rest of the party tried to run them down – I let Flank make a completely improbable display of Acrobatics to do a wall-jump up onto a nearby roof to chase after the Punishers. It didn’t turn out to do much of anything as Flank hopped back down to street-level to let Rholand mount up on him a couple rounds later. Oliver and Vaz’em chased after the Punishers on the streets, while Trevor got thrust up 60’ into the air on another Stone Shaped pillar – that also did no good as he still couldn’t see the Punishers to get a good shot off but it scared the poor cohort silly until Rholand finally dismissed the spell and let him sink back down to solid ground.
It was about at this point that the Punishers gave up on trying to get away to become a recurring thorn in the party’s side (which had been my fervent hope all along – ah well). They tried to convince the party not to follow them anymore – by Jean Luc lobbing a couple fireballs back at the party. Having healed back up a bit, Rholand survived the blasts, as did Oliver and Vaz’em, although getting dinged for 10-15 fire damage was slowly adding up for them.
Meanwhile in the skies above, Gromka summoned an Air elemental and sent it after the druid. With a ridiculous fly speed of 100’ or so, it immediately caught up to the raven druid and turned into a Whirlwind, threatening to send the small bird careening out of control. Hemlock made his reflex save so that didn’t happen, but it was clear he couldn’t remain up in the air for much longer. Cid started catching up as well, and we pretty much ended Session Forty-Nine with Gromka casting an Ash Storm down the intersection that the Punishers had just reached, pretty effectively pinning the street-bound ones down at the cost of obscuring them from sight.
We picked back up the next week for Session Fifty with Gromka an NPC, who pretty much immediately went to unhelpful and didn’t do shit as she thought the party had this situation well in-hand now without her. She wasn’t entirely wrong as Cid used Bladed Dash (I’m almost starting to hate this spell as much as Mirror Image and Shocking Grasp!) to fly over to Hemlock and cut him apart in four furious slashes (Bladed Dash’s one attack, Haste attack, +6/+1 BaB attacks). He went from full to unconscious, and then straight to dead as the bird changed back into a man that fell to the sidewalk from 30’ feet up. SPLAT!
Robert dropped Gregory so he could start shooting again (yeah, kinda cheesy that his fellows could shout out where to aim, allowing him to target people, but you can be sure that if it was a PC that was blind, people would be wanting to let him target bad guys by having party members shout out where to aim for him). He still had the 50% miss chance, although that actually helped him shoot Cid given shooting blind ignored his mirror images (50% to-hit > 20% or less chance to-hit). And Gregory did A LOT of damage with his arrows (+4 ranger bonus versus human, +4 STR Composite Longbow, and multi-shot for two arrows on his first shot of Hasted Rapid-Shot = nasty! I was glad later that I didn’t give him a couple Human Bane arrows as I had first considered). So Cid took a bit more damage from one arrow hitting him, and then some more as Jean Luc fireballed him instead of the rest of the party rounding the bend. Robert ran back at high-speed to hold the rest of the party back while Quincy the rogue kept playing spotter for the blind Gregory.
Cid had had enough of the sorcerer by this point as well, so one Hasted Bladed Dash later, and Jean Luc the sorcerer was in four pieces as well. The rest of the party managed to gut Robert by this point, and came running as the last two members of the Palin’s Cove Punishers made their final stand. I was quite saddened that Robert never was in one of the fireballs and got to activate his cloak of fiery vanishing, seeming to be burnt to a crisp until he popped out of the illusion by punching someone in the face, nor did he get to do what he was designed to do – get into melee with Oliver, Improved Disarm his precious Keen Cutlass out of his hands, and then either stab him with it or simply throw it down the street as far as Robert could manage with a cry of “Fetch!”, forcing Oliver to pull out one of his many less effective back-up weapons or go hustling after the cutlass at a 20’ move.
Quincy stabbed out one or two mirror images from Cid but didn’t manage anything else. I think Cid managed to move into melee and get a cut on Gregory somehow, but didn’t quite drop the ranger on his last turn. And then Gregory backed away, and got lucky, pumping yet another multi-shot pair of arrows into Cid, taking him down to something like -18 HP – DEAD. One arrow went through the Hellknight’s heart, the other into his brain, and Cid hit the street like a sack of rotted grain, never to get up again. Well, not quite but let’s finish the fight first.
The rest of the party gets there, pretty much immediately drops Gregory, and then Quincy stubbornly fights on for like 3 more rounds, accomplishing nothing, before he too finally falls. Wanting someone to interrogate, the party bandages Quincy’s wounds – most of the other Punishers were too far gone by this point to have not bled out (Hemlock was certainly dead, and the sorcerer was right behind him). They check Cid, and find that he is quite, quite dead . . . and fortunately Rholand is prepared! All the way back in Book Two, Queen Ileosa provided the party with an aid package just as they were about to go into the Hospice, if you recall. And in that care package was a Scroll of Raise Dead, just in case someone died before the grand finale.
Rholand pulled out that scroll now, and although he wasn’t high enough level to cast it (he was Oracle 7/Fighter 1 remember), he could try to use it anyway by making a caster level check. And . . . he rolls a Nat 1 the first time, thankfully avoiding the follow-up mishap that would have consumed the scroll. The second time, he makes it, and Cid returns to life with quite possibly the worst hangover headache imaginable (given an arrow had been driven through his face a few moments ago).
I came up with an explanation for this temporary failure, and what Cid saw in the afterlife, a little later after the session in my own private write-up, which he had flashbacks of that night in his dream as he remembered what he saw. I’ll post that below . . . it isn’t pretty. But before all that craziness with Cid, he just had a headache, and was rather irritable at being made a corpse. A unit of Grey Maidens showed up at this point (my backup plan to avoid a TPK in the event that the Punishers’ ambush turned out a little *too* successful), asking if the party was alright. They got told to clean this mess up, after the party looted the bodies, and picked up the comatose Quincy to take back into the castle for interrogation, since it was basically RIGHT THERE.
Despite just having his ass handed to him, watching his comrades all die, and wake up tied up with a bunch of pissed off PCs standing over him, Quincy was still pretty smug. With his mates dead, that just meant more of the reward for him, and there was an obscene bounty on each of the party’s head (can’t remember if it was 1,000 or 5,000 GP per dead PC, but it was a fortune to the Punishers anyway). Technically, Cid got better, but in Quincy’s book it still counted.
Of course, money wasn’t worth anything if you weren’t alive to spend it, but Quincy didn’t have any compunctions about selling out his would-be employer either if it meant that he got to walk away at the end of the conversation. Otherwise the party was free to go nuts and fillet him into little pieces – Quincy at least gave the air of someone who had seen and done some very bad things in his time, and so wasn’t intimidated by the thought of torture or death. Obviously he’d prefer to save his own skin, but if it was his fate to be murdered by the PCs so be it, that’s just how the world worked.
He gave some other cynical “the world is a bag of shit” speeches, and paraphrased the conversation between Tony and Vanko in Iron Man 2 – “If you can make God bleed, people will cease to believe in Him. And then the sharks will come.” Obviously the Punishers managed to kill one of them out in the middle of the street, even if Cid immediately got better, so that was a pretty good demonstration that the PCs were not invulnerable. The Punishers took their shot, and missed, but Quincy seemed confident that more and more people would follow after them, and sooner or later one of those groups would get lucky and finish the job.
They learned that the Punishers had been hired by someone who was calling himself the Emperor of All Korvosa, although most people just called him the Emperor of Old Korvosa. Quincy didn’t know much about the man other than that he was in Old Korvosa, which was where the Punishers were supposed to go to claim their reward after killing off the party. Hopefully, word of today’s battle had already reached him, and Quincy could go collect his reward for killing Cid, however temporarily.
That was about all of useful information the party got out of him, and after being reassured that Quincy had no interest in fighting them again His mates were all a#~@!~&s, so he felt no desire to avenge their deaths, and it just meant he got the entire reward instead of one-fifth. Soon as he collected that money, he was leaving Korvosa and going off somewhere quiet to retire. This promise was apparently good enough for the party, and I guess after Isabelle and the carnage of the PC vs. NPC adventurer battle, the party was tired of bloodshed – so they let Quincy go. And true to his word, they never saw him again (so far – I was seriously considering having Quincy show up as one of the mounted heads in Pilts’ throne room, as he never intended on paying anyone/he didn’t like Quincy’s face, and since he was alone, well . . . much easier to just introduce him to the Tall Knife, but since the party skipped Pilts’ who knows – maybe I’ll have Quincy show up again after all at some point).
From there we switched gears to the latest plot point that I dropped in the party’s laps – Queen Ileosa came to see them. She admitted that she had been looking into ways to match Kaer Maga militarily since war seemed inevitable, and she had come across an interesting reference in one of Queen Domina’s surviving diaries. Apparently the queen had a secret study/laboratory somewhere in the castle, hidden away out of sight. No one knew where it was, and few if any even knew it existed after her death. But (driven onward by Kazavon) Ileosa had found a reference to it (or perhaps Kazavon had simply given her this information, as this was where the Fangs of Kazavon had been made into the Crown of Kazavon at Domina’s orders).
Ileosa wanted this secret study found, as she believed it held the key to understanding her new powers and how to use them, and possibly some other useful tools that Korvosa could use to defend itself. The party was to start its search of the castle immediately. Vaz’em spent the rest of the day and most of the night slowly searching the castle from top to bottom for any secret passages that were not already known about, while Cid went to get drunk after his death experience, Oliver went back to manage his gang, and Rholand . . . stuck around in his quarters in the castle.
I figured this was going to be a fairly involved search, but Vaz’em rolled quite well on his Perception checks, so in the middle of the night I described him down in the dungeons beneath the castle, when he located a cell where the back wall just didn’t seem quite right to him. Vaz’em nearly went in and blundered into a horrible trap. I can’t recall if I decided what this horrible trap was yet or not, but ultimately I decided it was a ridiculously overkill combo trap – spikes scything out of the wall to impale the would-be thief into the hidden door, a Fire-damage blast Glyph of Warding, which would detonate the large reservoir of alchemist’s fire stored around the doorway, creating an immense secondary fireball after the Glyph of Blasting went off.
Pleased with himself at finding a secret door that potentially had merit of being what they were looking for, Vaz’em went back upstairs to find someone to give the good news to. He found Ileosa walking with a purpose through the hallways in a full-body cloak, despite being indoors. Vaz’em being Vaz’em, he decided to go invisible and follow after her, which backfired since thanks to the Crown Ileosa had Trueseeing and saw Vaz’em immediately. Activating the dominate power, Ileosa imperiously commanded Vaz’em to leave the castle, NOW. And failing his save (for once someone did! Hurray!), Vaz’em hurried to obey, and then stayed gone, acting much like a cat who has been told not to go somewhere it shouldn’t, and then picked up and moved after it didn’t listen.
Concluding the session, Rholand had a midnight visitor shortly thereafter – Ileosa, of course, who removed the cloak to reveal she was wearing nothing under it. This got everyone thinking that this had just been some sort of strange booty-call, when it was not, in fact. Ileosa was only wearing a cloak because she was tired of getting her own blood into her clothes, and she expected to do some bleeding tonight as she went and attempted to revive the deceased Marcus Endrin with her blood. It didn’t go well, as the blood interacted with the lingering necrotic energy of the Arrow of Slaying, turning Marcus into a revenant instead of bringing him back to life fully. Marcus was locked up for further study/use (he’d be sicced on the party in Book Four, in place of the Cinderlander – the result of someone else on the boards using that idea in their game and I liked it). And following that, Ileosa figured she might as well drop in on Rholand for some comfort, because bringing people back from the dead with her blood was weird enough, but having the guy turn into a mutant zombie undead thing was just TOO weird.
Rholand got the idea that something strange was going on when he woke up the next day to find Ileosa gone, but several small bloodstains on the cloak that Ileosa had left behind – so she had been bleeding at some point (when she cut herself to revive/revenant-ify Marcus). But, that was pretty much as far as things went, as the party had more pressing matters to focus on, and Rholand didn’t push Ileosa on the matter when he saw her the next morning.
And that’s pretty much all I’ve got for Session Forty-Nine and Fifty. Up next, one of my favorite parts of my Book Three – Domina’s Study (as pulled out of Inspectre’s deranged arse).
And now we come to the write-up I did of Cid’s dream/remembrance of what happened after he died. Like most stuff involving Kazavon/devils/Hell, you can expect it’s a little disturbing and features some (brief) torture. It was also rather trippy, which perhaps might be expected from a memory of the afterlife filtered through a dream. Nonetheless, it was the catalyst for Cid reconsidering his entire life and belief system, and resolving to change his ways (finding yourself a victim in Hell – or should I say Belzerga - would probably do that to you).
After your resurrection, your memories of what happened after you died remain frustratingly elusive. Nonetheless, you are plagued with a deep unease that refuses to go away even if the reasons for it are inexplicable. When you finally do drift off to a restless sleep, those repressed memories come flooding back into your dreams.
You awake with a pounding headache to find yourself lying on a stone floor. You are not on the streets of Korvosa anymore . . . you are somewhere else. Someplace indoors, where the air is hot and foul. It seems you were expected, for a moment after you awaken you are seized by the arms and dragged to your feet. Two devils of some sort from the look of them, unidentifiable as their black armor and faceless helms cover much of their bodies, save for their scar covered claw-like hands. But they’re not the only ones present in this dimly-lit room, for out of the shadows in front of you steps a familiar face – Zarzagug the Huntsman, looking none the worse for having been slain twice before now.
“Aww . . . were you expecting some sort of eternal reward for your service, Hellknight? Surprised to be here? I guess you should have read your contract more closely.”
Zarzagug explains with a leer, pulling out a scroll of parchment and unfurling it in front of your nose. Your eyes are unable to focus on the writing, but somehow you dimly are aware that you are looking at your recruitment contract, a perfunctory document that you signed upon joining the Order of the Nail. There is no question that it is the document you signed, for in your own handwriting at the bottom in bold letters is your name. Yet you were quite sure that there was no mention of your soul in that document, nor any mention of the afterlife for that matter! Sensing your confusion, Zarzagug laughs as he flips the document over to show you the back. Perfectly blank for only a moment, blood begins to well up from within the parchment, forming Infernal letters.
“Maybe you should have read the fine print, *meat*. Oh well, too late now.”
Zarzagug presses the parchment against your chest, and then from seemingly thin air produces a foot-long spike that he rams through the parchment into your chest, pinning the document to your heart. What little strength you had been gathering leaves you as blood wells up into your mouth, and you slump in the arms of your captors. Sniffing in disdain, Zarzagug steps aside and nods at the two minions holding you up.
“Take this meat down to the Furnace. He’ll burn nicely.”
Blood drooling out of your mouth with every breath, you can only weakly tilt your head to watch as your two escorts drag you out of the room, your bare(!?) feet scrapping painfully against the rough metal floor. Beyond the room is a succession of torturous scenes, not connected to one another – either due to your fading in and out of consciousness, or your mind repressing as much of your time here as it could, even in the liberating land of nightmares. But the scenes that you do remember in between your welcome to the afterlife and your final destination is sufficient to give you the gist of this horrible place.
This is far from your own private Hell – there are dozens of other humans here, being subjected to torments both perverse and excruciating. You don’t recognize all of them, but some of them are Hellknights – fellow Armigers who survived the harsh initial training of the Order, only to fall later during the riots or the plague. Robert . . . Julius . . . Geralt . . . and others whose names you don’t remember.
You even see Xerxes, traitor that he was, locked in an open-barred cage, some sort of box at his feet with an opening at the top just large enough to fit a hand through. A bearded devil was trying to coax him into putting his hand inside, while Xerxes begged and screamed as several imps “encouraged” him by jabbing him with hot iron pokers through the bars.
Yet Hellknights aren’t the only victims here – you see men and women that you don’t recognize, Varisians, Chelish, even what might have once been a Shaoti man, although it is difficult to tell as his skin has been flayed off from the waist up. Perhaps the most curious sight, however, is that of a young boy who could not be older than fourteen, still dressed in the tatters of one of the gaudy school uniforms mandated by the Acadamae of Korvosa. You only catch a glimpse of him as a black armored devil pushes the boy’s face down into a bowl full of flesh-eating scarab beetles, and then your memory fades to black once more.
When your memory comes back into focus, you find yourself being dragged into your cavernous destination – the Furnace. Brittle blackened bones are scattered about the floor here, yet the devils pay them no mind, crunching them underfoot as they drag you towards one of the many stone pillars jutting from the floor and stretching up into darkness. Shadowy figures hang from some of the pillars nearby, their forms no longer entirely human but stretched and distorted, as if they can no longer hold their humanoid shape. The air here is unbearably hot and stifling, and you can feel your own unprotected skin begin to bubble and melt. The source of this heat is clear – a glowing red hot mass of jagged metal squatting in the middle of the enormous room, the cataclysmic fire burning at its center obscured by metal grates and the bones of charred skeletons still shackled to those grates.
As your two captors shove you roughly up against their chosen column and reach for the rusty chains overhead, you realize this is your last chance. With a strength born of desperation you shove them away, Retribution suddenly in your hand and flashing as it scythes through the air, forcing your captors further back still. The two devils back away from you, circling around to flank you as you stagger away from the pillar, trying to find a way out and finding none. You try to use magic to help defend yourself, but find the blood in your mouth prevents it, your fingers suddenly too slow to trace out the complex patterns necessary. You still have Retribution, though, except that a moment later you’re no longer holding a sword but a hand? . . . or is it a claw . . . Whichever it was, the owner of it pressed their back up against yours, thwarting the attempt to hit you from both front and back at the same time.
“I am with you to the end!”
Retribution cries out, this time not in your head but out loud. But even so, your resistance is fierce but short-lived. The devil in front of you makes some sort of gesture, and pain explodes from your chest as the contract-holding spike twists and turns inside of you. Behind you, Retribution also cries out, and disappears while you slump to the floor, beaten. Unconcerned, the two devils approach you once more, dragging you back up to your feet and over to the pillar, dragging down the chains and locking them around your wrists. The barbs on the inside rim of the cuffs bite deeply into the flesh of your wrists, and you feel as though these chains will not come off without taking your hands with them.
Satisfied that this will be sufficient to hold you, one of the devils runs a single clawed digit down the side of your face, while the other toys with the spike still jutting out of your chest, forcing your to fight back a gurgling scream. The two step away as Zarzagug suddenly appears again, his hideous looking even more hideous than usual as it splits into a grin.
“Hope you’re comfy there, because you’re going to be here for a long time. The rest of eternity in fact. But look on the bright side – eventually you’ll start to enjoy it. Welcome to the family . . . Cid. Now open your mouth.”
Zarzagug commands, draws a poker from the depths of the furnace, its tip heated to a nearly blinding white hot glow. The two escort devils spring into action once more, one grabbing you by the throat and hair, while the other forces your jaw open as Zarzagug approaches, the fiend’s grin only getting wider by the second.
“Now, let’s see if you can still make a pithy remark with a full mouth, meat.”
Zarzagug cackles, only to be interrupted by a bright flash of light and a thunderous boom as a vortex opens up directly over your head, threatening to blow the devils away and suck you up into it. The devils are flung away from you, and even Zarzagug is forced to drop the poker and grab a nearby pillar for support as the vortex howls and yawns wide. You are lifted off of your feet, the chains clattering as they, like your limbs, are pulled taut from the force. The shackles’ barbs dig ever deeper into your wrists, and just as it seems your arms are about to be ripped off, the vortex collapses and you swing back down against the pillar with a painful whumph! Zarzagug cackles even louder as he stoops to pick the poker back up and the two other devils pick themselves up.
“Hah! Friends trying to revive ya, are they? Nohohoho, no no . . . you’re ours now, Cid. Forever and ever and ever.”
Seeming to have abandoned his previous plan to ram the poker down your throat, Zarzagug approaches with the poker and levels it at your left eye. Just before the devil can inflict further injury on you, however, the furnace explodes. Well, more or less anyway, as one of the grates flies off and a blackened skeleton that doesn’t exist below the ribcage crawls out of the gout of flame that comes roaring out of the newly-made breach. Zarzagug shrieks and the two armored devils rush towards the figure, only to be consumed in a gout of flame that comes not from the furnace but the skeleton’s outstretched palm. Roaring in fury, Zarzagug charges the not-so-pathetic skeleton himself, only to be cut down as the skeleton slices across his chest with a thin green line conjured by his other hand.
Then the skeleton turns its attention to you, but any fears you might have had towards its own plans for you are mollified when it summons a second thin green line to dissolve the chains holding your shackles to the pillar. A moment later, and the vortex that nearly sucked you away from this place reappears, lifting you more graciously up into the air now that you are not chained down. Your progress is stopped for a moment, however, as the skeleton reaches a hand up and grabs what’s left of the chain around your left wrist, pulling you down closer so that you are face to skull with it. With all but a few flecks of charred flesh seared away from its bones, the skeleton is unrecognizable, and yet a strange sense of familiarity flows through you as you look down on it. The skeleton’s jawbone falls open as a voice, raspy and raw but still holding an ounce of the authority it wielded in life, speaks a dire warning to you.
Theme Song (The same theme I played whenever Kazavon was mentioned throughout Book Three)
“You must warn them, you must warn them all! If you remember nothing else of this place, remember this! Beware the Bleeding Eye, for It turns Its gaze towards Korvosa. And Horror shall follow in Its wake.”
Then the skeleton releases its grip, and you fly up into the vortex just before it closes and leaves you once again trapped here in this torturous place. You return to the land of the living, and it is only now in the midst of your feverous nightmares, that you remember what happened after you died, and the dire warning you were given.
Beware the Bleeding Eye, for Horror shall follow in Its wake . . .
Session Forty-Nine (no spoiler): All of a sudden you hit the jackpot on the soundtrack. In the admittedly extremely unlikely event that I end up directing a theatrical or audiovisual production about Hellknights, now I know who to go to for the soundtrack. If Blizzard can't rediscover the people they had to do the WarCraft II soundtracks, Two Steps from Hell is the next best thing.
Also, while Stone Shape can make walls, it shouldn't be able to make very large walls, although unfortunately the spell's description only gives a maximum volume of stone affected, not a maximum volume that the resulting stone object can be inscribed into -- it shouln't be more powerful than Wall of Stone, which is 2 levels higher.
Also, did Rholand (or someone) have the means to do something about Cid's negative levels after succeeding in bringing him back?
Who was the Revenant Marcus trying to go after, before being locked up?
Cid's After-Life Party (no spoilers): Awesome.
Although for Cid's temporary death experience, I'm thinking of this soundtrack, although I've also thought of this for an Abyssal party, although we have the WarCraft II Orc soundtracks for that . . . Maybe it fits best in between, as the soundtrack for an Abaddonian party . . . ?
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Thanks - stumbled on it while looking for a musical theme for their ambush, found it fit pretty well.
Keep in mind despite their disadvantages, the Punishers still killed Cid outright and came within a hairs' breadth of killing Rholand (if I had been merciless with their surprise round, Gregory would have shot Rholand and then the sorcerer would have dumped a Fireball onto the party which would have undoubtedly put Rholand past negative con).
So while I didn't plan very well for the stone wall nor Gromka's spell use, if those things hadn't happened we might have been looking at a TPK/DM Fiated escape which would have been just as bad. So the Punishers did their job, more or less (I was disappointed I didn't get to use them as a recurring thorn though). Oh well, next evil adventuring trope!
And as I mentioned before, I've been letting Rholand get away with his Stone Shape hijinx specifically because there is a lot of stone available inside of Korvosa to give him fuel for the spell (I wouldn't let him do that stuff in a forest, for example), and without those walls the party has 0 CC capability, especially now Gromka is gone for good. So I let them get away with things here and there so they don't die horribly when I swarm them with large mobs of guys that Cid can't just explode with Fireball.
The nat 1 = no other attempts is only for Use Magic Device. This is not use magic device, this is "I can cast this spell in a couple more levels so I make a caster level check", which is given under the scroll rules. It says nothing about not attempting again, so long as the scroll is still intact, which it will be barring a mishap (which also has a pretty low chance of happening).
Included with the Raise Dead scroll was two scrolls of Restoration - I, and by extension, Ileosa had figured if they needed to use the scroll, they were probably up to their knees in undead and needed whoever they revived to be fully functional.
Marcus wanted to go kill Ileosa, but since he was animated with her blood, she has control over him (and there's always the crown to Dominate). Yeah, sucks to be Marcus - damned to Scarwall, brought back as an undead abomination, and you have to obey the very thing you hate most in the entire universe. Presumably he gave Ileosa a good scare before he got put under her heel though.
Ah yes, Belioz is always a good choice for dark, moody orchestral themes. Mostly it was meant just for a laugh, since Cid and all of the other Hellknights were aware that they would probably be going to Hell (being an evil antisocial jackass that kills/tortures "criminals" tends to do that). But they all think that they'll be in charge down there, since they slap around Devils all the time on the mortal plane - not so. No, instead they're no less victims than any other damned soul - arguably they have it even worse because the devils have an agenda here.
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So . . . not much happened this session, mostly as we again did individual scenes. After the two-session long slugfest with the Punishers, it seemed like having some individual roleplaying scenes was the thing to do given our current habit in Book Three of doing Roleplaying -> Combat -> Roleplaying sessions. Also, Vaz’em’s player wasn’t able to attend, and since he was the only one who currently knew of this secret door down in the dungeons, we couldn’t move on to Domina’s study (nor did I want to as I wanted everyone here for this particular development).
We started the session with Rholand waking up to find himself alone in his quarters, Ileosa’s bloodstained cloak still lying where she had left it the previous night. Finding it unlikely that the cloak was going to have any further answers for him, Rholand got dressed and went looking for the queen. He found her having breakfast with a guest – the young head of House Ornelos, Vladimir Ornelos. It seemed like the two of them were hitting it off well, as Ileosa was smiling and laughing at some sort of joke when Rholand entered. Not surprisingly, Rholand immediately decided that he didn’t like Ornelos (oh, if only he knew the truth about Ornelos – he *really* wouldn’t like him then!)
Taking the hint that he was muscling in on Rholand’s turf, Ornelos excused himself shortly thereafter, with a final comment that his uncle would be stopping by to see Ileosa with a proposal. Vladimir wasn’t sure what the proposal was, but he asked that Ileosa give his uncle her ear. After he left, Rholand sat down for breakfast, although he didn’t get much of a chance to talk to Ileosa as she got up almost as soon as he sat down – apparently before meeting “Uncle” Toff Ileosa had several more boring meetings with merchants and the like, trying to manage the ongoing tariff war with Kaer Maga. She soothed that blow a little by asking Rholand if he could sit in on the meeting with Ornelos, so that Rholand could provide his own opinions on this proposal of his.
As it turned out, Toff’s proposal was to summon a number of devils to reinforce the ranks of the city guard, and come the war with Kaer Maga if it came to that, to reinforce the army. The Acadamae had sufficient resources to Call, not summon, a number of devils, and would have personnel on stand-by to use summoning spells to immediately bolster those numbers . . . for a few minutes, anyway. Sabrina thought this was a bad idea, Ileosa thought this was a bad idea and still didn’t like the Acadamae after their lockdown during the plague, and Rholand understandably REALLY didn’t like this idea.
So Toff got shown the door shortly after explaining his proposal, although he was gracious after being turned down – he suspected that after the war with Kaer Maga started, the queen would adjust her stance due to necessity. Most of the PCs thought that this was a lead-in to some sort of coup by the Acadamae, summoning a bunch of devils into the city that would be loyal to their summoners alone. Given that the demiplane of Belzerga was a home away from home for a small army of devils already, there pretty much already *was* an army of devils inside of Korvosa, biding their time. But, of course, nobody but the Ornelos family knew about that . . . yet. *evil DM grin*
At this point, and I’m not sure if this was just spur of the moment or something that he had been planning for some time, but Rholand asked Ileosa if she had a few minutes now that the meeting with Toff was over. He wanted to test something, but this test would require him to cast a spell on Ileosa – would that be alright with her? Ileosa wasn’t so sure about this, but she trusted Rholand, so she gave him the go ahead despite Kazavon hissing warnings in her ear about this. And then Rholand cast Protection from Evil on Ileosa.
Now, Ileosa’s own alignment was rapidly trending Evil at this point thanks to accepting Kazavon’s influence, and there is no mechanical impact on casting Protection from Evil on an evil being. Furthermore, Kazavon’s presence in Ileosa was more intricate and intimidate than a simple possession at this point – more like a soul splice – so he would not be driven out by a simple first level spell. Regardless, after a bit of thought, I decided that it would be more fun for something dramatic and horrific to happen at this point, so the Crown . . . overreacted a bit.
An explosion of concussive force erupted out of the crown, flinging Rholand about twenty feet across the room and into the back wall. Not as close to the blast, Sabrina was merely pushed back into the nearby wall. As he shook his head to clear his dazed vision, Rholand looked up to see blood pouring out of Ileosa’s mouth, nose, and eyes. In a soft, horrified whisper, Ileosa – the *real* Ileosa – who managed to have moment of perfect clarity free of Kazavon’s influence – spoke. “He’s killing me Rholand. He’s killing me one piece at a time.” And then the crown just ate Rholand’s Protection from Evil spell, and Ileosa blinked and wiped at her bloody face in confusion while Sabrina looked back and forth between Ileosa and Rholand in horror.
While Ileosa recovered (and groused about yet another dress ruined with her blood running all over it), Sabrina pulled Rholand aside into a nearby room. She asked him what the hell just happened, Rholand explained that this crown Ileosa was always wearing was clearly having some sort of influence on her mind, and it was EVIL given how it reacted. Sabrina countered with the declaration that that scene just now was a warning – and who knows what the crown would do next if it was pushed, but it was clearly capable and willing to hurt Ileosa. In no uncertain terms, Sabrina stated that Rholand was not to do anything reckless again without consulting her first. Rholand ignored Sabrina’s demand, and told her to get her hands off of him or he would kill her. She released him, as she wasn’t willing to get into a fight with the queen’s beloved just right now, but she repeated her demand – leave Ileosa’s crown alone without consulting Sabrina first, or there was going to be TROUBLE. That was pretty much the end of Rholand’s private session, and prompted Cid’s player to comment that apparently they were fighting a BBEHM (Big Bad Evil Hunk of Metal) . . . which wasn’t that far off really.
Cid got his little afterlife story, so that sort of counted as his private session, so we moved on to Oliver. He was back at his house, when Boule paid him another visit. He officially signed over ownership of Lamm’s old Fishery hideout at this point, and mentioned that the Cerulean Society would be in touch. However, on a more serious note . . . apparently Boule’s boss wanted a meeting with Oliver and his friends - as soon as possible. Oliver told Boule to tell his boss that was acceptable (they had been looking for this big bossman since Boule admitted his part in the Senaschal’s abduction). Boule said that he would make the arrangements, and let Oliver know where and when the meeting would be.
Shortly after Boule left, Oliver had another visitor – a gang of Scarzni thugs, whose leader introduced himself as Romero Scarzni/Scarnetti (not sure whether I was calling them Scarzni or Scarnetti, after the crime family in Sandpoint I guess :-/ ). Anyway, Romero had a proposal of his own for Oliver – the Scarzni were looking to move into Korvosa – for a long time the Cerulean Society had kept them out of the city, while the Scarzni basically had people everywhere across the rest of Varisia. Now that the Cerulean Society was crippled by the plague and quarantine of Old Korvosa, it was an opportunity for them to move in and the Scarzni were taking it.
They’d like to make a deal with Oliver – he was a clever man, and they thought that they could do good business. What they wanted was simple – they wished to pay Oliver for the use of the Old Fishery as a smuggling den. Oliver had no loyalty to the Cerulean Society, so he was fine with this, provided the Scarzni followed a few simple rules – no kidnapping, no drugs, no kids. Romero thought that those terms were reasonable – the Scarzni just wanted a place where they could store smuggled goods into the city. They shook on the deal, and then the Scarzni left, which brought Oliver’s personal scene and the session to an end. Next session – Domina’s study for real this time!
Hahahaha - making an index of the AD&D DMG is impossible because it was written by a mad genius. A lot of gygax's opinions are a little outdated in today's world, but so long as you keep in mind that he had a very gamist perspective on RPGs, you can get some really good insights.
Yup. We open Session Fifty-Two with his personal scene. Which explains where he was at, and why he wasn't there in the morning to tell everyone where they needed to go to get into Domina's study. That consumed a fair bit of time for the session, but we still managed to have the first encounter or so of the secret study. *Lots* of interesting revelations were had there. Mostly involving Domina's involvement in all this, as well as a very unexpected name was mentioned . . .
Session Fifty (actually the Great EGG):
Gary Gygax may have been a deranged genius, but I was just reminded in another thread that he at least made an honest (if flawed) attempt to catalog Earth historical weapons (especially polearms).
Since this came up earlier in this thread (because Cid is a Hellknight Magus), somebody made a bunch of Prestige Archetypes, including several Hellknight archetypes (although strangely no Hellknight Magus), but I don't much care for the way they did most of these (including adding more than they replace). The Hellknight Paragon in there is actually an alternate class of Paladin instead of an archetype, and might make a decent class for DeVries.
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Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve put an update up here. Sorry, I’ve been rather busy and tired as of late. My personal favorite from the AD&D Big Book of Polearms was the Spetum – don’t ask me why, I just liked the look of it! :p
So as mentioned the last time I posted here (like nearly a month ago O_O) this session opened up with Vaz’em’s own personal session. After scoping out the castle and finding a rather oddly placed secret door in one of the cells of the castle’s dungeon of all places, and getting ordered to leave by Ileosa after trying to follow her around, Vaz’em heads back home for the evening. Only to have yet another encounter with Cinnabar, who was waiting for him at an intersection just beyond the castle.
She announced that her client wanted to speak with Vaz’em. Right now. And it was pretty clear that this was not an optional meeting. Vaz’em followed her down to the docks, where another pair of Red Mantis, these wearing the mantis masks typical of their order, waiting with a boat. Vaz’em’s player was definitely freaking out that this was going to be a short trip out into the river for him, but he didn’t see a way out so he got into the boat. For his part, Vaz’em was cool as a cucumber as he and Cinnabar climbed into the boat and set out for the mouth of the river. A short distance out into the sea, a sleek courier vessel was waiting – The Moon Dancer.
Somewhat relieved that this wasn’t just a plot to row out into the sea and then dump him, Vaz’em climbed aboard with Cinnabar and was met by the strange masked man with cat eyes that had stolen Ileosa’s blood from Isabella. This man introduced himself as Avidexu, and indicated that Cinnabar was to wait outside on the deck while Vaz’em met with their boss inside the captain’s quarters. Escorted inside, Vaz’em found himself face to face with none other than Glorio Arkona, who greeted the catfolk assassin warmly.
Glorio was complimentary of Vaz’em’s skill, and more importantly discretion, because Glorio had brought him here to ask a simple question – were his party mates also capable of a similar level of discretion? Glorio needed a group of people that he could trust to help him keep matters under control in Old Korvosa. But he needed to know that he could trust Vaz’em and the rest of his party – could he count on them? Vaz’em seemed to think so, and apparently that was good enough for Glorio as he thanked Vaz’em for his honesty and dismissed him and Avidexu after that answer.
Left to wonder just what was going on, Vaz’em was escorted back to the Red Mantis rowboat, and shipped back to Korvosa with only a promise that Glorio would be in touch soon then. The trip out to the boat ended up taking the rest of Vaz’em’s night, and so he collapsed into bed once he got back to his nearest safe house within the city, and slept through the morning (which made up Session Fifty-One where Rholand was poking the crown with a sharp stick and nearly getting his arm torn off for it).
Later that afternoon the party met back up finally to hear Vaz’em’s report that he had discovered an unusual door down in the dungeon. The group as a whole went down to investigate this time, deciding to keep the queen and Togomor out of the information loop for the moment since they had no idea what was waiting for them in the study, but that it was likely going to be dangerous, and especially dangerous in Ileosa’s increasingly unstable hands. The first hurdle to overcome was revealed after Vaz’em examined the secret door within the cell more closely – a trio of traps awaited the unwary – a series of scythe blades designed to spring out and impale the unfortunate into the wall, a reservoir of flammable gas to be released in their face, and then a glyph of warding set to Fire to set off the gas consume any survivors in a massive explosion. It was a pretty serious, if a bit overkill, trap, that had Vaz’em sweating bullets as he disarmed each trap in sequence (he took a feat that gave him Trapfinding/disabling – just in time for this!).
Traps disarmed, the group opened the secret door to find a long stairway descending down into darkness. The stairway led down to a small, clearly very old chamber, where a runic circle decorated the floor and ancient glowing runes decorated the walls. This was unmistakably Thassilon in origin, and as the group examined the runes they shifted and twisted into the Common tongue. Sadly, I made up the exact text off the cuff and didn’t save a copy, but it was basically a statement that only the loyal could proceed, and then a pledge of allegiance to Sorshen, Runelord of Lust. The group figured out pretty quickly that they needed to recite the pledge in order to activate the runic circle, and some spellcraft checks confirmed that it was a teleport circle, so presumably it would be sending them somewhere.
Not seeing another way to activate the ancient magic (and perhaps for once being a little hesitant to pick fights with ancient beings who left behind *very* high-level magic, the group each spoke the command words, the circle activated, and suddenly they were somewhere else, even deeper below the Grand Mastaba that Castle Korvosa was built on top of. (Flank got sent along with Rholand as they were bonded, and being an animal it wasn’t like Flank could give an oath of allegiance).
They found themselves in a chamber divided in half, with the half that they were currently in lower than the back half of the room and connected via a pair of stairways to the left and right. They were standing in another teleport circle, so presumably speaking the same oath of allegiance to Sorshen would send them back home(?). There was a small dome built around their teleport circle, hemming the group in somewhat, with six columns holding up the dome surrounding them, each column decorated with a beautiful nude woman holding a sword.
Indeed, the walls, ceiling, and floor of this entire chamber were decorated in bas relief carvings of men, women, animals, and monsters partaking in rather . . . passionate, if depraved, acts with each other. A number of these carvings had been smashed, and seemingly quite deliberately too – rather than the crumbling passage of time, it instead seemed likely that someone hadn’t liked the artwork of this chamber and spent some time erasing at least part of it (Domina was somewhat of a prude).
Before the group could spread out to examine the room in more detail, an angel made of brass stepped up onto the landing of the pair of stairs, looming down over them in judgement. In a screeching, grating voice the angel demanded to know who the group served. Thinking quickly, the group blurted out “Domina” – which was actually a pretty good guess given who had taken over this part of Sorshen’s domain. It was, unfortunately, incorrect, but since it wasn’t entirely wrong (like saying “Sorshen” or “Ileosa” would have been) I decided that the angel would cut them a little bit of slack.
Rather than continuing to demand who they served, it switched to a pass phrase. It wanted them to complete the following phrase as proof of their identity. “Beware the Bleeding Eye –“ And this bone paid off as Cid thankfully remembered this little after-life write-up that I made for him, complete with a dire warning from the strange skeletal soul that rescued him (the former general Leo Astares, founder of the Order of the Nail). “Beware the Bleeding Eye, for Horror follows in its wake…” Cid breathed, a bit horrified that it seemed everything was all starting to connect together now, at least a little bit.
*That* answer satisfied the angel, and it stood down (along with the six caratyid columns that were currently surrounding the party as “innocent” columns around the teleport circle). The metal angel welcomed them to Domina’s Workshop, and then seemed to go into a stand-by mode, as it simply stood there and did not answer any more questions. Proceeding up the stairs past the angel, the group found themselves confronted with a trio of doors – a set of double doors on the west wall, a single door on the east wall, and directly ahead of them in the north wall, a massive set of doors nearly 15’ wide, and decorated with a sigil painted over the doors, possibly in blood – a stylized depiction of an eyeball with a nail driven diagonally through it from left-to-right, the tip emerging from the bottom-right corner of the eye and dripping blood – The Bleeding Eye (I was pretty proud of coming up with this sigil for Kazavon, as I wanted some sort of eye-motif (eye wide in horror) but was concerned someone would make a “omg it’s Sauron!” crack and then I’d never hear the end of it. Thankfully, no one made that crack, and it seemed to work pretty well as heraldry for Kazavon going forward).
Deciding to start small, the group went to the door to the east – which of course was the door that I *hadn’t* prepared yet (the northern doors were sealed by the sigil and would require a key from both of the other wings, so I had that one locked down, but it was rather hard to justify only one of the three doorways being unlocked without accusations of railroading). Fortunately, I had an idea of what was waiting for them, so I quickly sketched out a small study – several shelves of books, and a writing desk, with a few chairs, waiting for them beyond the east door. Another set of double doors sat on the far wall, which thankfully would end up waiting for next session, as the group explored the study.
They found several rare books on the shelves, most of them related to history – either what was known of Thassilon, and also more curiously the haunted nation of Ustalav far to the north of Korvosa across the Cinderlands. Several of the books were valuable enough to be worth trying to sell, so the party pocketed those, and then turned their attention to the writing desk. Inside a hidden compartment of the desk, they found a pouch of gems suitable for use as ritual components, and a large leather-bound tome – which was also emblazoned with the Bleeding Eye symbol on its front cover.
It was only the work of a minute or two for Vaz’em to pick the lock of the tome, and they opened it to find dozens of pages filled with elegant script – the secret journal of Queen Domina herself. Only this wasn’t a journal filled with regrets and unrequited love – this was a journal detailing Domina’s own slow descent into madness. Again, I made most of the text off the cuff, and provided the party with a number of interesting passages from Domina’s life.
Apparently she had nearly died from the same assassin’s blade that had taken the life of her husband King Chandris, and the crippling wound was only alleviated after Domina discovered an ancient relic within the Grand Mastaba – an artifact she called only “The Fangs”. That was only the start of it, however, and after discovering a page filled with only the phrase “The Blood is the Power” over and over again (written by Domina in a trance), the party moved on to the last year or so of Domina’s life.
She sought to fully harness the power of the Fangs, as she sensed that they were incomplete, and she craved to obtain its full power. Part of her vision had also given her a starting point for where she could find this blood that she needed – the lost city of Tamrivena, an ancient city in Ustalav that vanished nearly six hundred years ago, only a short time after the defeat of Tar Baphon (which had the party freaking out for a bit that maybe they were dealing with the arch lich reborn). To locate this city, and bring back what she needed to complete the fangs, Domina hired a group of adventurers, led by a man who had made something of a name for himself in getting the job done, no questions asked so long as the pay was right – Gaedren Lamm.
Predictably, Oliver flipped out at this point, but thankfully he was prevented from tearing the book apart in a fit of rage at the mention of his old nemesis. Continuing on, the group learned that Lamm returned from Tamrivena, and the fortress known as Scarwall, in failure – he hadn’t acquired what Domina needed, but he had returned with a chunk of unusual metal taken from Scarwall itself – there was no explanation as to how Lamm acquired this metal, however. Domina experimented with this Scarwall metal, and eventually hit upon the idea of using it to forge a crown that might help focus the Fangs’ power, given that the two seemed to react to the presence of each other.
The last entry of the journal, dated the day of the great fire that consumed Domina’s bed chambers and killed her, stated that someone named Yzahnum was putting the finishing touches on the crown now. Domina, separated from the Fangs while Yzahnum worked them into the crown, was having a brief moment of clarity as she wrote this entry, and she was filled with horror at the thought of what she had done, and what she would do once the crown was on her head. But what could she do? The crown would soon be ready, and all Domina could do, was to listen to its call, and bear the Crown of Fangs.
And that was pretty much where we ended the session, with the group preparing to breech the set of double doors and investigate further what Domina had wrought down here in service to the Bleeding Eye, the Crown of Fangs, the Eternal Horror – they had not yet learned the name Kazavon just yet. But now they were getting the aliases of their true enemy, and on the whole while there was no fighting and the group was just getting into Domina’s secret workshop, on the whole the group liked the dungeon and the revelation that once, long ago, Lamm was an adventurer instead of just a criminal scumbag.
For those curious, while it hasn’t been revealed yet (even now in Book Four), Lamm obviously didn’t go to Scarwall by himself. He was accompanied by a newly-graduated wizard known as Rolth (yes, the same Rolth), a half-elf paladin named Taira, and a fourth as yet-unnamed person. While not completely unskilled, the group obviously wasn’t ready for the horrors that awaited them in Scarwall.
They were captured and tortured by the denizens of that dark place – the as yet-unnamed guy was the first to surrender to the darkness of Scarwall and became a loyal follower of Kazavon. As proof of his loyalty, he tortured Taira to death in front of Rolth and Lamm, damning her soul to an eternity of torment within Scarwall. Then . . . the three of them were mysteriously released by their captors, given a hunk of Scarwall metal, and sent on their way to return to the one who sent them. Mr. Unnamed A@~~&#! now assumed command of the three-member party on their return trip, but his reign was short-lived as Rolth and Lamm conspired together to murderhobo the shit out of this guy for what he did to Taira, but nonetheless felt compelled to return to Domina to deliver the Scarwall metal (likely a Geas or something equally unpleasant).
Lamm and Rolth then went their separate ways after Domina was . . . less than pleased with their performance since she had expected more than a hunk of metal, but the taint of Scarwall had been branded into their souls. Not pleasant people to begin with, Lamm and Rolth both gradually fell into the depraved horrible people that they were when the party met them – and both damned to return to Scarwall after their deaths.
AD&D Weapons: According to the Wikipedia articles on these, the Spetum was a highly effective weapon, more deserving of the Fauchard's stats than the Fauchard itself, which was apparently not very good. (I'll say that the Spetum certainly looks a lot scarier, too.)
The Bleeding Eye doesn't sound like Sauron -- it sounds painful to whoever has it.
Did they ever figure out where the metal angel came from?
Any hint that they can quest to try to release Taira's soul from Scarwall?
Yup, that's the Spetum, similar to how it appeared in the AD&D sketches! I liked the side prongs, what can I say? :p
It inspired an idea that perhaps at some point during his repeated attempts to conquer the world, someone cut out one of Kazavon's eyes, and rather than regenerating properly, it continued to weep blood - hence The Bleeding Eye moniker. Plus, it just sounds unpleasant and a lead-in to an Eye Scream. (Yes, I just linked to TvTropes. BEWARE!)
And yes, they got a pretty good idea where the metal angel (I think it's called an Angelic Guardian actually) came from in the next session! *evil DM grin* (Hint: The boring answer is that Domina had it constructed by some of Yzahnum's lackies)
At this point, they still don't even know Taira exists (although Oliver has heard the name finally at least). I suspect she's going to end up just being another obstacle to them in Scarwall. I will need to either figure out a method they can use to save her afterwards, or simply state - as written in Book Five - that killing the Chained Spirit shatters the curse and frees all of the trapped souls.
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Indeed, that’s the one! And yeah, most of the constructs here were upgraded a bit so that they could talk to at least a rudimentary degree. I’ve found constructs make really poor guardians if they can’t at least say “get out of here or I will activate and try to kill you”.
Yeah, I’m not sure how to handle that. Obviously the spirit already has its four anchors as-written, but I could always either add more anchors or just have it spam its “shackle host” ability to link up with other mini-bosses as quickly as the party can put them down. One write-up I’ve read that gave me evil ideas had the chained spirit try to bind its essence to Laori, which if it had succeeded would have turned her into a puppet/forced the party to kill/dispel evil her in order to kill the chained spirit.
So the following week I was fully ready with my dungeon this time, minus the stuff behind the Bleeding Eye door, which, given the key would require visiting each wing to get the two pieces, I was confident they wouldn’t get to this session. Thankfully they were also pretty frightened of a magical door with such a menacing symbol on it, so they didn’t risk trying to pick the lock.
Continuing on past the small library they had found Domina’s journal in, they passed through the double doors to enter into an alchemical laboratory. A dozen workbenches covered in various chemicals were lined up in a trio of orderly rows through most of the room’s center. At the back of the room directly across from the door was a small stone pedestal holding a half dozen or so black metal shards – the rest of the Scarwall metal that was *not* used in forging the Crown of Fangs.
Also along that back wall was a small writing desk where experiments on the metal were recorded . . . and near to the pedestal in the back most corner of the room, was an immense 15’ tall bronze statue of Leo Astares. Which, of course, stirred to life as the group entered the room. This brass juggernaut was even more of a Chatty Kathy than the angelic guardian was, stating that its purpose was here to guard the room, and that while they were welcome here (as they said that they served Domina), they were not authorized to remove the Scarwall metal from its place.
They asked the juggernaut some more questions, and while it didn’t answer all of them (not being programmed to answer those), they got the gist that Domina was studying the Scarwall metal, the juggernaut was there to guard what’s left of it, which apparently could be made into some sort of key, and that they were not authorized to mess with it.
They were pretty cautious to obey this construct’s demands, so instead of a wild fight in the middle of an alchemical lab with the brass juggernaut nonchalantly charging through work benches and scattering acid, fire, frost, and ochre jellies everywhere, they basically walked around without a fight. It would be something of a pattern in this dungeon – but then sometimes that’s a refreshing change as well. But I still never got to use my theme for the big guy.
Brass Juggernaut – Smithy Fight from Super Mario Bros RPG (For those wondering at the choice of music, in the game at the very start of the fight the boss drops a very large hammer on the party. This gigantic statue was pretty much going to drop a similarly-sized hammer on the party’s heads if they had pissed it off.)
The party was permitted to look at the research notes on the desk, although they were not permitted to take the notes with them. They flipped through them – mostly it was rather dry notation on what various effects different energies had on the Scarwall metal . . . which wasn’t a whole lot. Cold – nothing, Fire – nothing, acid – nothing, unusually conductive of electricity (the exact sort of thing a blue dragon with lightning breath might like to make his fortress out of, perhaps? ;) ), and likewise strangely receptive to psychic control. Apparently by holding the metal in your hands you could think of an object and WILL the metal to take the desired shape (this wasn’t particularly easy, but I thought it made sense for metal from a Silent Hill-esque hellhole).
The party also found a secret door at the back of the chamber (which I deliberately made somewhat easy for them to find due to what was back there), but they decided not to piss the juggernaut off as access to that secret room was strictly forbidden. So, with this being the end of the road apparently for this wing of the secret laboratory/study, the group across the lobby area and entered the west wing of the complex.
A blast of intense heat greeted them as the doors opened, and the group found themselves standing at the entrance to a foundry. Dwarf-like creatures with fiery skin and hair labored around several smelters, while another group labored at a number of anvils across the sweltering room, hammering out the ingots of metal into pieces of armor. As the group watched, one of the pairs of dwarves (Azer, actually) finished their metal plate, hanging it off of a hook dangling from a clothesline of chain nearby, and then pulling the chain to send the metal plate speeding along down the line through a hole in the wall and into the next room.
It was at about this point that the group got noticed, and all of the work stopped while one of the “dwarves” stepped forward and started ranting at them in a language none of them could understand (basically “hey! Who are you! This is a dangerous area! Where is your protective gear!?”) The dwarves grumbled amongst themselves, but did not turn immediately hostile so again the party tried desperately to negotiate and talk their way through. Rholand cast comprehend languages, allowing him to at least understand what they were telling him although he still could not speak back.
Here’s what the DM mercy bit stepped in, where I allowed Rholand to get a good enough feel for how the words the Azer were saying (in Ignan) that he could speak a few broken words in Ignan, enough for him to get his point across despite a few mispronounced words or wrong words used (what does a banana have to do with why you are here!?). I probably shouldn’t have let it work, but eh . . . it was either that, or they would have shrugged and either left or started killing people, which while expected given this was a dungeon nonetheless would have been less satisfying.
Although, again, this did mean that I didn’t get the chance to use another cool construct – the Cutlass Spider, sitting in a pile of scrap and weapons beside the anvils. It was capable of stealing and eating magical weapons, and I had been looking forward to it stealing Retribution, Cid’s sword . . . which would have had the unexpected effect of forcing the Cutlass Spider to make a Will save or Retribution would hijack it for a round, allowing Cid to give it orders . . . until such time as they decide to destroy the spider to get Retribution back, anyway . . . or got tired of the spider passing a will save and tearing into the party.
The party was escorted into the next room, where they found additional Azer working the collected metal plates into a suit of armor, which was then loaded onto a cart and wheeled onto a ramp leading down into darkness. Back in a corner, a shadowy figure floated within a cage of silver bars – no one passed the checks to identify the undead, but the token name and appearance made it clear – Wraith. An Azer wearing actual armor was overlooking the work from a platform, flanked by two of the empty suits of armor which were mobile and with glowing eyes and were clearly the Azer’s bodyguards. He was definitely the one in charge, as he constantly berated his workers and threatened them with “conversion” if they didn’t pick up the pace of work.
This Azer was capable of speaking the Common tongue, and he welcomed the group, clearly assuming that they were inspectors sent by Domina to check up on his progress. He apologized for the fact that they were behind schedule, but that there had been a shortage of resources and manpower (due to the Azer laboring non-stop for the past twenty years without further support from Domina). Nonetheless, a sizable portion of Domina’s army was ready for use at her command – would the party like to view the currently prepared forces?
At this point the party was starting to mutter amongst themselves of destroying this whole place to keep it out of Ileosa’s hands, as certainly a bunch of dwarves making an army of constructs was not a good thing for her to have given her instability and growing desire for a war with Kaer Maga. That was before they agreed to a tour, and were escorted by Azer Prime and his guards up onto his platform, and from there through the doors set into the back wall of the platform – which led to a balcony overlooking a cavernous room.
Domina’s Army – Minas Morgul from The Lord of the Rings the Return of the King Soundtrack
A cavernous room where, thirty feet below, an entire army of constructs stood – a dozen of the angelic guards, nearly a hundred of the suits of armor, a dozen of which were mobile and active (felwrought, if you’re curious – animated by the wraith the Azer had sucking down on the Azer workers who got worn out or were too slow or mutinous to satisfy their leader, spawning new wraiths that were then bound into the armor as described in the Felwrought descrption). Four more Cutlass spiders, and for the masterpiece – no less than FIVE Iron Golems. All of the active constructs came to attention upon seeing the group up on the balcony, including the five iron golems, and the group pretty much just collectively PISSES THEMSELVES.
To be fair, I probably would too if I rounded a corner and got shown a literal army of constructs that included five IRON GOLEMS in it of all things. All thought of destroying this army pretty much went out the window at this discovery, and the group was *very* polite to the Azer leader from that point onward (even Cid, who had been considering pushing him off the balcony until the lights went up to reveal the full extent of the army). The party quickly congratulated the Azer on his hard work, promised that Domina would be sending new material and equipment to him right away, and that they would get back to him later. And then they ran away back to the lobby as fast as their legs could take them.
Having no desire to push their luck further with the Azer, the group wandered back to the laboratory to check out that secret room. They discretely triggered the glowing rune on the wall, opening up the secret door and causing the brass juggernaut to lumber forward down the aisle from its resting place to investigate. Deciding that the construct couldn’t get to them inside the room beyond, the group distracted the juggernaut by shouting that there was an invisible intruder in here with them, and that it had triggered the alarm – and he was over there! The construct charged forward towards the spot that they indicated, plowing through one of the work benches and shattering vials . . . and releasing one of the ochre jellies. Wanting no part of this mess, the group screamed that the ochre jelly was the intruder, and then dashed inside the secret room while, sadly, using a blunt weapon, the juggernaut effortlessly smashed the jelly into paste. :( With the juggernaut thus distracted and unable to reach them, the group had a chance to catch their breath and look around at their surroundings . . . which were even stranger still than everything they had discovered thus far.
Secret Room’s Theme – Echoes at a Distance by Ocremix for Final Fantasy IV
The room’s main defining feature were the half dozen man-sized glass tubes set up in a semi-circle towards the back of the room. All of them were filled with a putrid, greenish liquid, but only one was occupied by anything beyond that. Floating inside of the slightly larger, filled-to-the-top tube at the apex of the horseshoe curving away from the doorway, was a naked twenty-something woman. A woman that looked startlingly like Queen Domina probably did in her twenties, after the party thought of all the paintings of Queen Domina (in her forties/fifties), and de-aged them to the slumbering form floating inside the liquid-filled tube before them. A stone panel with faintly glowing runes was set in front of the tube, quite obviously a control panel of some kind.
And Cid, being the ever-inquisitive sort, walked across the room and placed his hand against the panel. Immediately the light within the tub dimmed, as the figure within began to stir . . . and then the woman’s eyes shut wide open and she took her first shuddering breath in this world, only to inhale a lungful of the green liquid which, apparently, was not able to sustain a creature after it was no longer in suspended animation! Apparently the tube was supposed to swing open at this point in some way, dumping her and the liquid inside out, but the ancient mechanism was jammed! The woman was drowning inside the tube, her eyes wild as her fingers desperately scratched against the reinforced glass!
At the same time, the brilliant sigil flashed into life on the floor of the room, igniting into fire as the magical summoning trap was activated, and a Summon Monster VII was cast. The sigil’s flames leapt up towards the ceiling, and when they subsided an angel with blackened wings and a flaming bow was standing amidst the remains of the summoning sigil. She got there just a little late, as by the time she raised her bow, arrow nocked, and shouted at the group to step away from the tube, Oliver and Cid had already worked together to smash their way through the tube (50 HP and like Hardness 5 really didn’t go very far between the two of them damnit >< ).
The glass shattered, dumping the woman out unceremoniously onto the floor, or at least it would have if Cid, being the gentleman for once, caught the naked Domina as she fell out of the tube. Meanwhile, Oliver interrogated the Erinys, wondering why she was interfering in any of this. She shrugged and said that her job was only to protect the tube, not whatever was inside it. (In other words the plan was for her to just watch Domina drown inside, and fight the party while they tried to smash the tube before Domina drowned. Foiled by a couple lucky high damage rolls by Oliver & Cid . . . ah well, it was just how this dungeon went!)
The Erinyes flirted with Cid for a moment, made a few comments that at least watching this sad little drama play out was better than being brutally tortured by devils, and then winked out of existence in a flash of ashes as her summoning time expired. Meanwhile, tube-Domina had flown into a panic, flailing at Cid and eventually twisting out of his grasp to fall onto the floor and crawl away from the group until her back was up against the wall, and then curling her knees up to her chin and hyper-ventilating. Taking off his cloak, Cid draped it around the woman’s shoulders and tried to get her to just breathe and calm down. Finally, the woman seemed to overcome the panic attack of waking up to find oneself trapped and drowning, and her breathing slowed.
Brushing her wet hair out of her face, the woman looked curiously at the group, and then cleared her throat and asked who they were, and if they were here to rescue her. And when they questioned who she was and what she was doing here, the woman somewhat predictably answered “My name . . . is Domina Arabasti.” End Session.
This is a preview of Sorshen’s Everdawn Pool that Ileosa is supposed to hijack in Book Six – basically I think I did mention in Domina’s journal that she had been looking for it along with the rest of Sorshen’s secrets like this complex below the Grand Mastaba. Well, Domina found it, and made use of some of its techniques in creating blood simulacrums to clone herself. So, this Domina that the party found was one such clone, grown in the tube over the past twenty years – hence why this Domina is twenty-something, as she’s been literally growing inside of the tube for twenty-some years, since Domina’s death. Yeah, I warned you Book Three is where things got weird – I think the previous queen of Korvosa coming back from the dead via clone should qualify for that.
Well, it's always a relief whn a party DOESN'T decide to murderhobo their way through, although sometimes it takes an Intimidate to pull this off.
And I don't know if that last event is in the AP as written, but either way, it is way cool.
Things mght be getting weird, but also very intriguing. Keep it coming.
Uhhh . . . no. Hell no. We're so far off the AP's map at this point that we might as well be playing something other than Curse of the Crimson Throne. Like many other elements, the AP is so focused on what it wants to do that anything not aligned with "the plan" is completely, criminally, unused or underused. Like Domina, who is basically a footnote in the Guide to Korvosa as "Eodred's Mother, she was a really good ruler that everyone liked, she died in a fire, The End".
Sooo - in my goal to ever expand the AP by cramming literally everything I can think of into it, we get Domina being the one to make the crown, and now literally coming back from the dead to haunt the PCs. They got the idea pretty quickly that here was potentially a legitimate way to dethrone Ileosa, and put a sane monarch back on the throne. It . . . didn't work out so well for them, for various reasons, as you will see soon enough, but it at least gave them a brief hope that there was a solution to Ileosa. It did mean that their first reaction was to go and hide Domina away in the hopes of using her to spearhead a revolution/legitimate dispute of the throne later, so she did end up sort of being the "NPC shoved in a closet and forgotten about". But, eh . . . players will be players, what can you do.
It probably didn't help that I keep cramming eight billion more things into the AP, both the material that actually *was* there, and my own deranged ideas. >>
Yeah . . . Book Four is sort of weird. I don't dislike it, in the way that I disliked Book Three (and even then I only dislike it because the entire book is basically Glorio's manor, which is an awesome dungeon but leaves the book as a whole woefully short). But Book Four, like Book Five, is really the big "smash hit or flat on its face" parts of the AP, depending on what your group likes.
My players seem to really like roleplaying and talking to NPCs, so I don't think they would mind so much having to prove themselves to the Shaoti. But their characters? They would f@$@ing HATE it, and quite possibly at some point deciding to just punch the Shaoti in the face until they told them what they wanted to know. Which isn't unreasonable given that the Shaoti are worried about Kazavon, and yet are completely unwilling to help the only people actually able to do anything about him until said people prove themselves literally three times over.
So while my players would enjoy the talking bits, they probably would hate the endless hoops that the Shaoti have set up, and might possibly try to rebel at some point given that I haven't *forced* them to do only what the AP says they do thus far.
In fact, at this point in my planning, I was already half-expecting that I was going to need to write my own Book Four entirely, as the players would continue supporting Ileosa while trying to discretely separate her from the Crown of Fangs. My plan for that involved a shadow war between Ileosa and Domina, and a gold rush for Sorshen's various artifacts scattered around Korvosa. Then if they continued to work for Ileosa I guess she'd send them to Scarwall to pick up the blood (blood from Kazavon's old body) in Scarwall, hopefully succeeding where Lamm & Co. failed Domina. And then . . . I dunno, just wave my hands and say they win and go on to become Kazavon's new generals as he conquers the world if they still insist on supporting Ileosa the madwoman?
Anyway, that didn't happen, the party still got kicked out of Korvosa and had to flee the city in terror (Oliver's player actually really liked this as it turned the whole dynamic of the game on its head, where the party went from nobodies, to the queen's bosom buddies, to being outlaws fighting for their lives again). And it was the path that they chose by their own actions, which would include trying to set Domina up as a successor to the throne.
So coming back around to the original question ;) - like Book Three, Book Four is being written pretty much into a giant sandbox where I just cram everything I think of into the game, along with what's written about the Shaoti. I might still steer the players towards getting the Shaoti's aid, and certainly they would be useful allies even if the party doesn't end up needing their help to find Scarwall.
They might even like that, because then they are proving themselves to the Shaoti because they *want* to, not because they *have* to.
Well, that's really awesome . . And an awesome amount of work. Still want you to get a job with Paizo doing Curse of the Crimson Throne Anniversary Edition.
Given what Ileosa said to Rholand at one point just a few posts ago (actually Session Fifty One), separating her from her crown seems like not an ureasonable plan, althouhg perhaps technically very different.
You'd think Domina would object to being stuck in a closet and forgotten about, but maybe she's not firing on all cylinders (incomplete download of memories to clone, perhaps?).
Just as a note, I'm still here! Just haven't had the time or energy lately to write up any updates.
Just as a note, I'm still here! Just haven't had the time or energy lately to write up any updates.
Hang in there! (Of course, now I have to hang in there, since it has been a long time since the last posting of an eposide . . .).
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So we're taking a bit of a break over the next month or so due to DM burnout/stress failure. I've been tired out in general, but recently work has been really stressful on top of it and so I've just had to take a step back and focus on survival. Which unfortunately for my players means no game for a month or two while I recover - on the plus side, Oliver's player has stepped up to run a brief introductory 4E campaign (which most of the other players have never played before) as a sideshow. It was meant to be run between Book 4 and Book 5 though while I prepared Scarwall for them to venture into, so we'll see what happens when we get to the end of my bizarro Book 4.
On the plus side, this does give me a chance to try to start catching up to where we are in the story with my recaps!
So when we last left our erstwhile heroes in the depths of Domina’s hidden workshop (that she in turn found from Sorshen), they had just discovered a young Domina floating in suspended animation inside a giant test tube. They woke her up and freed her from the tube before she drowned (and the Erinyes summoned in to prevent anyone from damaging the tube - thanks to poorly worded instructions – could do anything to stop them. Knew I should have given that thing more than 30 some hit points :-p ).
Recovering her wits reasonably quickly, “Domina” thanked the party for their help, and revealed that she didn’t remember a lot beyond a certain point in her memories (due to the clone being started before Domina got *too* involved in the whole Crown of Fangs fiasco). This was a little frustrating for the players, but I didn’t want to hand out the exposition for *everything* that was going on just yet. Nonetheless, Domina had some useful memories, such as how to get past the large door sealed by the Bleeding Eye sigil.
She also asked how long she had been gone, and if Eodred, her son, was still the ruler of Korvosa. She was saddened to learn that he was not, and that his wife Ileosa was now queen after he was murdered. On the other hand, the one who sits on the Crimson Throne didn’t tend to live long, so Domina understood something like that had been probable. The players also mentioned that Ileosa probably wasn’t going to be happy about suddenly having competition for rightful rulership of Korvosa. When asked if she would like to rule again, Domina was thoughtful for a few long moments and then agreed, if it meant saving Korvosa from these apparently dark times she had been awakened into.
The idea of replacing Ileosa with a valid successor was clearly on the party’s mind, but that meant getting Domina out of the castle without Ileosa finding out about her until they could figure out how to start the political challenge (and somehow deal with the fact that their immortal, increasingly axe-crazy queen was unlikely to just step down). First thing was first though – finishing their exploration of this workshop in the hopes of finding a back way out or something that might help them smuggle Domina out the way they had come.
First thing was first though – Domina was ill-equipped to be venturing through a potentially dangerous location alongside the party, with no weapon and nary a stitch of clothing or armor (the armor was actually not that big of a deal – given her relationship with the Hellknights and *intimate* relationship with Leo Astares the Order of the Nail’s founder I gave her a bunch of levels in Magus. I had also considered giving her levels in Oracle as some sort of weird Mystic Theurge dual-class, but that seemed like a good recipe for making her useless so I just gave her 8 levels or so in Magus.) The clothing was a little bit bigger of a deal given Domina’s previously established prudish nature, and I had a nice DM chuckle at the party’s expense as everyone went through their inventory’s to discover that no one was packing an extra set of clothes.
Cid did graciously lend his cloak to the former queen (Cid wasn’t a complete a&!~@!@ to someone he just met? Bah, he probably just wanted to get in her pants, if she had any pants at the moment, tee hee!) Domina begrudgingly made do, and Oliver let her borrow his +1 shortspear (that he got back in Book Two from the sea hag, you pervs :-p ).
From there the party set out – Domina commanded the brass juggernaut to stand down without any difficulty upon exiting the room. Which was fortunate for them because it was getting ready to smash anyone who came out of the secret high-security closet Domina had been stuffed in. She also told the juggernaut that the party would be taking the Scarwall metal, which she knew could be forged somehow into the key to get past the sealed door.
They then went back across the “lobby” into the actual workshop, where the Azer were still busily making new iron constructs (Felwrought, which apparently are metal-men animated by Wraiths, hence why the Azer had one cooped up in the back – anyone caught slacking off was turned into a baby wraith and shoved into one of the finished constructs to power it). The foreman was shocked to see the party already returning with Domina, although if he thought it was weird she was now a good forty years younger he didn’t say it. She asked him for the other half of the Scarwall metal, which the foreman hastily produced on a necklace from underneath his armor. She told them to keep up the good work, whatever it was that they were doing, and she and the party beat a swift retreat before any questions could be asked of them.
Along the way, the party continued to talk to the former queen, who voiced disappointment that, given how things had turned out, she had not been a better mother to her two sons. She had spoiled Eodred, making him weak, and she had not been supportive enough of Venster, hiding him away from the world due to a heritage (he was Eodred’s tiefling half-brother) he had no control over. The party thought that was nice, but that they should really focus on getting out of here rather than navel gazing right now. I decided that the time was ripe for a new complication to rear its ugly head.
As the party returned to the lobby, they arrived in time to watch as a lightly-injured Gwen roared in fury and crunched the last caryatid column in between her teeth. After seeing the party come in, the dragon was a little sheepish about the carnage she had just wrought, but came bearing troubling news indeed – Togomor had learned of the party’s discovery of this place. Giddy at the thought of getting to explore some Thassilon ruins again, he was coming here in moments – he had merely sent Gwen on ahead in dragon form to clear the way for him.
The party was *definitely* not ready for the queen’s seneschal and personal archmage to be coming in here to join them, especially with Domina amongst them. They were panicking about how to stall him when Gwen got the gist that they were not ready for him to come in here yet. She offered to go back through the teleport circle and suggest they retire to his chambers for a bit and conduct another one of his “experiments”. Despite suggesting it, Gwen was clearly *not* in favor of this idea and seemed to be on the verge of tears (after Rholand asked her if she was alright, I made it a point to say that while she dismissed his concern it was blatantly obvious that Gwen was very much not okay. If the party hadn’t gathered yet that Togomor and Gwen’s relationship was a rather abusive one, they were starting to get the idea now).
Nonetheless, nobody had any better ideas, so Gwen went back through the teleport circle to lead Togomor away for a bit, allowing the party to finish their exploration and escape hopefully without Domina’s existence being discovered (of course, the secret closet where her cloning tube had been held wasn’t exactly gone, so Togomor might still be able to put two and two together after the fact – but the party couldn’t worry about that just now).
With both halves of the key in hand, they now had to figure out how to turn the metal scraps into an actual key. Domina explained that the metal was somehow receptive to mental commands, and by holding in one could simply shape it however they wished by holding an image in their head (which required a Will save, else the metal got the idea that what you *really* wanted was for it to skewer its way through your hands like something from a horror movie). Don’t remember if someone put the key together, or if Domina did it for them. Either way, the key was mentally forged, slipped into the lock, and the doors were thrown open.
Beyond, what awaited the party was an incredibly long hallway, ending in an cavernous chamber. The room was lit by a fiery glow from a bed of molten lava sitting about ten feet below the level of the floor. Traversing the length of this long hallway was a somewhat rickety-looking rope bridge, connecting the doorway the party was at with a large platform waiting at the other end of the hallway in the cavernous chamber. Lining the hallway at periodic intervals at the party’s height were statues of twisted demonic creatures.
If the party had actually fallen off the bridge, I probably would have gone with the idea that the lava was an illusion (because falling into lava at level eight would have been rather painful – and short-lived). Instead, it was simply a deep pool of dark water that Sorshen had enchanted to look like lava for whatever reason (perhaps to make it a more ominous place to use as a forge in Domina’s time? :-p ) But since nobody ever actually fell in, the image of traversing over a pool of molten lava on a rickety rope bridge was preserved.
Oh, and some of those demonic statues turned out to be gargolyes, who animated and attacked as the party was halfway across the rope bridge. It was a pretty minor fight really, as despite having to be in single-file on the bridge, the party was a bunch of heroes with magic weapons fighting CR 4 creatures with DR that was useless against magic weapons. Still, Trevor, Oliver’s archer cohort, got shredded up pretty good when a gargoyle landed at the back of the formation to keep the party from backing away off the bridge to fight (and there just happened to be a squishy ranged guy in the back, awesome!) And Vaz’em just barely passed a bull rush check to avoid getting thrown off the rope bridge by another gargoyle as it flew past. But Cid cast Fly, Domina used some ranged damage spells, Oliver hacked at anything that came in arm’s reach, and Rholand used Stone shape to turn some of the stone wall into a stone bridge that managed to run the entire length of the hallway, essentially turning the 5’ wide rope bridge into a 5’ wide rope bridge alongside a 10’ wide stone bridge (it was pretty thin stone though . . . pity the gargs were too busy dying to smash it).
After that the party continued on to the platform, discovering it had been turned into a forge. This was where the Crown of Fangs had been made, and around the massive black anvil that had been used for that task, black cracks in the stone formed strange runes. Rholand cast Comprehend Languages, and a bit on the spot, I went for a slightly prophetic moment by having the runes form a poem. A poem that the party had already heard once before, sang by some creepy children playing during the plague in Book Two (it had been written by the poet Imon Vernon, or whatever his name was, one of the other Kazavon-touched artists that Laori was looking for, and who had been sacrificed by the Rovagug cultists.)
For those that don’t remember the poem and don’t want to go back looking for it, I’ve included it below. I had plans to include the half-finished Alkarazug from Book Six here, as one of Yzahnum’s other projects that he never quite got to finish, but alas I forgot all about it. Still, I didn’t forget to mention the other three important features of this platform – at the back was a set of stairs leading up to a dais, upon which was a set of doors set into the wall (a way out!?), and a pedestal which held a brass lamp – yes, it looked a lot like the one from Aladdin, why do you ask? ;) )
The third and final detail was what was positioned in front of the stairs leading up to the lamp and doors – an immense insect-like suit of hellish armor, wielding a lance and shield. As the party stood around investigating, this suit of diabolic armor stirred to life and introduced itself as Levaloch, a prototype devil-construct created by Yzahnum to guard this location. It pointedly did *not* recognize Domina’s authority, and stated that if they wished to acquire the lamp that it had been tasked with guarding (and likely getting anywhere near the stairs to get up to that set of doors either) they would need to best it in battle. Specifically, an honorable duel, if any in the party had the stones for it – given Cid’s status as a Hellknight, despite his glimpse at his true ultimate fate as a devil’s b%+!# for eternity, this was pretty much akin to waving a red flag at a bull. Of *course* he would accept the challenge to a duel! (With the party, being a bunch of amoral a*!+#+*s, having no compunctions about stepping in to sneak-attack shiv the Levaloch as soon as its back was turned, of course!)
Unfortunately, we ran out of time there, and so we had to open the next session with the actual duel – so Cid and Levaloch simply exchanged insults and threats as we closed out this session.
City shall burn,
and City shall rot,
Abandon whatever hope you have got!
City shall crumble,
and City shall groan,
Under the weight of its Crimson Throne!
Hell itself shall come,
and shall finish thy doom,
city built atop Evil's tomb!
When the Throne sits empty,
then the darkness has won,
and Eternal Horror shall descend upon everyone!
So barer of Fangs,
deliver suffering, despair, and fear,
and destroy all that we hold dear!
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So we're taking a bit of a break over the next month or so due to DM burnout/stress failure. I've been tired out in general, but recently work has been really stressful on top of it and so I've just had to take a step back and focus on survival.
Wishing you a natural 20 on that survival roll!
^Here's Aid Another on your Survival roll.
Gakkk . . . Hero Pointing that for reroll
Well, that's better . . . Apologies for poor optimization (I have the wrong primary Deadly Sin to be a Modern Necromancer Life Sciences Researcher, being most afflicted with Sloth rather than Gluttony . . .).
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Thanks guys. I seem to have not rolled a Nat 1 yet, so that’s good right? ;)
So as promised at the end of last session, this session started with a duel between Cid & the Levaloch prototype. Unfortunately, Cid’s player was not present for the beginning of the session, but I had a reasonable idea of his tactics by this point ;) (Shocking Grasp, HO!)
Levaloch Duel Theme – Unbreakable Chains from Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep OST
Hilariously, I ended up rolling like crap for poor Cid, and the Levaloch for the most part, but this flurry of misses from both sides did have the fortuitous effect of prolonging the duel for several rounds with neither side getting an advantage. I had also set up several “flaws” with in the Levaloch’s abilities, given that it was designed by Yzahnum for use alongside the Order of the Nail – flaws which Retribution was able to remember and communicate to Cid. Simple things like hitting it with electricity damage caused it to have to make a Reflex save to hold onto its shield & lance (which it passed everytime >>), and it’s Wall of Fire spell-like ability could be dispelled with an application of Chill Touch to the wall of fire. While the two fought, the rest of the party watched, although Oliver always made sure he was within charge distance, and Vaz’em skulked about invisibly, biding his time.
But I had anticipated both the party interfering in the honorable duel, and the party staying out of it. Just watching a teammate fight without any input into the outcome was rather boring, so I had arranged for a . . . distraction, if you will, a fight outside of the fight between Cid & the Levaloch. A half dozen of the statues standing across the back wall animated a round or two into the duel – more gargolyes that attacked indiscriminately, including the Levaloch itself (these gargolyes, like the bunch from the bridge, where a flight that had settled into the area by sneaking in somehow in the twenty years since Domina “died” – they had no allegiance to anyone here).
Eventually the party decided that they’d had enough of the Levaloch, and Vaz’em used flanking to tear into the diabolic construct, nearly finishing it off (I’m pretty sure I gave it fortification to negate Cid’s critical hits, which also worked versus Vaz’em’s sneak attack, although I don’t think it actually managed to work this time). Nonetheless, the blow just barely avoided killing the wounded monstrosity, and outraged at the interference by both the gargoyles and Vaz’em/Oliver, the Levaloch gestured as an immediate action and summoned two bearded devils (my contingency for if the party had just decided to attack Levaloch after laughing at the idea of a fair fight). Cid immediately killed the Levaloch on his next turn, and Rholand got one of his crazy ideas again.
Making a Bluff check, he tried to tell the two freshly-summoned devils that he, too, was in a devil in human disguise, and that these gargolyes were threatening the master’s work! As usual with these bold and somewhat insane acts by Rholand, the dice smiled on him, and he rolled something pretty close to a natural 20 on the bluff check. The devils didn’t buy his story that the Levaloch itself had actually betrayed the master, but they couldn’t find fault with the idea that the gargolyes were a threat.
While this neutralized the bearded devil reinforcements, and with the Levaloch dead, the fight didn’t last much longer as the party was able to concentrate on the couple gargolyes that weren’t already dead (CR 4s are useless! :-p ). With the party victorious, and still confused about what had just happened, the two bearded devils returned back to whatever Hell spawned them.
Interested in the lamp that the Levaloch had been guarding, Cid ascended onto the dais, picked up the lamp, and after looking it over, decided to give it a little rub in the time-honored tradition of rubbing random brass lamps you just find sitting around (I think Cid’s player just wanted to see what would happen, or he picked up on my brain waves that I *really* wanted someone to mess with the lamp).
So, of course, pretty much exactly what you might expect would happen – a cloud of roiling smoke and ash spewed forth from the lamp, and an ogre-sized form with reddish-bronze skin emerged from its depths – an efreet, who Domina recognized right away – Yzahnum the Fire Forger! Yzahnum also recognized Domina, and was amused to see her, and said as much as he revealed that he had been the one to set her bedroom ablaze and that she looked quite well for a dead woman! Apparently that act hadn’t worked out so well for Yzahnum in the end though, given that he had been imprisoned in that lamp and left down here, guarded by one of his own creations no less!
For such an important meeting, I probably bungled it a little bit, although Yzahnum was relatively friendly for an efreet (he did feel some slight gratitude to the party for his release, and his attempted murder of Domina was mercenary in nature, not personal). I think the party was a bit too intimidated by the efreet to actually want to bother him with questions about what had actually happened all those years ago, or something, I don’t know.
In any event, wanting to keep things moving along, Yzahnum noticed Cid’s broken black blade, Retribution, and identified it as a soulblade – a weapon designed to trap a being’s soul and use it as a power source (something Cid had already gotten an inkling of, clearly). What was news to Cid was that Yzahnum might be able to reforge the weapon. Taking Retribution and laying it on the anvil, Yzahnum warned Cid that due to his connection to the weapon, this was probably going to hurt – a LOT – and that he should steel himself. Heating the weapon inflicted a decent amount of fire damage to cid, and then several hammer blows did a fair bit of physical damage to Cid, forcing him to make Fort saves to remain conscious. The efreet was able to restore the blade almost entirely, leaving just the tip of the blade missing – which he theorized was due to the weapon’s soul not wanting to be complete again (Retribution punishing itself for what it had done when it was alive). Yzahnum then handed the weapon back to Cid, and memories from the repaired sword rushed into his mind, threatening to overwhelm him. Since he blew the Will save here, he fell unconscious without learning anything new really, but Retribution’s memories would return in a more understandable form as Cid’s Book Four intro. The upgrade to the sword also let Retribution function as a Black Soul Shard, a magic item that could absorb one negative level a week in place of Cid (level-draining undead *or* due to resurrection sickness – quite handy given poor Cid’s status as the only player who had his characters die – twice thus far!).
The party didn’t really try to take Yzahnum with them (as he wanted to remain here to continue his work of forging weapons and such – and the party wasn’t prepared to try and make him do anything. Wise choice, there!) . . . and he “politely” asked them to leave his lamp behind as well, which they agreed to. With that, the only thing the party could really do here in the workshop was leave. They considered using the back entrance in Yzahnum’s forge which was still unexplored, but Domina revealed that she didn’t know what was beyond those doors save a set of stairs leading down further into the ancient Runelord complex. She had sent a dozen of the Order’s best knights to find out, but none of them returned (and indeed, in anticipation of them going that way anyway I had prepared a very nasty ambush at the bottom of the steps. Two multiplying skeleton Gugs, along with several re-animated Hellknights as Zombie Lord Maguses. It probably would have been a TPK, although I’ve seen them pull victories out by the skin of their teeth before now. The party’s damage potential was pretty insane if they managed to just encircle and melee something together as a party).
Taking the hint that descending into the unknown but clearly very dangerous depths was courting Death, the party decided to just take their chances by going back out the front. They clearly wouldn’t be able to do anything to prevent Ileosa from gaining control of an army of constructs and it’s Efreet creator, but then that was the whole point of this dungeon – to introduce some new upcoming threats in the distant future, and throw a curve ball in the form of the Domina clone.
Emerging back from the teleport circle into the basement dungeon of Castle Korvosa, the party started to make its way out. Togomor nor Gwen were anywhere in sight (it only having been like five minutes or so in-game time given how fast combat moves), but there were a dozen Grey Maidens waiting for the party just outside the cell. And with them were Sabrina and Ileosa, who had also come down here to see what the party had stumbled onto. The party panicked for a moment, but Domina was in the back, and Rholand was at the front. He convinced Ileosa that all of this adventuring (particularly in a locale formerly owned by the Runelord of Lust) had made him desire her company . . . in a more private setting, and that he would tell her all about what he had seen down there . . . after.
Rholand was one of the few soft spots that Ileosa had left, so an offer like that was readily accepted, and the two left, Sabrina and most of the grey maidens in tow. This gave the party a chance to sneak Domina past the few remaining grey maidens (she might even have cast Invisibility on herself, I can’t remember), and then out of the castle through a secret passage to the outside walls that Domina had discovered during her own explorations of the castle (which led to the discovery of this hidden workshop in the first place). This was likely the same passage that a reformed Sabrina would recommend the party use to sneak into Castle Korvosa during Book Six.
Emerging from the castle, the party got as far away from the place as they could, and then pondered what to do with Domina. They couldn’t just have her following the party around everywhere – sooner or later someone would recognize her, or at least start asking questions about who this woman following them around was. So they knew that they had to hide her somewhere, but there were very few people the party trusted that were left in the city by this point. In fact, there was only one man they could think of, one man that could rescue them and Domina in their hour of need. His name . . . was Fishguts Jim. *facepalm*
Yes, they took the former queen of Korvosa to go hide out with Fishguts, the random NPC commoner I made that they kept running into in Book One, and his new wife Tiora or Naomi or whatever her name was at the moment (the thief girl prisoner in the Dead Warrens from Book One). They had taken over the All the World’s Meat Butchery together, and the party’s plan was for Domina to hide out there as a new member of the butchery’s staff, while she regained her memories and the party figured out how to get the resources for her to oppose Ileosa in any form that wouldn’t get them all killed.
Always eager to help the party, Fishguts agreed to take her in, although I don’t recall if they told him Domina’s true identity (at this point, in an attempt to lay low, she was going by the name “Mina” instead). But she was clearly important to the party, so Fishguts and wifey agreed to keep her safe for the foreseeable future. I had planned on coming back to this at times throughout the rest of the book, as “Mina” became in danger of being discovered or started to make efforts on her own to reclaim her throne, but alas we got too busy with all the other shit in Book Three that Domina got side-lined for much of it until near the end. Oh well!
Something else that was supposed to make the party not want to risk endangering Domina was that any wounds she took were difficult to heal. Technically, since Mina was actually a simulacrum of the real Domina, she should have been impossible to heal, but I decided Sorshen’s blood clone magic voodoo was something special. So instead I simply made it similar to a clay golem’s cursed wound – any attempt to heal Domina had to beat a decently high caster level check (I think I set it at DC 20 or something). She had taken a hit from one of the gargolyes, leaving her with a nasty scratch on her arm that continued to slowly bleed (for effect, no actual ongoing damage) throughout the rest of the session. But of course, Rholand just had to roll really high on his d20 when attempting to cure it, and so what was supposed to be a really strange and unnatural wound (on top of all the other weird stuff about Domina, such as finding her in a test tube) ended up being no big deal at all. *DM sigh*
No matter – as I said, Domina faded from view pretty much entirely while the party dealt with other things. Considering they were only a couple sessions away from descending into the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was now Old Korvosa, I suppose I can’t blame them for getting a *little* distracted by that. Plus, this was still the point in Book Three when I was sort of making things up as I went along, within the rough framework I had sketched out. >> Still, I think on the whole the dungeon and Domina proved to be an interesting opportunity to reveal some crumbs of backstory and actually do something with Korvosa’s history beyond “meh, all that happened in the past and holds no real relevance to the AP as written”.
GoGo Fishguts Jim!
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So the following session was strictly a roleplaying session with each person getting their own private scene, as I continued to follow my pattern of “private scene -> dungeon -> private scene” more or less. Nonetheless, we got some development of everyone’s private plotlines I’d say.
Don’t remember the order that I did these in, so I’m just going to go down the list here that I have for awarding XP after the session (one of the reasons I used the Slow track – awarding XP for things other than just combat, combat, combat without also noticeably speeding up the party’s leveling up progress).
So, that night after the party got Domina out of the castle with no one the wiser, Oliver got a visit from some Varisians, including a well-dressed older man who introduced himself as “Romero Scarnetti”. Mr. Scarnetti was, of course, here representing the Scarnetti crime family – this was supposed to be foreshadowing of the Scarzni thugs that show up with Yzahnum in Book 6 (I was going to make them play a larger role than just that one fight though). Unfortunately I now see that I got Scarnetti and Scarzni mixed up, although considering they’re both families of criminals in Varisia, what the f%$@ ever. :-p
Anyway, Mr. Scarnetti was here to explain that the Scarnettis had never managed to get a foothold in Korvosa, both because of Korvosa’s sole thieves guild the Cerulean Society, and because it was a backwards backwater compared to Kaer Maga and Magnimar (yeah, somebody’s not bitter at his family getting its ass kicked by the Cerulean Society for decades thanks to Arkona). But now the winds seemed to be shifting with the Cerulean Society crippled due to the quarantine of Old Korvosa, and despite being a backwater Korvosa did have one important resource the Scarnettis were interested in – access to black markets in Cheliax.
Where Oliver came in was that the Scarnetti family wished to take operation of Gaedren Lamm’s old fishery off of his hands. He would still be in the owner, but the Scarnettis would essentially rent it out from him to use as a smuggling base of operations. In exchange Oliver would get a fairly generous percentage of whatever the take was from the Scarnetti’s smuggling operations (this never actually ended up paying him any dividends I think, which was probably a mistake in hindsight – oh well, too late to rectify now!)
Of course, doing business with the Scarnettis pretty much meant pissing in the face of the Cerulean Society who gave Oliver the deed to the Old Fishery in the first place, but it did give him something more productive to do with the space beyond just watching it burn. Oliver did have some ground rules though – no slaves (Ol’ Romero didn’t like that rule, hehehehe) and there was something else – might have been Shiver, or some other dangerous and illegal cargo that pretty much only complete scumbags would deal in. Anyway, those were terms that Mr. Scarnetti was willing to accept, if it meant getting a foothold in Korvosa for his family at long last.
As a gesture of good faith, Mr. Scarnetti presented Oliver with a finely tooled and adorned belt, which was introduced as a gift of friendship from the Scarnetti family. He thought this was rather fishy, so he had it identified and examined by some people who knew magic (we just hand-waved that part). It was a belt of Mighty Health (STR & CON) +2 . . . and it didn’t seem to be booby-trapped or cursed in any way. Pretty nice gift just for a “I’d like you to listen to my proposal”! But then, that’s what happens when you and the rest of your party falls behind WBL and your DM is desperately trying to get you back up around par. >>
In the back of my mind, another wrinkle to this whole Scarnetti affair was going to continue into Book Four. Namely, that the instigator of the Scarnetti entering Korvosa was actually a woman in Kaer Maga who was an honorary member of the Scarnetti family that nonetheless held a great deal of power within the family. This woman was going to be Oliver’s mother, who had finally found him after news of his deeds in Book One and Two finally reached her ears. That plan had to be scrapped completely after I tipped my cards and Oliver’s player revealed that wouldn’t work at all. Apparently Oliver knew who his parents were – his father was the elven ambassador to Korvosa as given in the player’s guide to CotCT, Perishial Kalissreavil and his mother was some random human hooker. Backstory torpedoed! Oliver’s player was also rather pissed that I had forgotten this apparent detail of his character’s backstory, despite the fact that he mentioned it once back at character creation over a year ago at this point, never wrote it down anywhere that I had access to (i.e. wasn’t on his character sheet), and never came up in-game. So sue me for trying to make things interesting. :-p I did manage to make his dad really interesting all the same, as you will see . . . much later.
Meanwhile, Vaz’em was on his way back home when he ran into, of course, Cinnabar. The Red Mantis leader had appeared to give Vaz’em some “good” news. She had submitted Vaz’em’s qualifications to the Red Mantis, and the head of recruitment had accepted his application. Vaz’em was now an honorary member of the Red Mantis, and it was expected that at some point he would be taken to their secret training lair to be indoctrinated in the way of the Red Mantis, after which assuming he survived the training, he would become a full-fledged member of the Red Mantis. Vaz’em wasn’t really excited about leaving his home nor being indoctrinated into being another assassin-drone at someone else’s beck and call.
But the benefits weren’t all bad – Cinnabar graced Vaz’em with a gift as a symbol of his newfound honorary membership – a ring of Ki Mastery, which was quite a nice gift for a ninja. That was pretty much it for Vaz’em really – just “hey, you’re a Red Mantis now! Here’s a secret decoder ring!” Well, that and that their employer, Glorio Arkona – and that Cinnabar was still waiting for Vaz’em to make the introduction to the queen so that they could move on with supporting the new winning side (Cinnabar knows which way the wind was blowing now that Ileosa was an immortal god-queen, and Arkona . . . well Arkona was trapped in basically a tomb city).
Next up was Cid, who was determined to get word out about the fate that awaited every Hellknight after they found themselves in the afterlife (namely, being a b%!$@ of the devils forever rather than their equal or superior as expected). Clearly, there was some sort of trickery going on here given the hidden additions to Cid’s contract that Zarzagug had shown him during his trippy post-death experience. But given Cid’s status with DeVries as “person I’d love to kill, but can’t”, going to him for help or an explanation was probably unwise. He wasn’t even in the city at the moment anyway, so that left as usual his second-in-command, Mistress of Blades Maidrayne Vox. As an additional plus, Vox didn’t seem to hate Cid’s guts so maybe she would listen to him even if his story was pretty insane.
On another note, Cid’s player never even blinked at DeVries’s sudden about-face, going from declaring that the emperor had given him the go-ahead to take over Korvosa, and that he was going to rip out Ileosa’s spine at the seneschal announcement . . . only to literally make her commander of the entire Order of the Nail. But then I’d been throwing all sorts of stuff at the party throughout Book Three, so it wasn’t like he had this one single thing to think about.
So the night following Domina’s rescue, Cid shows up at the watchtower the Order of the Nail had taken over to serve as their base in Korvosa unannounced. Cyrus was on duty at the “front desk”, so to speak, which was a shit job given it was the middle of the night and no one ever came to speak with the Hellknights, willingly anyway pretty much. Cid demanded to know where Vox was, got told that she was probably in her room sleeping, and then pretty much told Cyrus exactly why he was here and everything that had happened to him after he died.
This would go on to be sort of a thing, where any Hellknight Cid met was immediately told what was waiting for them upon death (if the Order didn’t think he was nuts before, they certainly did now). It also meant that word got out pretty much immediately to Mavrokeras and the gang that not only had Cid escaped, but he was speaking their secrets to everyone. Which meant that he was rapidly turning himself into a problem that they needed to silence. Him, and anyone he had talked to about the true nature of the Order.
For now, though, Cyrus was shaken by this news, and he tentatively believed Cid given that Cid was sort of the poor bastard’s hero. While Cyrus pondered his inevitable fate, Cid went on to spread the “good news” to Vox. He pounded on the door to Vox’s private room within the watchtower, and got told by Vox in a surly tone to “get lost”. After Cid revealed his identity, Vox opened the door to stare at him with bloodshot eyes, and a waft of alcohol accompanied in the door opening – she had been drinking. Heavily.
Out of her armor and now clad in a mithril chain shirt and a simple chemise, Vox let Cid in, and returned to the table where she had been drinking at. Apparently in her off-hours Vox was a bit of a lush. Despite her state though, Cid pressed on with his story, and Vox bought into it hook, line, and sinker. She was understandably pissed, and vowed to tear DeVries apart for this betrayal (because clearly he was to blame, and not the Order’s founder Leo Astares). For tonight though, she was going to keep drinking, and she expected Cid to drink with her.
Since she had just finished whatever was in the bottles already on the table, Vox went over to a chest and opened it up to reveal several moonshine-style jugs of something packed carefully away inside. Vox revealed that this was Hill giant whiskey, and she got about a dozen of these bottles from a hill giant she killed. She kept them for special occasions, and learning that you were doomed to become a slave to the devils you bossed around in life seemed as good a time as any to enjoy one.
They both drank most of the bottle’s contents, and I guess hill giants made crappy low-proof booze because they didn’t die from alcohol poisoning (just assume the hill giant made these bottles to be more like shots than an actual bottle of high-proof firewater, I guess?) Anyway, they pound most of the bottle back, Vox gets even surlier, and I think at one point challenges Cid to a duel . . . to show her skill with a sword? She’s about fall-down drunk at this point though, so they wisely decide a duel was not a good idea at this time. They cry into their beers a bit more, and then Vox flops down onto her bed and falls asleep.
In hind-sight it was a rather silly and disjointed scene, but I was mostly making it up as I went along, so *shrug*. I was sort of thinking in the back of my head that maybe Vox would get drunk, come on to Cid, and then he’d have to decide just how much he wanted to fraternize with his superior officer – with possible consequences once Vox woke up and was sober again. But that didn’t really end up happening, so whatever – guess they’re just friends and allies in this sudden hunt for the truth.
The scene did have some important meaning, however – it established where Vox lived so Cid could come back later, it revealed a new and unexpected aspect of Vox’s personality (or rather, a flaw – that she tended to be a rather hard drinker in private), and it revealed the bottles of hill giant ale (which would prove to be more important than you might expect – later).
On his way out, Cid also talked to Cyrus, and asked him to round up any other black sheep within the Order – any armigers getting the really shit jobs, any Hellknights also rumored to be on the outs with DeVries. Cid was planning to build an army of his own, by exposing the truth to all of the Order’s outcasts in a big meeting. I had planned for this to be the big finale to Book Three for Cid – he gets to meet a bunch of other outcasts, and then Mavrokeras teleports in and slaughters them all right in front of Cid. But as usual, by that point in the story some twenty sessions from now . . . I had a BETTER idea. *evil DM grin*.
And finally, we get to Rholand. Poor, poor Rholand. Well, his private session took place the next day, since he was rather . . . *ahem* occupied with Ileosa and filling her in on what had happened down in Domina’s workshop. He kept a few choice bits out of it of course, such as Domina, but he told her pretty much everything else, anything that would be proven by what was found there (hopefully the juggernaut, Azer foreman, or Yzahnum wouldn’t mention seeing Domina with the party!) I’m not sure if this was the point or if it was during a full party meeting with Ileosa, but they also handed over the journal from Domina that they found down there as well. So Ileosa now had access to an evil wish-machine, an army of evil constructs, and access to an ancient evil . . . whatever that place was to Sorshen. And there was pretty much nothing the party could do about it at the moment.
But Rholand had a plan to save them. Rholand had a plan to deal with this Big Bad Evil Hunk of Metal (as Cid’s player referred to the crown after it’s little demonstration several sessions prior). And Rholand revealed that plan during this session. He . . . went to talk to Togomor!? *record screech* Yes, Togomor. The outsider to Korvosa who Ileosa made into seneschal. Who had displayed no desire thus far to wanting to betray Ileosa, even for his own interests. Who I had *just* got done rather heavily implying was raping and/or abusing Gwen. That Togomor.
He started by going off to find Gwen, who was actually in dragon form, sunning herself out on a balcony in the castle. She seemed to be in better spirits than when she had left the party in Domina’s study – apparently Togomor had been so excited about the discovery he had “gone easy on her”. Rholand asked her where Togomor was, and was informed that he should still be up in his room. On his way there, Rholand gathered up a plate of choice food and a nice bottle of wine, and then went up to Togomor’s quarters. He was greeted by a rather screechy voice who informed Rholand that the master was busy, and that he should go away. That voice got a bit more cooperative when Rholand revealed that he had brought food, however. The door opened up shortly thereafter, and as soon as Rholand was through the door a grotesquely fat imp become visible as it attacked the plate of food he had brought in for the thing’s master.
There was no sign of Togomor, although his strange bone staff was sitting against the back wall, the crystal set into its head glowing faintly (Togomor was actually inside the staff, on a demi-plane within it, communing with the spirit of Kazavon within the Staff of the Slain). Sensing that he now had a visitor, Togomor exited the demiplane (I can’t remember if he just popped out of the staff in front of Rholand or emerged in an adjoining room, and then walked out to speak with him that way). Either way, Togomor showed up in time to watch Pudgeyknuckles demolish the last of the food to Rholand’s chagrin.
Togomor was not amused, and the imp cowered before its master a moment before disappearing as Togomor asked Rholand what it was that he liked to speak about. And then Rholand told him . . . not everything, but that his theories about the crownd, and that he and the party were interested in removing it. And would he be interested in helping them?
Now, my guess is that while Rholand knew Togomor was a bastard, he was hoping to play him off against Ileosa. That he could get the arch-mage to assist them, both because he might have the magical knowledge to deal with a cursed crown and because they would rather have the archmage on their side (for however long their alliance of convenience lasted) than have him start out against the party.
I played Togomor off as interested in Rholand’s offer, feigned concern over Ileosa’s condition, and pledged to aid him however he could in saving Ileosa from the crown. He would start immediately looking into the crown’s origins and possible means by which it could be undone. I rolled several Sense Motive checks in secret for Rholand, and he also got a couple of them, but Togomor had sucked down an elixir of glibness before chatting Rholand up, so his Bluff score was enough to skate by.
As a result, I successfully portrayed Togomor as a concerned party, and willing ally in Rholand’s desire to help Ileosa and destroy the Crown of Fangs. My hidden DM reaction, of course, was something along these lines however. I immediately set my brain to work thinking about how Togomor was going to screw Rholand over, and when. He saw Rholand as a rival for Ileosa’s attentions, and now a threat since he just outed himself as opposed to the Crown of Fangs, and naturally Kazavon. Rholand was a soothing, stabilizing influence on Ileosa as well, and Togomor figured once he was removed, Ileosa would fully give into the depraved, monstrous voice in her head – much as Togomor had some time ago. It was simply a question of how, and when Togomor would strike now – and Rholand had literally handed him his plans and the most effective weapon of all to use against him – the truth that he wanted to take the Crown of Fangs away from Ileosa – the one act that would cause her to go berserk . . . even on Rholand.
Not quite done yet, I also had another scene for Rholand after he left Togomor’s abode, and left the castle to join up with the rest of the party. On his way out of the castle, he encountered an adventuring party trying to get in. Apparently this group called themselves the Star Weavers, they were heroes from Kaer Maga, and they were here to escort a Margrave Luis DeSilva to speak with Queen Ileosa on behalf of Kaer Maga to conduct peaceful negotiations and back away from war. The Star Weavers consisted of the human paladin of Sarenrae named Abigail, her father Sergio a cleric of Desna, a raucous dwarven barbarian named Granthor, and a human wizard named Edwin (no relation to the Edwin of Baldur’s Gate fame sadly).
Sadly I did not have the guide to Kaer Maga (City of Strangers) just yet, so I didn’t know just how f+%!ed up that city was (how they were ever capable of holding back Korvosa’s military, I’ll never know). I had assumed it was similar to Korvosa, if a bit more chaotic (heh, try A LOT!), so there was a council of nobles rather than a single monarchy ruling the city. Hence the Margrave, here to speak as a theoretically empowered-to-speak-for-the-city nobleman. I will have to decide now that I know what Kaer Maga really is like just how much De Silva actually spoke for the city. Regardless, he was here, and he was determined to speak with the queen.
In their initial meeting, I had Abigail do most of the talking, and she was rather brash and headstrong, although respectful of Rholand, both due to his nature as a healer and a hero of Korvosa who saved the city from the plague. Rholand helped convince the guards to let the party into the castle, as they seemed legit negotiators, rather than a team of assassins sent by Kaer Maga to kill Ileosa (hah, good luck with that one!) And that was the extent of their interaction at this point, although the seed had been planted now.
I intended for the Star Weavers to be competition for the party, a rival adventuring group that was nearly as successful and powerful as they were, albeit not nearly as hostile to them as the Palin’s Cove Punishers were. Although how their relationship ultimately ended would be up to the party. I intended for relations to continue to decline between Korvosa and Kaer Maga, to the point that Ileosa sicced the party on the Star Weavers with orders to kill/arrest them and De Silva near the end of Book Three. From there they would either do her bidding and put the Star Weavers down, or help them escape the city.
Although not planned at the time, the ultimate outcome for the Star Weavers turned out to be even better than I hoped, and there will likely be future cool interactions with this group later on in Book Four and beyond!
And that was pretty much the session, which concluded with the party getting back together, and then notified that Arkona wished to speak with them that evening, on board his ship (in the same way as he had spoken to Vaz’em a couple sessions ago – out in the ocean away from prying eyes – hopefully. That didn’t work out as well as planned though, as you will see next session, which tended to be a recurring theme with Arkona’s plans.
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In the back of my mind, another wrinkle to this whole Scarnetti affair was going to continue into Book Four. Namely, that the instigator of the Scarnetti entering Korvosa was actually a woman in Kaer Maga who was an honorary member of the Scarnetti family that nonetheless held a great deal of power within the family. This woman was going to be Oliver’s mother, who had finally found him after news of his deeds in Book One and Two finally reached her ears. That plan had to be scrapped completely after I tipped my cards and Oliver’s player revealed that wouldn’t work at all. Apparently Oliver knew who his parents were – his father was the elven ambassador to Korvosa as given in the player’s guide to CotCT, Perishial Kalissreavil and his mother was some random human hooker. Backstory torpedoed! Oliver’s player was also rather pissed that I had forgotten this apparent detail of his character’s backstory, despite the fact that he mentioned it once back at character creation over a year ago at this point, never wrote it down anywhere that I had access to (i.e. wasn’t on his character sheet), and never came up in-game. So sue me for trying to make things interesting. :-p I did manage to make his dad really interesting all the same, as you will see . . . much later.
{. . .}
Actually, Oliver's player's concept of his mother doesn't have to be mutually exclusive with what you had in mind. She could have been what he said when she had him, and then later managed to ascend up the ranks in the Scarnetti family.
She could have been, but I didn't want to mess around with things when apparently forgetting these details that he mentioned to me once upset him already. ><
That being said, I saw no reason why my idea for dear Perishial was actually incompatible with the backstory given for him in the player's guide to korvosa (which I think was the only place he is mentioned, and even then only one line "He is the Elvish ambassador to Korvosa"). So Perishial is still the ambassador to Korvosa, he sired Oliver with a random Varisian street hooker, and they have met (I think - briefly) at some point in Oliver's past after he got back to Korvosa as an adult (he was sold into slavery in some distant land as a child by Lamm). Enough for them to know of each other, but neither one really had much of an interest in dealing with each other - at least until Oliver got Perishial's attention by saving the city. Twice. He's a pretty interesting character, and I foresee some fun stuff in the future ahead with him.
Anyway, this discussion about Oliver's backstory also soured me on my original idea for the culmination of his Book Three private scenes, which was Zarmagorf showing up to introduce himself to make mention of the family debt (of PAIN!) he had inherited from dear old dad . . . more on that later.
This probably comes too late to be of great use in your particular situation, but Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Path of the Hellknight has been announced for June 2016. (Apparently it is too new to have an entry on www.pathfinderwiki.com yet.) Wonder if they will have any Hellknight-specific archetypes or updates of the prestige classes that would have been useful for your campaign (like we were talking about a LONG time ago) if this had come out earlier.
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So, in fairly short order after starting this session, the group as a whole got invited to meet with the “mysterious” employer of Cinnabar and boss of Boule (and technically patron of Oliver now, although Oliver certainly didn’t have any loyalty to the Cerulean Society – see last session of selling Lamm’s Old Fishery to the Scarzni). Since Vaz’em had already met Glorio Arkona, this wasn’t really a surprise to the players, and they certainly weren’t impressed with him despite getting a rowboat ride out to his fancy ship the Moon Dancer.
Of course, the first meeting didn’t get off to a very good start, given that Avidexu welcomed them aboard and made no secret about being the cloaked figure that had coerced the maid Isabella into being a spy. Cid, who as you remember mercy-killed Isabella, was *NOT* happy to see this guy, and while he managed to restrain his desire to start an actual fight, was nonetheless nonstop verbally abusive to Avidexu the entire time (including laughing when Glorio introduced Avidexu as his knight (i.e. champion/bodyguard). So . . . basically . . . business as usual for this party whenever they encountered someone they didn’t like. :p
They got along marginally better with Glorio, but only because he was flattering, and quite frankly, blatantly and foolishly forthright with them. As I mentioned before, the intent was to portray Glorio as having finally “got it” in regards to the impact his attempt at taking control of the Crimson Throne had, while still being somewhat true to his nature as a monster who couldn’t help but lie through his teeth. The group definitely got the latter part loud and clear, as they repeatedly said amongst themselves that they did *not* trust Glorio one bit.
Despite the fact that he all but let them hold a dagger to his throat – he started the meeting by confessing his involvement in the death of Eodred, that he funded Gaedren Lamm and Andaisin, and at last indirectly was behind everything that had happened in Book One and Two. He also admitted that obviously while they had no proof, if the party went and breathed a word of this to Ileosa, the Grey Maidens would likely storm back into Old Korvosa with explicit instructions to kill him, and House Arkona would likely be no more. He further went on to state that he had made a mistake – and he was willing to do whatever was necessary to repair the damage he had done to Korvosa, including removing Ileosa from power as she was clearly unstable (the party of course agreed with that but they still didn’t count Arkona among their allies on that front).
Unfortunately, Glorio also had to confess that his back was up against the wall. Not only was he cut off from much of his power base due to Old Korvosa’s isolation, but a new player was attempting to seize power in the isolated district – the so-called Emperor of Old Korvosa. The biggest problem with this wannabe Empire was not that its leader was untouchable – on the contrary, Glorio had already commissioned the Red Mantis to put an end to the Emperor, and they had . . . three times already. But each time some new person was propped up onto the throne, the work of an as-yet unseen hand (the Cult of Rovagug, who in turn were puppets of yet another enemy of the party). The current Emperor was the infamous Pilts Swastel, whose play work Oliver and Vaz’em had gone to see all those sessions ago.
So, clearly just killing the leader of the Empire wasn’t working, and as Cinnabar frostily pointed out, the Red Mantis were killers, not investigators. Glorio was hoping that perhaps despite their past differences he and the party could work together to save Korvosa, starting with finding out who was *really* behind the Empire of Old Korvosa and putting an end to them. In return, Glorio could offer them a safe base of operations within Old Korvosa to operate from, and certainly would provide whatever other aid he could, although it was again limited with the Empire pressing his own forces so dearly.
Nonetheless, he was able to offer an immediate retainer for the party’s services, as a sign of good faith – a chest full of 10,000 GP in platinum coins. *THAT* finally bought him a little goodwill from the party, although they still didn’t trust him at least they weren’t on the verge of saying “nah, f#&& this guy” and feeding him to the wolves (which would have been fine although Ileosa probably would have expected the party to deal with Arkona, and Rakshasa can be *very* unpleasant opponents when backed into a corner).
It was about at this point that the little conference was interrupted by the harsh sound of demonic shrieks and screeches. Ducking outside, the party was confronted with a trio of Vrocks flying in from the direction of Old Korvosa – the demonic vultures announced that they had been sent by the Emperor of Old Korvosa to escort Glorio to the bottom of the ocean! The beasts swooped over the deck of the ship, summoning as they went, and in their wake fat, deformed shapes clawed their way out of shadowy corners on the deck – Dretches (rather than summoning more of themselves, I prefer to adjust Outsiders summoning ability to bring in a group of lower-CR minions. For vrocks, a gaggle of CR 2 demons seemed about right, if a bit underpowered given the party’s status – which was fine, it gave them something to attack for the first part of the fight).
A total of eight dretches were summoned forth from the Abyss to join the assault, and they leapt at nearby crewmen with gusto. Rholand helped negate this part of the encounter by casting Communal Protection from Evil on everyone, keeping the summoned dretches at bay, but with nothing else to fight at the moment and with the dretches tearing into the unprotected (but still capable of fighting back – as much as level 2 or 3 warriors without magic weapons can, anyway) crewmen most of the party still helped clear the deck of the demonic scum. With the fight got started on the deck, the three vrocks joined hands above and began to dance in a circle overhead, the sky crackling dangerously as magical power built-up.
Built as a Mastermind Investigator (Moriarty, HO!), Glorio pretty much immediately identified this as a Dance of Ruin, an attack that could potentially kill everyone on board (he and Avidexu would probably be fine after the first one, it’s only like 15d6 damage from 3 vrocks, and they each had 100+ HP. The 8th level party though, not so much). While they had Trevor the human machine gun to help with ranged combat, he was the only one built for it and with the Vrocks respectable AC and mirror images (they buffed themselves with their Mirror Image and Heroism SLAs before starting the attack run, of course) it would be slow going for him. Too slow to save their asses, most likely.
Pointing at the ballista mounted near the bow of the ship, Cinnabar instructed the party to give her a clear shot by removing the images around one Vrock, and then vanished as she dashed towards the bow. Trevor started shooting (blasting mirror images) and Cid also cast Fly on himself to get up and start meleeing one of them while Oliver, Vaz’em, and Flank focused on clearing out the dretches.
Together they managed to get the images down on one of the vrocks, and Cid even landed a mighty crit on said Vrock, but (heheheheheheh) with its immunity to lightning and DR 10/Good, even a falcata crit only gave it a minor paper cut (-15 HP out of 110 or so). Still, the way had been cleared for Cinnabar, who had reached the ballista and attached some sort of bag onto the ballista bolt. Re-appearing as she fired the ballista, Cinnabar took aim at the now imageless one that Cid had hit, just before the Dance of Ruin completed, and . . . . nat 1’d the shot. >< But since I didn’t want to punish my players with potential death (eating a 15d6 Dance of Ruin) when they had done everything asked of them, I had the bolt fly close enough to the vrock that the attached bag broke open. Gooey tendrils of flame (Burning Tanglefoot Bag!) lashed out at the demon, ensnaring it and sending it crashing down from the sky and into the sea. This sudden departure of the Vrock broke the circle, and the other two vrocks shrieked and descended onto the boat to do things the old-fashioned way, one heading for Oliver while the other headed for the demons’ primary target of Glorio Arkona.
And here is where things started to go seriously sideways for the party. Perhaps concerned for Glorio’s safety despite Avidexu’s presence, the party decided to slip up, Cid, Oliver, and Flank handling one Vrock on the deck while Vaz’em and Rholand helped Glorio on the aft castle with the other. As it turned out, DR 15/Good and Piercing is quite effective at making even a power-attacking Vrock useless, as even when the Vrock did beat Glorio’s impressive AC (Masterminds get an AC bonus to targets that they use their special Study ability on) it did little more than tear his clothing (a point that I took pains to describe happening several times in an attempt to raise the party’s curiosity . . . I think they just thought he had Stoneskin running or something *sigh* ).
Oliver, on the other hand, did not have DR of any sort. And while his AC was pretty damn good, it still was starting the almost inevitable slide into “not good enough” that starts at mid-to-high levels. Which meant that with a little hot dice rolling on the DM’s part, the Vrock basically landed every single one of its Power Attacks. All five of them. >< Oliver went from full to bleeding out on the deck in I think one round of full attacks from the Vrock, maybe two. It probably didn’t help that on the proceeding round it used its Standard to trigger its bullshit Shriek ability, Stunning Oliver (another piece of good luck for the Vrock).
So that left Cid to deal with the Vrock, with a little surprise help from Cinnabar, while Flank (unable to do much due to DR), finished off the Dretches. Meanwhile, Vaz’em tried to help Glorio and Avidexu out, but definitely was having trouble thanks to the vrock’s high AC and multiple mirror images left (being stunned for a round after *that* vrock used its own Shriek probably didn’t help). Avidexu was probably the MVP here, as he went two-hand Power Attacking with his scimitar, which given his high BAB, meant that he could reliably break through the demon’s DR, while Glorio basically just stood there and ignored the Vrock’s full attack routine (dumb bastard demons never did figure out that trying to claw him to death wasn’t working).
Due to time constraints, we ended the session pretty much at this point, with Oliver bleeding out, Cid and Cinnabar and Flank desperately trying to deal with the vrock down on the deck, while the Arkonas and Vaz’em and Rholand grinded away at the second vrock’s hit points up on the ship’s aft castle, and Trevor pretty much shot at whichever one he felt like (when he wasn’t Shriek Stunned). Not a particularly pleasant note to end on, but an exciting one – Vrocks are seriously mean for CR 9 demons!) It made for a good cliffhanger anyway, and since I’m now out of time to write, we’ll have to make this a recap cliffhanger as well, ahahahaha!
I like your adjustment to the Demons' summoning ability -- didn't make much sense to me that Demons or even Daemons would summon more of their own exact same kind instead of something of lower rank that won't upstage them (Devils on the other hand are another matter).
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Well, I understand the reasoning for it, as in 3.X pretty much if you go from fighting one outsider to TWO, that’s roughly a bump in difficulty of 2 CR, which is probably noticeable. Meanwhile, even if it summons a bunch of low-CR trash to swarm the party, they probably won’t even notice except for the round or two it takes to cleave through them to get back to fighting the REAL outsider.
In 1E AD&D, what’d you would get is an endless avalanche of summoning, where the big bad demon summons his lackeys, who summon THEIR lackeys, who summon . . . ad nausem every round until they failed a summoning check or died. Which made fighting a demon lord or other really big deal outsider well, a big deal because you usually had to fight his/her WHOLE ARMY at the same time. And even then you pretty much needed a plan to keep them from just teleporting away when things looked bad for them.
Anyway, they were already fighting THREE CR 9 demons (and Vrocks probably are a solid CR 9 – they aren’t going to do much to a 9th party ready with Stoneskin, and Smite-Evil type stuff, but as poor Oliver demonstrated, in a straight-up slugfest that plays to their strengths they are BRUTAL) while still only level 8 (albeit with a LOT of high-level help, and the demons fighting like, well, stupid, bloodthirsty, chaotic evil jackasses) so them bringing in some low-level guys for oliver and vaz’em to cleave through for the first couple rounds until the vrocks’ dance got disrupted worked out well enough.
Things weren’t looking so great for the party after the Vrocks actually joined the fight, considering Oliver got stunned and then ripped into the negatives over the first two rounds or so. I was debating whether the Vrock really was enough of a jackass to divert an attack down into the fallen Oliver’s face on its next turn just to be SURE he was on his way to the afterlife, but then Cid had to go and crit again. It didn’t really do that much damage to the Vrock, but it hurt enough to draw its ire and decide it’d rather see Cid torn apart first before getting cute with pseudo-coup-de-graces.
Of course, Cid had Mirror Image up, and the Vrock didn’t get so lucky on its next round of attacks, but Vrocks get a LOT of attacks so those mirror images weren’t going to last long. Of course, Cid just recast Mirror Image on his next round with Spell Combat anyway, since Shocking Grasp wasn’t going to do anything (damn cheatering Magus).
Meanwhile, Rholand was trying to figure out how to disengage from his fight up on the aft castle, lumber his way down to Oliver, and heal him WITHOUT the Vrock tearing his head off with an AoO. Cid was debating pouring a potion down Oliver’s throat as well to get him back up into the fight, although of course getting someone back up into positive hit points could possibly be just dooming them to a power attack death if they’re still in single digit HPs when the next attack comes in after they start moving again.
Fortunately, the problem of who was going to be able to get Oliver back up was solved for the party when a potion of Cure Serious Wounds was dumped down Oliver’s throat from the ether – Cinnabar to the rescue! Oliver risked the AoO from the Vrock to get back up, even though it risked dropping him again, and thankfully this time the Vrock missed with its AoO despite having the +4 Prone bonus to-hit. He dealt it a minor scratch in return.
It was around this time that the triple tag team of power-attacking Avidexu, sneak-attacking Vaz’em, and insightful strike spamming Glorio (he’s a high level investigator with a high intelligence – he’s got A LOT of Insight points to blow in a day) finally ground down their Vrock. Rather than disappearing in a cloud of disintegrating ash like summoned monsters, the Vrock collapsed to the deck a disgusting, oozing mess of black blood and rancid meat. These Vrocks were physically here then, Called or walked through a portal or something, not just summoned (a fact technically confirmed after the vrock completely ignored Oliver’s Protection from Evil to rip his head off, albeit at the -2 to-hit penalty for being evil).
It was also around this time that the vrock that had disappeared beneath the waves finally resurfaces too, geysering up out of the water now that it had shaken itself loose from the tanglefoot bag’s tar. Its first action was to use its telekinetic power to lift Cinnabar up into the air (she had become visible after shanking the Vrock she/Cid/Oliver were fighting I think), and then throw her overboard! The Vrock they had then been fighting chose to go try to avenge its brother by fly-by attacking Oliver (I gave them Fly-By attack to make them even more obnoxious, so sue me :-p ) to take to the air and get up into Glorio’s grill instead. Vaz’em was grateful for barely having to move in order to continue sneak attacking!
Meanwhile, Rholand went over and healed Oliver a bit, Trevor kept firing, and Cid flew over to the side of the ship to see if there was anything to do for Cinnabar. As it turned out, the Red Mantis leader was still in sight, clinging to the side of the ship has it trawled along through the water, dragging her along – her one hand was now shaped into a mantis claw and embedded in the side of the ship. Still, she was half-drowned and definitely unhappy to be down there, so when she said “Yes!” to Cid’s offer for help, he flew down and hauled her back up onto the boat.
This in turn enraged the Vrock who had just gotten done throwing Cinnabar overboard, so it swooped down to tear into Cid immediately after he and Cinnabar got back up on deck. That gave Cid & Oliver their own Vrock to deal with again while Trevor/Vaz’em/Avidexu/Glorio started beating on the one Cid & Oliver had already softened up (a tiny bit, anyway).
Another round or two of combat past before the high-damage dog pile proved to be too much for the second Vrock, and it joined its brother in a messy heap on the aft castle, Glorio’s clothing shredded but not much else actually accomplished by the demons. It was at this point that the last Vrock decided that this was NOT worth losing its access to the mortal realm for a thousand years or however long, if ever, it took its essence to reform in the Abyss after dying for real here. So it flew off at high speed, and Cid wisely decided not to try and chase it alone (although one-on-one in the air, it may have stayed and fought for another round or two, giving Cid & Trevor a chance to kill it before it became a recurring villain with a name. But since it escaped, well . . . let’s just say that they got a chance to meet this particular Vrock with a vendetta against them again and again. :-D )
So the day was saved, Glorio Arkona was saved from the demons (which the party sort of felt bad about OOC, given that they had just saved a mass murdering creep from a bunch of other mass murdering outsider creeps – oh, if only they had taken a bit more of an interesting in Glorio’s unusual durability, so that they might learn he *was* an (native) outsider creep too! ). Everyone was properly concerned about the Emperor having demons at his beck and call now, *especially* demons physically brought here and not just summoned. I don’t *think* they knew how that was happening just yet, but if Glorio didn’t mention the possible answer during this particular session it was definitely an upcoming plot point.
For now, however, the party was grudgingly willing to work with Glorio, at least to put an end to this latest outside threat to the city. Cid was *NOT*, however, willing to give Avidexu any sort of slack, and continued to be hostile until they parted ways. For now, Glorio suggested that they part company and our heroes return home, lest Ileosa start to wonder where they had gone. I believe Glorio also revealed at this point that he had a potentially quite useful political weapon against Ileosa – Senaschal Neolandus was a guest of his. Though technically no longer the seneschal, most likely the title would revert back to him automatically once news of his death proved greatly exaggerated (at least for as long as it took Togomor to yawn and MAKE him dead for real).
The party was quite interested in this news (and rightfully suspicious) and demanded to speak with the Senaschal. Which obviously wouldn’t be possible here, so after the party made it clear they would NOT accept no for an answer, Glorio agreed to let the party meet him once they arrived at his manor. Hopefully, the party would be able to slip into Old Korvosa at some point in the near future, weave their way through the chaotic streets, and arrive at his manor for just such a meeting.
Glorio did also ask the party for a favor, in that he wanted them to deliver a sealed letter to a dockmaster in Korvosa proper. With the collapse of Old Korvosa into anarchy, he was unable to get the letter delivered himself, but since the party was going back to Korvosa, perhaps they would be willing to deliver it for him? They were suspicious, but agreed to the request for now since it seemed relatively harmless (and I’m pretty sure they sneaked a peak at the letter later to find it seemingly boringly mundane, a bunch of financial transactions Glorio wanted to be done).
So the party parted ways with Glorio, sailing back to the Midpoints docks in a rowboat with Cinnabar. Before she disappeared back into the night, an actual conversation with her started as she wanted to know what motivated Cid to save her. Cid simply shrugged and said something along the lines of he just wanted to help. Cinnabar in return offered a story she had “heard” about a “girl” (just like everyone always telling an embarrassing story about “a friend” when it’s obvious who the story is really about).
This girl wanted to be a bard when she grew up, a traveling singer who provided entertainment as she traveled the world and uplifted people’s spirits. Her mother, however, was a powerful assassin and leader within the Red Mantis, who expected her daughter to follow in her footsteps and saw the girl as deluded and distracted by a worthless fantasy. So the mother decided that she needed to help her daughter.
So she had a Geas placed on the girl, that forced her to kill or suffer agonizing torment. It started simple at first, with just animals necessary to satisfy the Geas. The girl, still a preteen child, was horrified at what was being asked of her, and held out for as long as she could. But eventually, inevitably, the pain grew too great to resist, and so the girl learned to kill, starting with animals but soon moving on to people. In the end, rather than seeking to ease her pain, the girl killed because she enjoyed it. In fact, she had become addicted to the rush of killing and the feeling of release (due to the Geas) after taking a life. And eventually, one dark night, the girl killed her own mother while she slept, in a form of poetic justice.
Cinnabar then said her good-byes, and mentioned that she needed to go find someone to kill so that she could “scratch an old itch”. Cid’s reaction to this story was pretty much – “Damn, that’s f@%&ed up. O_O” . Of course, this is more or less Cinnabar’s backstory from Book Four, *finally* provided to the players’ upfront instead of related to DM Eyes Only. The one addition that I made was that Mistress Kayltanya from Book Six is, in fact, Cinnabar’s mother – she got better after being murdered by her daughter.
Which was going to lead to another story at some point (as yet unshared) of Cinnabar’s graduation to full-time Red Mantis assassin, involving Kayltanya arranging for her daughter to fail the final “live fire assassination” test, leading to Cinnabar’s capture and weeks of horrific torture before Cinnabar finally managed to kill herself - and thus technically pass the final test by proving she was willing to die for the Red Mantis, resulting in her getting Raised and sent out on missions as a full-fledged assassin. Yes, family dinners between the two of them are *really* awkward. They’ll be a whole lot more awkward before our story is done though!
(But it is hard to determine which particular NPC actually has it the worst – Gwen and Ileosa and possibly Sabrina could all arguably give Cinnabar a run for “most miserable backstory”, and that’s just off the top of my head! Let it never be said that I don’t put my precious NPCs through the wringer just as much as my PCs. :-p )
Anyway, one might think that our heroes’ night was over, but not quite yet! Another Arkona wanted to speak with the party, and give her own take on the situation. As soon as Cinnabar was gone, Melyia (Vimanda) Arkona appeared through the fog. She opened with a pretty straightforward “you guys know he’s playing you, right?” and went on to bad-mouth Glorio from there (Vimanda was getting started early on her whole “You guys should kill Bahor, not me!” plan).
Melyia pretty much put forth the story that this was all a game to Glorio, and that he was only weeping crocodile tears in an attempt to get the party to spare him out of necessity. Melyia offered a different option – go get hard evidence of his crimes that they could bring before Ileosa, and get Glorio rightly executed for treason (or they could just blackmail Glorio blind too). Just so long as the party made it clear that Melyia had *nothing* to do with Glorio’s schemes, and of course could be trusted to run House Arkona’s affairs as a loyal and upstanding supporter of Korvosa’s queen.
They didn’t really trust Melyia any more than they trusted Glorio of course, but they were interested in the idea of having some real insurance in their back pocket for when Glorio decided to screw them. So Melyia led them to a small warehouse in Midpoint that she said was a front that House Arkona used to secretly store notes on illicit activities. All evidence of Glorio’s dealings with the conspiracy against Eodred were now stored in that warehouse, awaiting Glorio’s go-ahead to burn the last proof of his ties to that conspiracy. In fact, that sealed letter that the party was carrying around was in fact the signal that the warehouse manager was waiting for to burn the place down.
So of course the party was *really* interested in seeing what Glorio was so anxious to destroy, and let Melyia lead them to the exact warehouse in question. She then wished them the best of luck and left, pleased beyond measure with herself that she managed to stick it to Glorio. With the party considering how best to assault this place without it getting burned down around their ears by itchy torch-fingered guards, we ended the session.