Hey Inspectre! My group started a Curse campaign about two months ago now, and I've been liberally stealing from your game to modify my own.
I've not had any difficulty with coming up with stats for the extra characters; either writing up the important ones, or just using stat blocks from aonprd (lots of NPC Codex and Villain Codex characters essentially). And I've been reusing a couple of generic street maps and dock maps for all the various street encounters.
What I don't have is something to use for the various Lamm encounters - the underground lair, the house/balcony/roof sequence, and the Longacre building. Do you recall what you used?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
ZanThrax - Hello! Welcome to the party. We're still here and still going, even if a whole host of issues this year has held me up from even my irregular posting of updates!
Finding stat blocks from elsewhere is a great way to save time provided you can make it work (probably don't want to be using a wizard stat block for Gaedren Lamm, heh - although that could also mess with your player's expectations :) )
Unfortunately, virtually all of my maps were custom built using the virtual tabletop program rather than pulled from the CotCT PDFs and elsewhere. I tried importing the Old Fishery map back in Session One, found that I couldn't get the grids to line up properly, and gave up in favor of making my own copies of maps from the book, and just making my own stuff up (me making stuff up wholecloth, like that's a surprise in this thread, hah!)
I imagine that you are playing in-person and so have been using physical copies, which makes it a little difficult for my custom virtual maps to be useful to you. I'll also confess that they tend to be very much function over form, and so are . . . well, UGLY. But they manage to get the message across most of the time, so it's worked for me.
I suppose I could provide .GIF pictures or some sort of picture format of the maps I made that you can then attempt to alter and/or print out on paper if you really want them, as the virtual tabletop does have some limited functionality in that regard, but I don't know if that's what you're looking for either.
Sorry friend!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
While I'm here, let me post this write-up of the set-up roleplaying that we did in-between Session One Hundred Twenty-Seven and Session One Hundred Twenty-Eight. I know it's not much after a four+ month hiatus, but it's what I can offer to everyone right now! Stay safe!
UnArcaneElection – I thought about setting up some nasty kobolds for the party to fight through, but Tucker’s little friends have a much harder time of it in 3.X due to the PCs being able to pump their ACs and saves *much* higher than they were able to do in the original AD&D edition, to the point of the little 1 HD guys being completely unable to do anything to them. So I’d have to give them levels, which would have been work, and for Gwen’s purposes (getting some hired help to set up explosives), garden variety kobolds were perfect. Plus the party got to have a little fun just cleaving through the hapless little guys, and I *occasionally* have to throw them a bone. ;)
As for the Freemen, it was a combination of factors. Mainly, Harman Wright, the leader of the Freemen, had gotten complacent and was totally corrupted by his position of comfort as a member of the council. All exactly as Pyre & Slag had intended by discretely getting the Freemen a seat on the city council, despite publicly making noise against it. They knew that the temptation of the good life would corrode and eventually destroy Wright’s ideals, making him into the thing he hated (Kaer Maga’s impassivity regarding slavery), and they were absolutely right. Trent was an old-guard extremist who was deeply frustrated by the Freemen taking the city’s deal (stop attacking the slavers and integrate into the city’s social structure, or get exterminated by the city at large). That left him an easy mark to get recruited by Gwen into effectively restarting the Freemen’s war against the slavers and Kaer Maga at-large. So yes, you had most of the organization corrupt and just paying lip service to their ideals anymore, and the rest were fanatics who were easily manipulated into lashing out by an external force (i.e Gwen).
I had expected Cid to try to “redeem” Abigail by rescuing her, explaining what happened to her, and then trying to help her adapt to her new circumstances. There could have been some good drama squeezed out of a Sarenite being condemned to not just an undead existence, but one that could never see the sun again. Obviously she also wouldn’t have been a paladin anymore, what with that involuntary alignment change and her goddess going “oh HELL no!” But with all the chaos in the city Cid would have had at least a chance of convincing her to remain on this mortal coil a bit longer to help while they figured out how to fix this (Resurrection most likely, difficult with the high priestess dead but perhaps not impossible to manage via a scroll). And my DM’s black heart was positively pitter-patter with all the ideas for Abigail slipping more and more into becoming the thing she hated as she got more used to the idea of being a vampire. In particular, I was expecting her to pay Laori an unpleasant visit, as the two of them had never gotten along and while paladin Abigail was too noble to act on the grudge, vampire Abigail was much more petty (plus elf blood is delicious). But alas, Cid just had to go and do the right thing (put Abigail out of her misery) rather than the selfish thing (keep the self-hating neonate vampire around until eventually getting around to curing her). I never get to have any fun. :-p
Oh well, as you might have figured out by now, I tend to have multiple contingency plans, and death is often not the end if I still have plans for a character. Which I suspect is one reason the players were satisfied with Victae’s punishment, as while yes I could theoretically have his head box be found and have him brought back (and he’s sitting in my back pocket for a rainy day, oh yes), at least while he’s still a vampire-head-in-a-box, he’s less likely to come back as some sort of vampire demon out for revenge from the afterlife. But this theme of nobody having the good grace to stay dead cuts both ways, and this was not the last time the party saw Abigail either. But we’ll be getting to that in a little bit, for now just know that I had plans for her post-final-death-as-vampire as well.
As for her soul being condemned to the Abyss, well yes it’s rather contrived, but it could have just as easily gone “Victae casts Plane Shift to the Abyss, eats Abigail, planeshifts himself and Vampigail back to the Material Plane, Teleport them both back to Kaer Maga”. That’s 2 level 7 spells and 1 level 5 spells, which is beyond Victae’s abilities but scrolls are always a thing, particularly for a planar-focused conjurer like Victae was (what with binding the Invisibile Stalkers as bodyguards and the derghodaemon as his nuke). At this level, I feel like this sort of over-the-top expenditure of magic is not unreasonable to have to deal with, but to make things a bit simpler I went with “daemon on-hand to eat Abigail’s soul”, then another outsider of Victae’s choice takes the daemon back to the Abyss and eats the daemon+Abigail’s soul, trapping Abigail in the Abyss. I could have gone with a devil for an old-school shout-out to “A Paladin in Hell” module, but I specifically made it the Abyss for reasons that will become apparent. I was already setting up my contingency plans, as you will see.
Oh, and as for them never, ever, getting their hands on 1 Wish, let alone 2 Wishes, in order to bring Abigail back, well . . . they’ve found 2 Wishes in the vicinity of Scarwall already, and several more are lurking out there for them to find. Part of my contingency plans to allow them to unf~+~ themselves from the really terrible things that can happen to them in Scarwall (which are things that basically require Wish-level magic to fix).
*****************************
So, with the party (mostly) victorious in Kaer Maga and ready to move on to the remaining Book Four plot lines that would take them back outside the chaotic city, it was time for the reminder that they weren’t safe anywhere because some very powerful people wanted them, specifically, very dead. To wit, it was time for Cinnabar to make her triumphant return back onto the screen, returning to her leadership position after Davos made a mess out of the attack on Da Silva’s tower a dozen or so sessions back. She had plans to take out each of the party individually while they were split up within the city, and with everyone wanting to blow off some steam before leaving Kaer Maga it was the perfect time for her to strike. So, prior to the next session we had some individual play sessions set up for each member of our party. Let’s see how well Cinnabar did . . .
Vaz’em’s private session was pretty short and to the point. The day after Abigail’s funeral, he was out on Kaer Maga’s streets, and was just starting to wonder where Trinia had gotten off to when a carriage rolled up the street to him and came to a stop. The carriage door opened, revealing Cinnabar seated inside next to a tied-up Trinia. Vaz’em had been dreading Cinnabar’s return for some time now, and so he wasn’t overly surprised by this turn of events. But neither did he have any acceptable alternatives here but to climb inside at Cinnabar’s command as she dug a very sharp knife into Trinia’s ribs. Theoretically we could have dragged the game out a bit longer here and seen if Vaz’em could have figured out a way to escape the carriage with Trinia, but given Vaz’em was probably the best equipped character out of the entire party to escape this ambush and I particularly wanted him caught for some plot reveals so I decided to just handwave the rest of his capture. The carriage door swung shut again after he climbed inside, and the carriage drove off as the screen went black, as presumably the other Red Mantis in the carriage with Cinnabar shoved a bag over Vaz’em’s head, pummeled him unconscious, and hog-tied him next to Trinia. One for one.
So, Abigail was dead now for about three days, and her funeral was basically earlier that day when Cid got paid a visit by Laori. The two had always gotten along quite well with some not-so-subtle flirting throughout Book Three and Four, and in my head she had always been the front-runner for Cid’s heart, so it had been surprising when he had gone with the paladin instead. Of course, now the paladin was dead, and Laori was not above making the most of this opportunity.
So she showed up at Cid’s place in Da Silva tower that night, with a bottle of alcohol and some half-hearted condolences about his loss. And then of course they started drinking, and Laori got rather up-front with asking if Cid would like some company for the night, and how she could help him forget all about that stuffy paladin. I had planned on Laori making a similar proposition to Cid if Abigail had survived but remained in Kaer Maga while they both went on to Scarwall (i.e. “I know you’re in a relationship, but she’s not here right now and I am, and this could be our last chance what with all the undead horrors and such in Scarwall, so . . .”).
I was a little surprised when Cid went for Laori’s proposition here, but oh my little black DM heart went pitter patter at this decision, for as Telltale Games might have once said “Abigail will remember this” (even though she’s currently dead). He didn’t bite the hook all the way, and take Laori up on her offer of kinky tie-up games (leaving at least one of them in a very awkward position when the Red Mantis kicked in the bedroom door later that night), but like with Vaz’em I figured enough set-up work had been done that Cid’s guard was down, and so I just handwaved that some hours later, he woke up to get the butt of a sword hilt to the face as Red Mantis sneaked in while he and Laori were sleeping off their wild night. Two for two, although I suppose four for four if you count the love interest NPCs as well!
Oliver, as usual, was drinking his cares away at a local bar, and trying to forget about this huge mess that he had steadily gotten himself further and further trapped in by associating with the rest of the party (it had seemed a good idea back in Book One, after all). His two gnome minions, Righty and Lefty, showed up with another gnome who introduced himself as Carpenter, an oracle of “The Hammer”. Oliver had been looking for a replacement henchman after Ronda sort of disappeared into the mire of Kaer Maga (off to seek self-employment rather than die – more than the once and coming back as a kobold anyway - like the rest of Oliver’s henchmen and dogs). Carpenter was clearly a bit mental with his worshipping of Oliver’s admantine hammer and referring to Oliver himself as “emissary”, but he had magical talent and Oliver was looking for a new henchman, so . . . he was hired?
Then Parashial showed up, wanting to talk with Oliver about Zarmangorf and their ancestral home, a fortress out in the Cinderlands that was run by Parashial’s old Order of the Griffon, before Zarmangorf killed them all and took the place over. That was where Zarmangorf had invited Oliver to come visit, it was where he was keeping Parashial’s daughter/Oliver’s half-sister, it was where a treasure trove of magical items from the Order was stored, and obviously it was where Oliver’s “I’m special” quest was scheduled to take place. But Oliver wasn’t interested in any of that, and between having already put up with Carpenter’s odd-ball sales pitch and having drunk enough to be good and surly, he went with telling Parashial he should deal with it himself, except for course he didn’t have the balls for that and would rather keep hiding in Kaer Maga like a coward. At which point Parashial punched Oliver in the face, and we got another bar fight between the two of them that slowly morphed into both of them against the rest of the bar as the fighting spread out from the two of them.
Eventually we cut to the back alley behind the bar some time later, where Parashial and Oliver were nursing their wounds and glaring sullenly at each other again, before Parashial agreed with Oliver that he was a coward. Zarmangorf had grown beyond his ability to defeat, and the dragon had gotten obsessed with wiping out every last one of his father’s old enemies (they had spent the past six hundred years or so since the last time Kazavon was around trying to kill each other to mixed success, although Zarmangorf had time on his side being a dragon, and only getting stronger with age). If Oliver was going to mess with that, Parashial could only wish him good luck (and give him the secret way into the treasure vault beneath the citadel, which Zarmangorf likely hadn’t been able to break into just yet).
After Parashial wandered off, a bar maid came out into the alleyway with a mug of ale for Oliver which she declared was “on the house”. Ignoring the potential warning sign there, Oliver chugged down the mug of ale, and easily passed his fort save versus the knockout drugs liberally mixed in with the drink, at which point Cinnabar abandoned the charade, ripped off her barmaid wig, and waved in the gang of Red Mantis assassins who had been lurking at the end of the alleyway waiting for Parashial to leave. This was actually a moment Oliver had been waiting some time for, as he wanted to see just how tough Cinnabar really was (plus it’s hard to run away from ninjas in plate armor). So he drew his cutlass and started hacking into Cinnabar, while the Red Mantis assassins further down the alley ran forward and started chucking more poison-tipped shuriken at him.
With his Fort save and high AC I really didn’t think the Red Mantis were going to be able to manage this one, and Cinnabar would have to run away after a round or two fearing for her life (as much as she cared about that, anyway). But a couple of the shuriken managed to get through, and no matter what your save bonus is, a natural one is always a failure. Oliver’s player was understandably quite salty about his luck after Oliver crashed to the street, rendered unconscious from a piddly 1d2 knockout poisoned shuriken with a poison Fort save DC that Oliver probably would make on a “2”. Three for three!
Rholand was the last member of the party to be free, and between his ability to melt restraints (and walls) with Erosion Touch and his b*!+%&+~ OP Stone Shape making huge walls out of nowhere (which got nerfed a little later on, finally) he was going to be a hard one to take. Fortunately, Cinnabar had a plan for this (it’s called copious amounts of knockout poison and stat-damaging poison until he’s paralyzed) and it was pretty easy to get Rholand to go wherever you wanted him to go. Just tell him there was a sick child somewhere in need of his healing expertise.
So the first step went off without a hitch – getting Rholand alone in a random Kaer Magan apartment in the seedier side of town. The second part is where things start to go wrong, as after Cinnabar ripped off her wig and the rest of the “family” brandished weapons (I should have had CInny disguised as the sick “child” ^^ ) Rholand used his Stone Shape ability to seal off his portion of the room. Cinnabar had heard about this trick, however, and had brought some scrolls of Stone Shape herself to “fix” any walls Rholand might erect. She only needed to roll a “5” or so on her Use Magic Device check to activate the scroll, but sadly she Nat 1’d the result (even the bad guys can screw up because of that), giving Rholand time to carve a hole in the outside wall, and buff himself with Blessing of Fervor. The next round as Cinnabar got to the business of dispelling the stone wall, Rholand was outside in the street, rushing away at mach speed.
Cinnabar had planned for this as well, and some more assassins appeared in the street outside, blocking Rholand’s way and trying to pelt him with more poisoned shuriken. He managed to survive the initial barrage, and shoulder barraged his way past the one Red Mantis assassin standing between him and freedom. Then he was gone into the night, and after all that I decided Rholand had earned his win. Sorry Cinnabar! But, three out of four PCs captured isn’t so bad – certainly better than Davos managed!
I imagine that you are playing in-person and so have been using physical copies, which makes it a little difficult for my custom virtual maps to be useful to you. I'll also confess that they tend to be very much function over form, and so are . . . well, UGLY. But they manage to get the message across most of the time, so it's worked for me.
I suppose I could provide .GIF pictures or some sort of picture format of the maps I made that you can then attempt to alter and/or print out on paper if you really want them, as the virtual tabletop does have some limited functionality in that regard, but I don't know if that's what you're looking for either.
Sorry friend!
We are playing in person, but I do use a VTT (Foundry) for our game. I've found that using the maps from the pdfs works well, if one scales them up first, or manually adjusts the width of every row & column of the map one slice at a time to get a consistent pixels-per-square scale.
I've put together an alley scene w/ balcony for the upcoming meeting just using a decent tileset I found recently, but I still haven't made maps for the final lair or the Longacre building.
Vaz or Cid would have just blinked away.** spoiler omitted **
Unless they were hit with Dimensional Anchor (which you can't even Save against, and it's not even terribly high level) or caught in an area covered by Dimensional Lock (which you can't even Save against and you can't even dodge, although it's really high level).
Just checking in to see if we're still on the air . . . .
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There are a few of us still...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I am still alive and well, my friends! Sadly, my focus has been elsewhere this year, and I don't think I need any explanations as to why 2020 has been a difficult year to deal with. Still, as the year wraps up things seem to be starting to stabilize, so hopefully I can turn my focus to putting together a few updates for this poor neglected journal/place for my mad ramblings regarding Curse of the Crimson Throne.
I have not been around in a long while, but I'm glad to know this is still going strong!
And I cannot thank you enough for the inspirations it has provided me with.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just wanted to say a few words to Inspectr, your journal has been a lifesaver many many times when it came down to my still poor GMing skills to find interesting ideas ans freshen up this adventure.
We're still playing book one, but it's been a blast!
I'm really hopeful we can hear from you again in the near future! :)
Take your time, health, friends and family first! <3
Forben
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Okay! *deep breath* Let’s see if we can get some progress made here, given how ridiculously far behind we are this point (we will be having Session Two Hundred Thirty-Five this week, so we’re over 100 episodes behind at this point!) I really appreciate all of the interest and well wishes from those who are still following this thread, even if you haven’t made a post up to now – hello! o/
ZanThrax – Probably best to just use what you can find/put together yourself then, I think. Gaedren’s final lair was a bit of a rush job and was repurposed from another map that I had made of a Shudder lab (the same one that Devargo was going to give them a mission to raid if they had ever gone back and talked to him again, I think). As such, it was basically just one or two side rooms, a big central room with alchemy workbenches where the final fight was waged, and then a small side room just off from that with Dodger’s sister tied-up next to a barrel of gunpower with a slow-burning powder trail stretching out into the big fight room to provide a count-down for the boss fight.
UnArcaneElection – I would argue that I basically did that. Vaz’em was pretty screwed, as any action he took that wasn’t to Cinnabar’s liking and didn’t also prevent her from taking a full-round action basically meant “and then Trinia dies.” Theoretically she could have rolled a miracle Natural 20 on her Fort save to resist the coup-de-grace, but that’s a lot to ask of Lady Luck if “roll a nat 20” is your only plan. And my players know by now that if I say “if you don’t do X, NPC Y DIES”, I mean exactly that, barring it being a bluff by the bad guys or some action that they take somehow manages to negate that threat beforehand. Here, Vaz’em didn’t really have any good ways of getting Trinia out of this situation alive – if it was Cid who had Dimension Door, it would be a different story as he could just lunge at Trinia, touch her, and teleport them both out of danger. If Vaz’em’s player had decided “forget this love interest, I’ma save my own skin”, then he certainly could have turned invisible, tried to kick open the carriage, jump out, and make a run for it. At which point we’d probably play it out for a round or two more to see if the Red Mantis could manage to drop him before he got into an alleyway, but more than likely Vaz’em would have escaped, at the cost of Trinia’s life. Since Vaz’em’s player didn’t want to pay that price, and his player didn’t seem able to come up with any other plan on the spot short of talking Cinnabar down (not happening) or lunging at her to start a grapple, and then somehow keep her grappled while beating down the other 1-2 Red Mantis inside the carriage who would still be free to do whatever they wanted (including stab Trinia to death first before attacking Vaz’em).
As for Cid, I believe that I did give him a perception check (that I don’t think he could have made even on a Nat 20, between Red Mantis stealth and the -20 for being asleep, although at least there I may have been tempted to give him a chance. He didn’t roll a Nat 20 though). After that, it was “okay, you’re taking three saps to the head for sneak attack damage, and then we roll initiative to see if you beat them in initiative before you take three more sneak attack saps to the head, plus whatever Cinnabar wants to do to you”. So mathematically he was also screwed, and I may have rolled behind the scenes to see if that did enough to knock him out or not, I can’t quite remember).
So we start the session with our captured team of heroes, which at this point is basically everybody but Rholand (and Sial, but nobody gives a rat’s ass about him, and he doesn’t give a rat’s ass back). Cid, Vaz’em, and Oliver each wake up in different rooms within a warehouse somewhere in Kaer Maga, heavily chained to the floor. I believe we had a short scene with each of them to set up the situation, although I can’t remember if Oliver’s scene was anything more than waking up to be taunted by everyone’s favorite nuisance enemy, Adonis Kreed, here in Kaer Maga despite Cinnabar’s objections to her mother as Adonis Kreed has been a bit of a deal maker for the Red Mantis lately.
The nature of the deals Adonis Kreed become a bit clearer with Cid’s short scene, as he wakes up to find that same damn Salikotal devil that killed Vox and nearly killed him at the end of Book Three leering at him. Apparently, the Red Mantis and devils were now united in their efforts to slaughter the party, as the devils could track Cid wherever he went (thanks to their pet Retriever), and the Red Mantis had the subtlety required to get them out of Kaer Maga without causing a major incident. The Salikotal celebrated this moment of victory by having Cyrus (also captured by the Red Mantis, off-camera) dragged into the room and slit his throat in front of Cid, while taunting him that he was the last Order of the Nail Hellknight left.
We then cut to Vaz’em, who awoke to find himself chained down and under actual watched guard by a Red Mantis. He is not alone with the silent guard for very long, however, as Cinnabar and Adonis Kreed both come to visit him. It quickly becomes clear that Cinnabar no longer remembers Vaz’em, although she is quite confused as to why this random enemy of the Red Mantis is so important and has been so difficult to catch. Noticing her hesitation, Adonis suggests that perhaps Cinnabar should meditate, and grins expectantly at Vaz’em as the Red Mantis leader kneels and produces a small wooden coffer from her satchel. Upon opening it, a swarm of purple-black spiders swarm out of the coffer and scurry up Cinnabar’s arms, crawling all over her and biting. As Cinnabar collapses convulsing and moaning in pain, Adonis Kreed gleefully explains these were a gift from another ally he’s made for the Red Mantis, and that the spiders’ venom takes away memories. Vaz’em actually heard something about these little monsters, from Glorio Arkona, as they were one of the experimental creatures Hazmarduk had created and were now in the possession of Auntie Vimanda. Thus making it a three-way alliance against the party of the Red Mantis, Devils, and Vimanda (four if you count Adonis Kreed’s own secret boss of ex-Queen Domina, as revealed to Oliver at the end of Book Three).
Once Cinnabar had recovered (and reset to factory Winter Soldier standards), she shuts the coffer the spiders had retreated back into, puts it in her bag again, and leaves with a final order to Adonis not to permanently damage Vaz’em as her mother wanted him alive when he got back to Korvosa – for a extremely drawn out torturous death there, of course. Adonis merely scoffs, and then once Cinnabar is gone taunts Vaz’em some more over Cinnabar’s grim fate and openly boasts he’ll do that and worse to Vaz’em’s new girlfriend Trinia. In fact, it seemed like now was as good an opportunity as any for him to have a little “fun” with her in front of Vaz’em, and he ordered another Red Mantis to go fetch the girl and a barrel to bend her over while Vaz’em could only watch it happen.
Well, Adonis’s plans are crushed when the Red Mantis comes running back a moment later to report that “the girl” was gone, and the floor boards in her room had been pried up – Trinia had slipped loose of her bonds (finally some pay off for all of her ninja training with Vaz’em that she had done recently) and was gone.
We then cut to Rholand who had escaped from the Red Mantis but was uncertain of where to go. He had met up with the Star Weavers and Sial (as well as Oliver’s new strange gnome sorcerer cohort) off-camera and recruited them to help save the rest of the party from the Red Mantis but had no idea of where they were. So he was hopelessly out with Bruno scouring the city streets for any sign of the Red Mantis when a bruised Trinia comes running up to him. She had just escaped from the warehouse, and conveniently knew exactly where it was so could guide Rholand and the others right back to where they needed to go to mount a rescue attempt.
Rholand’s plan for tackling the problem of a warehouse full of assassins with hostages was surprisingly direct and aggressive – he summoned a pair of earth elementals and sent them smashing into the building. Meanwhile, Trinia (and I think Rholand as well) would infiltrate back into the warehouse under the floorboards using the crawlspace she had used before, and Edwin would teleport using Dimension Door along with Granthor (the only two Star Weavers left now given Sergio’s crushing grief and Abigail being vampired’ and then mercy killed) into the warehouse and similarly wreck havoc alongside the earth elementals.
Cinnabar’s plan for dealing with this surprise attack was surprisingly non-confrontational – rather than risk her forces in an open confrontation with a party of adventurers and whatever other forces the city of Kaer Maga could bring to bear at Rholand’s insistence, the Red Mantis would simply evacuate the warehouse, leaving the captured PCs behind, and activate their contingency plan in case of discovery. To wit, they lit a trail of gunpowder on the warehouse floor that led to several sets of barrels of the stuff spread throughout the warehouse, which would blow the entire structure and everyone in it sky-high, leaving summoned giant Mantis and other disposable fodder (like the Salikotal devil) behind to occupy everyone while the Red Mantis themselves escaped through a hole leading down into the dungeon-like vaults beneath the city streets.
This put the party on a bit of a clock to escape (or snuff out the burning trails of gunpowder), and also let me avoid having to run a drawn-out fight with a full team of Red Mantis + Cinnabar while 3/4s of the party were helplessly shackled to the floor. Which didn’t mean that there was no fighting at all, as Rholand and Trinia started their rescue operation. Rholand went to rescue Oliver, dissolving his chains so he could pick up a weapon and help Rholand deal with the lone Red Mantis assassin guarding him, while Trinia went to save Vaz’em. She moved in invisibly to pick Vaz’em’s locks, although that didn’t work as well as she planned given there was also a Red Mantis assassin guarding Vaz’em and he activated the See Invisible portion of his mask the moment the door to the room opened and there was no one actually there. Trinia managed to get enough of the chains unlocked for Vaz’em to slip free, however, and together they managed to dagger and claw sneak attack the Red Mantis assassin to death even if they both took a bit of a beating from the assassin before he went down. Cid managed to free himself I believe, as once he managed to get rid of his gag he could just use Dimension Door to teleport out of his chains. He then proceeded to murder the Salikotal yet again, only much faster this time as he had another level and I think got a crit or two to accelerate the devil’s demise. Laori also showed herself around this time, grinning through a bloodied mouth as she joined the battle from her own room, along with a brief explanation that hiding a razor blade between her cheek and gums finally paid off (that being how she was able to cut herself free – probably should have used chains on her same as the PCs instead of just rope guys, Masterwork Manacles are not that expensive!)
With everyone now free and alive (save poor Cyrus who was quite dead), the rejoined party rushes out into the main body of the warehouse to join Granthor, Edwin, and the two earth elementals in crushing the remaining summoned giant mantis and extinguish the gunpowder trails before they could reach the barrels and blow the entire warehouse up with them still inside. Good attempt Cinnabar, but not quite good enough as the party is an old hand at putting out fires by now with Create Water and the like from previous attempts at blowing them up/burning the building down around them. Still, Cinnabar’s near success at eliminating the party is enough to convince them that it was time to move on from Kaer Maga before she could try to kill them all again.
Before they leave, in the new tradition that Cid was starting for his eventual own unit of Hellknights, he has Cyrus reincarnated, who comes back as a half-elf. While Edwin and Granthor remain behind to watch over Kaer Maga and their still-grieving friend Sergio, the party meets up with Vox and Gwen, who is hiding from the people of Kaer Maga given she is still seen as the orchestrater of the city’s near-downfall from the Freeman Revolt. Somewhere in here they also have a brief final meeting with the Kaer Maga City Council, who extend to them a job offer. In retaliation for Korvosa’s attempt at a coup, the City Council would like to hire the party to go into the Bloodsworn Vale and stop the Korvosan attempt at settling/building a road through the vale to establish an independent trade route through the Mindspin Mountains. A trade route that could also allow an army to ascend onto the Storval Plateau and invade Kaer Maga, hence the city council’s keen interest in stopping Korvosan expansion there. The party, tired of having already done so much for this group of ingrates, says that they’ll consider it but for now they have bigger problems to deal with – namely at this point, finding the mysterious Eurydice the Leper, the angel who had appeared in Cid’s death experiences and promised that she could help him find salvation. Given the non-stop harassment he had been getting from the devils, getting rid of their abilty (along with the Red Mantis hangers-on) to keep finding the party seemed like a priority now.
However, they do also get additional reason to go to the Bloodsworn Vale eventually, as now freed of Togomor’s control, Gwen is able to tell the party all of his secrets, including the fact that he like Queen Ileosa is also a relic of Kazavon bearer, the Staff of the Slain, which he found in a Thassilon tomb. Togomor has since been searching for additional relics of Kazavon to increase his power further, and after researching in Korvosa (including that temple under the Jeggare River that the party saw him and Gwen entering during the whole Lighthouse scenario near the end of Book Three), he believes there is another relic of Kazavon hidden in the Bloodsworn Vale. That definitely gets the party’s attention, and they resolve to go to the Vale to stop him next after getting Cid freed of these devils literally haunting his every footstep outside of civilization. Sorry Oliver, but your own personal “I’m special!” quest is going all the way to the back of the line!
Speaking of Cid’s personal quest, at this point the only lead the party had to go on was that the Shaonti may know where the Valley of the Ascended Spire was, based on the research that the party had done while in Kaer Maga, and so they set out to find some Shaonti. Fortunately, with Gwen’s permission, the entire party was able to mount onto her back and ride her through the sky, which made traversing the dangerous Cinderlands quite easy (many of the suggested Cinderlands encounters were pathetically weak at this point, and I deemed them not worth the time to deal with, so travel via dragon flight we go!) Besides, it’s a common (J)RPG trope that the last half of the game’s overland travel is rendered meaningless by a cool flying mount/airship/spaceship, so I thought I would just keep up the tradition here. :D
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The party was now finally out of Kaer Maga, with only the admittedly vague lead from their research that the Shaonti were aware of where the Valley of the Ascendant Spire was located. They also knew that of the Shaonti, only the Skull Tribe of Skoan-Quah were actually approachable by outsiders . . . and technically they already had an in there in the form of Thousand Bones. While traversing the dangerous Cinderlands in search of the nomadic Skoan-Quah’s camp would be a difficult journey on foot, from the air on the back of a Huge green dragon it was no real trouble at all. The party was not quite so foolish as to just direct Gwen to land in the middle of the Shaonti camp once they found it from the air, but even so the Shaonti were wary of the party but respectful given how large of an adventuring party this was given we had the four PCs, Gwen in human form, Cyrus the Half-Elf & Vox the Centaur, Trinia, Laori, and finally Sial with Asyra. Thousand Bones quickly made himself known once the party arrived as well, and so the various grim-faced Shaonti warriors, their faces painted white to resemble skulls, maintained a healthy distance as the old Shoanti welcomed his guests and showed them around the bone and skull decorated camp.
The only not-very-respectful Shaonti in attendance where the visiting group of Sun-Quah burn riders, led by Krojan-Eats-What-He-Kills, who taunted the party, calling them tashmeks (Shoanti for “s~+% talkers”, which given the PC’s reputation may be more apropos than usual!), and openly wandering if they really deserved their reputations. The party mostly just rolled their eyes and told him to go piss off, dismissing him without really rising to the bait of proving themselves to Krojan. As usual, the party showed really less than zero interest in Golarian’s Native American expys, even with the dropped rumors that the Sun-Quah were pushing for another war against Korvosa for some reason (likely because they knew about Kazavon, as Thousand Bones speculated way back in the council of war held in Kaer Maga where Parashial and Sial largely spilled the beans about the ancient abomination). Thousand Bones admitted that he didn’t know much about this Valley of the Ascended Spire, but thought that the Moon Tribe would, as they were perhaps the most religious of the clans, and worshipped Desna, a close ally of Sarenrae from time to time.
Arguably the Sun Clan may have been the most likely to know Sarenrite secrets, but given the party’s disinterest in the Shaonti I decided to cut their plot chain of fetch quests short with getting in good with the Moon Clan to find the answers Cid needed, rather than go all the way to the end with the Sun Clan. However, they did still need to jump through the hoops of convincing the Moon Clan not to slaughter them all on sight, prompting Thousand Bones to discuss the matter with the Skoah-Quah’s actual chieftain, One-Life (an original Shoanti character I created since Thousand Bones was apparently not the chieftain of the Skoan-Quah), and after a brief conversation One-Life agreed to help by revealing a way the party could prove themselves to the Moon Clan ahead of time.
There was an ancient temple associated with Desna that the Moon Clan used as a way for new warriors to prove themselves, by going inside, facing the horrors within, and emerging with a mark of Desna on their bodies. If the party were to do the same before approaching the Moon Clan, the heavily-religious Shaonti would see it as a sign from Desna to help them instead of killing them out of hand. And of course, One-life was aware of where this temple was, although he could say nothing of what was within the temple itself outside of something that granted this mark of Desna.
And so it was that the party flew out of there on Gwen, and I got to use at least SOME of Book Four’s actual pre-written material as they traveled to the Acropolis of the Thrallkeepers. To keep the NPCs down to a somewhat sane level I had Gwen, Vox, Cyrus, and Trinia wait outside while the party ventured in with Laori, Sial, and Asyra. I kept the location almost exactly as written, with the typical Paizo-style tight corridors and tiny rooms, the Havero slumbering in the central chamber, and the vault downstairs containing the magical globe that the Moon Clan had been using to receive Desna’s mark. In an uncanny series of lucky guesses, the party followed the EXACT path needed through the Acropolis’s various chambers to arrive at the magical elevator shaft leading down into the globe’s vault without needing to check any of the other upstairs rooms.
So throwing the rest of that section of Book Four over my shoulder with a confounded sigh, I had the party go down into the Vault without incident. The party found the strange magical globe and believing this to be what they were looking for and with this being his “I’m special” quest, Cid went and laid his hand on the globe. Immediately he found himself floating in the star-lit void of space, with a quiet female voice addressing him. The voice knew, of course, why he had come here but wasn’t sure yet if Cid was worthy of her aid. Cid was is usual dismissive to NPCs self at first . . . until he put two and two together and realized that he was speaking to Desna Herself (the off-hand comment that it was Her mark he was seeking probably helped with that realization), after which he wisely got much more respectful, heheheheh. Fortunately for Cid, his stated desire to find redemption for his mistakes in joining the Hellknights and inadvertently damning himself seemed to satisfy the Goddess, who gave Cid Her blessing as well as Her mark upon the back of his hand. A moment later Cid found himself back in the room with everyone else, and it seemed like they were good to go!
Good to go, at least, until the party was back upstairs and crossing the central chamber again, only to hear that by-now most frightening of sounds – someone biting into a crisp apple. A moment later and the party was under assault by a group of Red Mantis and Cinnabar, as well as a Bone Devil and Cid’s old friend the Salikotal, on yet another borrowed life thanks to his summoner (Cid finally needed to find that guy and take him out, but given it was some Acadamae wizard or Asmodean cleric back in Korvosa, fat chance of that happening any time soon). And of course it didn’t take very long for the sounds of the fighting in the central chamber to wake up and piss off the Havero which was enjoying its 10,000 year old slumber beneath the dark waters of the central chamber, and so it was quickly a three-way fight between the Red Mantis/Devils, the PCs and their allies, and the giant tentacles rising out of the water to slap the s@&* out of anyone and everyone who got a little too close.
The resolution to this fight and the party’s escape from the Acropolis stretched into the next session, so I will move the description of the fight to next session to pad that write-up a bit as after their escape the party pretty much reached the Moon Clan’s camp and that was it.
The devils showing up here at the Acropolis was easily enough explained by this being an advance force teleporting ahead where the Retriever (which does not have Teleport At-Will) told them where to go as it has been all along Cid’s harassed journey out of Korvosa. How the Red Mantis got here so quickly despite Gwen allowing them to move at a ridiculous speed (dragons flight speeds are absurd, 200 feet a move versus a horse’s 40!?) is not so easily explained, especially since all devils tend to have a “self only” attached to that Greater Teleport at-will spell-like ability. Assume Cinnabar used a scroll of Teleport via UMD or something to catch up with the devils once they knew where to teleport. :p
All right, you're back! By a remarkable coincidence, I just happened to check a short time later!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
UnArcaneElection – Not that I can recall, no (maybe some butterflies as well, as an additional hint as to who Cid was speaking to?) I could have included a brief revelatory scene regarding the ultimate fate of Abigail’s soul – i.e. whether Victae had been lying through his fangs or not – but Cid didn’t ask and I chose to keep that information for later.
Ambushed by the Red Mantis yet again, this time the party was determined to show Cinnabar and friends that it would not be nearly so easy to take them all together as it had been to take them one-by-one. The central pool room was arranged with a 5’ wide walkway around the edge of the pool, and then a 10’ wide bridge across the middle of it to cut to basically the pool in half. The Red Mantis had oriented themselves with one Red Mantis off to each side of the doorway, and then Cinnabar and the last two Red Mantis with her on the bridge, providing a three-pronged front for the party to defend against. Theoretically the party could have retreated and crammed themselves back into the small elevator room to force the Red Mantis to come to them, but that wouldn’t have let the party escape from the tomb and left them dangerously vulnerable to AoE. So as usual they went on the offensive, with Oliver, Vaz’em, and Laori going out on the bridge to fight Cinnabar, while Cid engaged the Red Mantis on the left walkway and Asyra/Bruno blocked the right walkway assassin from closing in on Rholand & Sial.
Things started out decently well for the party, with Oliver managing to get in a nasty cut on Cinnabar and Vaz’em doing his usual routine of making anything in melee with him die on one of the Red Mantis. Cid was also having the better end of the fight on the western walkway, although the Red Mantis he was fighting managed to dispel a couple of his Mirror Images.
Unfortunately for poor Cid, things were about to get ugly for him, as at the end of the round a puff of displaced air behind him informed him that something invisible had just teleported into position, trapping him between it and the Red Mantis. The Solikatal had returned yet again, and a Bone Devil came running down the stone steps into the entryway to start summoning some bearded devils to pop up in the middle of the party’s formation and harass Sial/Rholand. Worst of all, the Havero finally decided it’d had enough of the noise above its pool and raised a pair of tentacles up to beat everything back into silence.
Caught between two sneak-attacking foes, Cid abruptly went from “just fine” to “outright dead” after both the Solikotal and the Red Mantis assassin he was fighting got their turns – particularly bad luck too as a few of their attacks hit Cid directly instead of his last mirror images, which may have been enough to save him. Of course, it was starting to get a little silly with how many times Cid had died in this campaign, and kinda lame for him to just get snuffed out during his own “I’m special” quest so I decided it was time for a little divine intervention. With a parting whisper from Desna that it wasn’t his time yet, a Breath of Life spell brought him back from dead in the negatives to singular digit hit points, and Cid wisely played dead while he worked on figuring a way out of this situation. Faced with Cid’s “dead” body, on its next turn the Solikotal snorted and attempted to kick him into the murky dark waters of the pool, but since Cid was now alive and not a lifeless object, the devil had to make a Grapple check to push him in which it failed as Cid stirred and grabbed hold of the devil’s hoofed foot. Before it could recover or the Red Mantis could start stabbing, Cid uttered a Dimension Door spell and blinked out of there, reappearing next to Rholand.
Laori had a similar brief moment of escaping certain death as one of the flailing tentacles found her and grabbed hold. In another world the priestess of Zon-Kuthon was undoubtedly crushed and pulled apart by the other flailing tentacles now emerging from the pool as the Havero continued to be annoyed by all the noise. Fortunately in this world, she managed an impressively high roll on her grapple to break free of the tentacles grasp before it could lift her off the bridge entirely, and she wisely decided to beat a hasty retreat back towards the party’s center.
At this point with the Havero raging and her assassins lightly to badly wounded (Cid had put a whooping on the assassin he was fighting before he went down, and the other assassin on the bridge with Cinnabar was only 1-2 rounds away from death if Oliver & Vaz’em decided to make it so), the Red Mantis commander decided to declare a hasty retreat. The devils were less enthusiastic about this abrupt withdrawal, but with the party trapped down in the tomb with the Havero time was on their side (or so they thought). The Solikotal and the Bone devil beat a hasty retreat, with the Bone Devil throwing down a wall of ice across the stairway leading outside, trapping the party and inadvertently the two slowest Red Mantis down in the pool room. Seeing no purpose in provoking the Havero further, the party wisely simply withdrew back into elevator room while the two Red Mantis assassins likewise made themselves scarce by fleeing into the unexplored rooms on the far side of the pool room.
Theoretically this could have turned into a siege situation after the Red Mantis healed back up and the devils brought in more reinforcements from their main body somewhere back with the Retriever. What the Red Mantis and devils didn’t realize, however, was that the party actually had another way out of the Tomb thanks to one final addition that the DM *had* made to this map. Namely, that he had added a room down into the “basement” level of the complex where an old Thassilon portal to Yzahnum’s the Efreet’s palace on the Plane of Fire once stood. The portal was no longer present, of course, as long ago a certain legendary purple worm had burrowed through the room and inadvertently swallowed the portal, becoming fire-enchanted in the process. The tunnel that Cindermaw had left through the walls and into the rocky loam of the Cinderlands was still mostly intact, however, and while the party wasn’t sure they wanted to go wandering down a big purple worm tunnel they figured it was better than fighting their way out past the Havero and whatever army of devils and Red Mantis were waiting for them up top.
So they followed the tunnel for a good ways, until they found a spot where the tunnel had strayed close to the surface and the roof of the tunnel had collapsed, leaving a hole leading up to the surface. Cautiously, Vaz’em climbed up while invisible, and discovered the singular Bearded Devil that was guarding the hole, left there just in case this was in fact some way connected to the Tomb of the Acropolis (similar devils were spread out all around the Tomb in an attempt to catch any escape attempts involving teleport/dimension door). Well, CR 5 devil against a 12th level ninja armed with a lawful outsider bane sword is not much of a fair fight for the devil, and Vaz’em pretty much ripped the poor damned bastard in half. Then he waved for the rest of the party to come climb out, everyone got out of the tunnel, contacted Gwen via Message spell, and got the dragon who had been circling the area after the devils showed up to come pick them up. Then they got out of there as fast as they could (which was *quite* fast on dragon back) and headed towards the Clan of the Moon’s temple where they maintained a somewhat permanent camp.
The Moon Clan Shaonti were somewhat suspicious of the outsiders when they arrived, but much like the Skull Clan nobody wanted to immediately attack outsiders coming in on the back of a dragon. And once Cid revealed the mark of Desna still on the back of his hand, they all became much more friendly. Once Cid explained why he had come here they agreed to tell him where the Valley of the Ascendant Spire was, and revealed that the entrance to the valley was “conveniently” close by, less than a day away in fact in the nearby range of mountains! While it was only a short distance away, night was starting to fall and the Lyrune-Quah convinced the party to spend the night and enjoy Lyrune-Quah hospitality. Which admittedly wasn’t much, but at least the party had the advantage of camping within the Shoanti tent city which surrounded the stone tower of the Temple of the Moon, giving them protection (not a bad thing when you have an army of devils chasing after you).
Of course, staying with the Lyrune-Quah also meant being dragged into any conflict if someone attacked the camp that night, and sure enough the party was awoken in the middle of the night to shouts and battle cries. The Temple of the Moon was under attack! Only it wasn’t the devils this time, but a war band of those mutant orcs that served Zarmangorf (which had attacked the party once before on the way to Kaer Maga)!
I made a few modifications to the Temple as-written here, removing the Red Reaver within the Temple in favor of getting the party entangled in the mutant orc attack on the Lyrune-Quah. Theoretically of course the party could have just fought their way free of the orc’s encirclement of the camp and left the Shaonti to deal with it themselves, but this party rarely turned down a fight. I also made a few modifications to the Temple itself, turning it from a two-story building into more of a tower with an extra third floor and a small fourth-floor lookout tower. The original plan was for the Shaonti and the party to retreat into the Temple and from there defend it against multiple waves of orcs invading from multiple levels as the orcs’ pet wyverns ferried orcs up to the open top floors of the tower while more orcs smashed in through the front door. Unfortunately, that plan got a little scrapped as the logistics of such a battle became too unwieldy, and so the orc invasion got compressed down into just two fights, which still took the next two sessions to resolve anyway.
So, unfortunately this idea never got used because I decided to cut the Shaonti plot-line short right here at the Temple of the Moon instead of including all of the Sun-Clan hoops that the AP expects the party to jump through, which is where I felt things just got ridiculous. That did mean unfortunately that Cindermaw and the whole having to get eaten by the fiery purple worm got cut. Which is doubly unfortunate as I had always planned on having an entire subquest involving the portal to the elemental plane of fire still being active within Cindermaw’s gullet. The party would either find themselves down in Cindermaw’s gullet getting punched by fire elementals from the portal or something as an added danger, and then exploring the portal would be an optional curiosity-driven side quest, or more likely I’d have had them get swallowed by Cindermaw, automatically get thrown through the portal into the plane of fire, and then find themselves in the middle of Yzahnum’s palace and have to escape.
Being it’s own little sealed off portion of the Plane of Fire, the party could have learned some interesting things about the efreeti lord by navigating the complex politics of his palace (or more likely just killing everyone they met that tried to kill them and looting the place down to its floorboards). I didn’t have a lot of concrete plans on the palace here, so it’s just as well as it got scraped, although I had planned on the major antagonists being Yzahnum’s harem, who had taken over command of the palace in his absence. They would have been a motley lot, with the requisite succubus, maybe some other elemental creature like a Shaitan, a good-aligned creature like a nymph or sylph or assimar/angel that the other wives bullied and would happily aid the party, maybe a few others, and then the chief antagonist for this section – a white dragon who hated the whole place but loved power (and all the palace’s gold) too much to ever leave. That would make for the white dragon member of the full chromatic spectrum of dragons I intended for the party to fight over the course of the AP, so it made me a bit sad that this whole thing got cut. Fortunately, I came up with a plan for a White Dragon to show up in Book Five later on, and so the full chromatic suite of dragons was preserved at least!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
UnArcaneElection – Suppose I could have that happen, although I suspect Book Six is going to be packed enough already that having the party raid Yzahnum’s home palace seems like an unneeded distraction/padding. On the other hand, if he ends up retreating back there at some point or the party goes looking for some sort of leverage over him, I suppose the idea could be revisited, at least.
We opened the session with the party waking up in the middle of the night to screams and sounds of battle. Emerging from the magical pavilion that Rholand picked up at some point (Expedition Pavilion), the party stepped out into a scene of chaos. A group of orc raiders mounted on dire cinderwolves were dashing among the Shaonti tents, cutting down anyone they saw, which in rather short order included the party. At least, a pair of outriders tried to do that, only to get cut down in fairly short order themselves instead (such is the fate of all CR 3 & 4 monsters challenging a level 12 party).
But the orc raiders hadn’t come alone, as the party occasionally would catch sight of armored wyverns diving down out of the dark sky to pick off lone Shaonti, snatching them up Nazgul-style to drag up into the air and fling their screaming prey halfway across the valley to their deaths. And on the horizon, the party could see a sizable number of torches and dark figures slowly marching closer to the Temple from all sides – a small army of these mutant orc/minotaur/trolls (basically uruk-hai with the serial numbers filed off). Deciding that the Temple of the Moon was the best bet for having a defensible position from which to fight this army off from, the party started making their way there, helping to escort the Shaonti already retreating back there by picking off several more outriders along the way.
Sial was off by himself in his little magic bone tower with Asyra, and Vox had elected to sleep under the stars as well, so they would have to fend for themselves at the moment, although Trinia and Laori followed closely behind the party. Gwen also helped provide “covering fire” with a few choice acid breaths, although I seem to recall her also electing to retreat inside the Temple with the party rather than ascend into the skies after a wyvern’s critical hit fly-back attack managed to land and give her a nasty dose of wyvern poison (which she pretty quickly threw off because dragon saves). But it was enough to suggest that going up into the air alone against an unknown number of enemy wyverns was a bad idea.
Once most or all of the surrounding Shaonti were inside the Temple, the party slammed the doors and locked them, expecting to have to endure some sort of siege. As mentioned in the last session write-up, I had also expected a running battle with these orcs from the front doors as well as the roof of the Temple as the wyverns ferried orcs up, but I hadn’t managed to come up with anything more interesting than that and hadn’t done enough prep-work to make It more interesting than “50 orcs slowly feed themselves into the unstoppable melee blender of Cid+Oli+Vaz”.
So the DM changed tracks, as the army of orcs lined up in a shoulder-to-shoulder semi-circle in front of the Temple gates, banging weapons on their shields and roaring and being typical alpha orcs, until their leader emerged from behind their line. It was the party’s old “friend” Dolor, who had been present at Trinia’s auction back in Kaer Maga. The orcs had come here expecting to just slaughter some Shaonti on behalf of their glorious master/god (Zarmangorf), but Dolor was pleasantly surprised to see the party was here instead. He had greatly enjoyed observing their fight to rescue Trinia back in Kaer Maga, and so was interested in seeing if he could get a repeat of that same carnage against his own warriors. And so he proposed a duel – the party against a band of the orcs’ mightiest warriors. If the party won, the orcs would leave and allow the rest of the Lyrune-Quah to live. And if the party lost, well then they’d be dead and the orcs would proceed to raze the Temple to the ground along with everyone in it.
Confident as always, the party agreed to these terms and started throwing on every buff spell they had available to them, with Trinia and Laori also supplying what aid they could (although the actual fight would be just the PCs vs. the orc team). Meanwhile, the ranks of orcs parted again to allow a massive red-tinted Grey Render (a Red Reaver, basically a replacement for the one that was supposed to be squatting in the Temple by-the-book) into the semi-circle, along with its orc beastmaster. While I had initially planned on Dolor to be one of the members of the orc team, I ran out of time in-between this session and the next, resulting in him just watching while the party was up against this orc beastmaster, a wyvern rider (without his wyvern), and the Red Reaver. Which I surely thought would be enough to give the party a reasonable challenge, given the Red Reaver was a CR 13 beast by itself. Well, as was often the case during Book Four, I critically underestimated just how fast that melee blender the party had could spin these days. Which you will get an accounting of in the next session’s write-up, which covered the actual duel and its aftermath!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So, despite the build-up of this supposed heavyweight bout between the “champions of the Shaonti” and the champions of The Bleeding Eye/Zarmangorf, the ensuing battle was more of a one-sided slaughter than a duel.
The party went in more fully buffed than they had been doing lately, with Vaz’em getting a Protection from Evil, Remove Fear, and Barkskin all courtesy of Rholand, along with a Good Hope from Trinia. Oliver got Magic Circle against Evil, Rholand buffed with Divine Favor, and Cid got a Shield of Faith +3 from Laori. They also of course had Rholand cast his customary Blessing of Fervor just before the duel actually started.
Dolor likewise applied several buffs to his champions, getting a bull’s STR, Shield of Faith onto Beastmaster Lurn, as well as enchanting his weapons with an unholy blessing (basically a half-strength Unholy, inflicting an extra 1d6 to Good creatures). He also placed a blessing of Darkness upon the wyvern rider (20% concealment) and a Shield Other, linking it I believe to the Red Reaver. Dolor finished his own team’s set-up of buffs by summoning a Chain Devil/Kyton and buffing his team with his own Blessing of Fervor.
And then the two sides went at it, with Oliver winning intiative and pretty much immediately charging forward to engage the Red Reaver back by the enemy’s party lines before the beast could move up to endanger the rest of the party. The two had pretty much a completely one-sided duel as Oliver basically soloed the Red Reaver over the next several rounds. Despite getting an AoO on the charging Oliver and being a very dangerous melee beater in its own right, the Red Reaver landed one, maybe two hits on Oliver throughout the entire fight while he scored several critical hits. It’s last-ditch attempt at saving itself with a Terrifying Roar to frighten the comparatively tiny terror that was mauling it to death also failed as Oliver handily made his Will Save against the Fear effect, and then he finished cutting off the massive beast’s head on his next round. Thus killing the CR 13 monster and main threat on Dolor’s side basically entirely by himself.
Meanwhile, Rholand spent his first round dropping a Dispel Magic on the kyton, disrupting the Summon and sending it back home before it even got to do anything, and leaving Dolor’s team down to three even before Oliver started his solo slaughter of the Red Reaver.
That left Cid and Vaz’em who went to work double-teaming the wyvern rider, and while a single one of these guys (with his pet wyvern as back-up) had been a decent challenge on the party’s way to Kaer Maga, that was two levels ago. And what a difference those two levels and a bit of pre-buffing made as the pair tore the wyvern rider apart even with his Shield Other spell (although that extra damage done to the Red Reaver probably hadn’t helped its own fight against Oliver).
The one “bright” point for Dolor’s side in this fight, however, was the last member of their team, Beastmaster Lurn, a ranger with a focus on killing humans. And with no one left to engage him that left Lurn free to run down Rholand and proceed to savagely beat him to within an inch or three of his life with whip, kukri, and teeth (Lurn having cast an Aspect of the Bear as his own personal buff prior to the fight, giving him a bite attack). Ranger bonus damage to humans and lesser unholy added up across all of those attacks to be a world of hurt to the holy healer, and Rholand quickly found himself on the ropes after losing half of his HP or so after a particularly brutal round of full-attacks. Before Lurn could manage to actually score a win for his team, though, the wyvern rider collapsed and Cid and Vaz’em were left free to ride to the rescue, quickly returning the favor as they gave the Beastmaster a taste of his own melee blender medicine.
And so the fight ended with three deaths and one “Ring out” for Dolor’s team, and only Rholand getting seriously injured for the PCs. The orcs were understandably dismayed at the incredibly one-sided slaughter of their greatest champions, and wisely decided that now would be a good time to flee with their tails between their legs. The Shaonti were understandably grateful for the party’s aid, although they unfortunately had virtually nothing to offer to the party as a reward. Given they had shared the location of the Valley of the Ascendant Spire to the party with a relative minimum of stubbornness, our heroes accepted that as reward enough and rode off into the sunrise atop Gwen (before the army of devils could show up for Round Two).
Vox turned back up as the party packed up to leave, perfectly healthy having fought her way out of the orc encirclement of the camp and then simply kept her distance while she waited to see if she needed to come running back in to help the party. Sial, however, had had enough of these “cat in tree” distractions that the party so loved following – or perhaps he had some other reason NOT to accompany them into the Valley, I can’t quite remember – but either way, he would not be joining them the rest of the way. Instead, he would await their return from the Valley in his bone tower.
And so with everyone but Sial and Asyra on-board Gwen, the party flew the rest of the way to the Valley’s entrance, which turned out to be a small cave deep within a ravine cutting part-way through the Valley. The party also got a nasty surprise in the form of a small army of devils, including the massive black scuttling shape of a giant stone spider (the Retriever Zarix) moving to set up defensive positions at the mouth of the Valley. It wasn’t entirely clear how the devils knew where they were going, either because they knew where the Valley was themselves, or more likely, being able to track the party’s course through Cid and guessed from their path where they would be, and oh hey look, a ravine with high cliff walls that would force the party to go straight through them!
Regardless of *how* they managed it, the devils were going to need to be dealt with or circumvented somehow if Cid was going to get entrance into the Valley of the Ascendant Spire. Given they would have had to fight their way past a Retriever, a barbed devil, a couple bone devils, a trio of Erinyes, and probably about a score of Bearded Devils, Hound Devils, and Cerberi, and who knows what else waiting in the wings out of sight, the party wisely decided to avoid a fight for once.
Unfortunately for the devils and their blockade, while they could teleport at-will they were considerably less able to block teleportation themselves. Which meant that circumventing their little blockade was simply a matter of Gwen flying to a reasonable distance away from their formation at the mouth of this ravine, and then Cid and Vox would use Dimension Door to teleport themselves and the vast majority of the party past the entire army of devils to the mouth of the cave, which they could then duck into and hopefully block off before the devils could react and follow them (and apparently the devils didn’t like the idea of lurking inside that cave for some reason, as they were all giving the entrance a wide berth. That might have changed once their quarry was inside said cave, but that was a risk the party decided to take.)
Meanwhile, Rholand would stay with Gwen, Trinia, and Oliver’s gaggle of followers (his two halfling hirelings as well as Ronda’s apparently replacement, the weird gnome “Emissary of the Hammer” cohort guy) and attempt to have Gwen enter the Valley by flying over the mountains and down into it. There could be some sort of magic at work preventing that, of course, but hopefully without Cid present on Gwen’s back the devils would largely ignore the dragon flying rapidly away from them and up into the high mountain peaks.
While the DM had planned on some sort of running battle on Gwen’s back as the party sought to breach the devil battle lines, the teleport plan seemed like a pretty good one and so allowed it to go off basically without a hitch (for once). Cid and Vox together managed to teleport everyone but Trinia, Rholand, Bruno, Gwen, and Oliver’s minions to the mouth of the cave and escape inside it before the stunned devils could react, and then Gwen flew off and up into the mountains without pursuit. Of course, there was a reason that the devils didn’t try to pursue the party into the Valley of the Ascendant Spire, and it was here that the party actually encountered a little hitch to their otherwise clever plan. But that is a story for another session.
Hmmm . . . never split the party . . . .
Just checking in to see if anybody's still home . . . .
Anybody still on the air?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Wow, so it's been over a year since I've last posted in here, huh?
Time certainly flies when the world is falling apart.
On the bright side, we're still trucking along in the actual game, now finally approaching the party returning to Korvosa to kick some ass.
Doing the prep work for all of my evil plans for Korvosa in Book Six, however, is taking up a lot of my mental time and energy at the moment.
*BUT*, I do intend to try and catch up once I'm not so desperately trying to make more bad guys to throw down in our heroes' way on their path to Ileosa and the "final" confrontation with Kazavon. (which is in quotes because I've promised my players a homebrewed Book Seven to wrap everything up and take the PCs up to 20th level).
Apologies for the lack of replies in here for so long, and the very spotty posting before that! I hope to be able to get back to posting recaps at some point in 2022.
^If it helps, maybe you could save a bit of time and effort in makes BBEGs -- just watch/listen to the news.
Just checking in here to see if anyone's still on the air.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Still here, and still going - party is now back in Korvosa getting ready to topple Ileosa/Kazavon's evil rule. After Scarwall though, I decided that I didn't want Castle Korvosa to be another centerpiece megadungeon and so have taken to rewritten pretty much all of Book Six to spread events out across the city, and well . . . it's a LOT of work.
But I've been slowly getting back into my various online hang-outs as the annual winter funk slowly burns away with the (eventual!) approach of Spring, so my I can get back to working on that next update sooner rather than later.
(Wondering if you could apply to do a years-after sequel to Curse of the Crimson Throne . . . .)
^ . . . That would be to Curse of the Crimson Throne as Return of the Runelords is to Rise of the Runelords.
Shattered Star is sorta the fallout of both Rise and Curse. Could probably pivot a bit after book 3 when you've visited Magnimar, the former Grey Maidens, and Kaer Maga so that the remaining swords more closely follow other groups from Korvosa or where ever.
Any headway on the Book Six rework?
Wow, it’s been a year and a half since I posted anything here. Sorry folks! Been some real-life shakeups over here, with getting laid off, having to job hunt, and then settling into a new job over the past couple years. We’re still trucking along to the grand finale of Book Six, with the party slowly making in-roads into my greatly expanded liberation of Korvosa (It’s been quite the excessive rework). Let’s see if we can get a few updates posted here, at least.
Unfortunately, the next session we held was not the conclusion of the miniature mystery cliff-hanger I left the group on as Cid, Vaz’em, Oliver, along with Laori, Vox, and Cyrus entered the tunnel leading through the mountains ringing the Ascendent Spire while Rholand flew over the mountain ring on Gwen with Trinia, Bruno (Rholand’s animal companion), and Oliver’s various hirelings and new cohort Carpenter. No, instead it was that most special time of the year, the first week of April, during which I indulge myself by unleashing the full weight of my depravity and insanity to pour out upon my poor, poor players in our very special annual April Fools’ episode!
We opened this year’s April Fools session with a Robot Chicken-esque skit changeover of a TV flashing static before moving onto the next channel (essentially leaving our regularly scheduled game behind). On the new channel was a stereotypical dating game show, complete with stereotypical opening jangle. Running out onto the stage first is our host, Glorio Bahor Glenn Bob, who reminds our studio audience that today’s sponsor is Meow Chow brand catfood – “Remember, Meow is Cat for Chow!”TM Tonight’s contestant was Vaz’em, who would be posing questions to three bachelorettes hidden behind curtains, only one of which he would select to go with him on an all-expenses paid vacation, courtesy of Meow Chow – “Remember, Meow is Cat for Chow!”TM The three contestants were Cinnabar, Trinia, and Mittens, who answered Vaz’em’s questions in ways more or less consistent with their personality – Cinnabar being a creepy murderous git who liked “the feel of her victims’ blood running off her hands”, Trinia being a relatively vanilla but sane person who liked “long walks on the beach”, and Mittens who seemed to be just a completely normal kitten given she answered every question with “Mew” (bad boy Vaz’em, robbing the cradle like that).
Before Vaz’em was able to make his final selection, however, he entered the Challenge Round, in which Adonis Kreed burst onto stage and challenged Vaz’em for his right to go on any date at all with anybody. With a cry of “pants off, dance off mother-er!” (a reference to another even more obscure and TERRIBLE dating show) Adonis Kreed began his challenge with an impressive break dance . . . which swiftly left Vaz’em the winner by default after Adonis got his legs caught while trying to remove his pants at the same time as spinning around on his head, resulting in him snapping his own neck and reducing him to a twitching dying mess on the game show floor. Glorio Bahor Glenn Bob quickly called for a commercial break, and as the Meow Chow – “Remember Meow is Cat for Chow!”TM commercial played, he mercy killed Adonis by pulling out a pistol from within his glitzy jacket and put two bullets into the back of Adonis’s gasping for breath head. Grumbling about the price of getting new clones for this guy onto the show, Glorio went back to his spot and resumed the show as the commercial ended and Adonis’s remains were unceremoniously swept off the stage floor.
When asked to make his final selection after having gotten to ask two, maybe three, questions to the ladies, Vaz’em sarcastically grumbled about having learned basically nothing about them, and so he was just going to pick Mittens because why not. At which point the curtain to Mittens’ booth was rolled up, and it was revealed Vaz’em, you fool! The contestant known as Mittens was a complete fabrication, not even a baby kitten at all but instead was just a digital image created and voiced by Baby Groot voiced by Vin Diesel! As the studio audience graced Baby Groot voiced by Vin Diesel’s performance as Mittens with a standing ovation, and Baby Groot gave a final “I am Mew!” before scampering off the stage, Glorio presented Vaz’em with his consolation prize - a trip to the studio’s back lot pool with Cinnabar and Trinia, along with a year’s supply of Meow Chow cat food – “Remember, Meow is Cat for Chow!”TM,
Unfortunately, things didn’t go well back there either, as Cinnabar and Trinia almost immediately got into a drunken cat fight, which spilled over and got Adonis Kreed’s latest clone, coming fresh from the cloning vats out behind the studio, to get caught up in the fight. This led to Adonis Kreed getting his neck broken and thrown into the pool, where he unceremoniously drowned while Glorio Bahor Glenn Bob once again mourned the costs of having to make yet more clones of the poor bastard for next week’s show. And with that he signed off, with a final salutation of “Remember, Meow is Cat for Chow!”TM
The channel then blurred with static like a bad parody of Robot Chicken as we switched to a new “channel”, this one featuring the grimmest dark future of Golarion that ever grimdarked, 40 million, and perhaps just 40 thousand years into the future, who can say? Here we have Cid being woken up from suspended animation to go on a ripping and tearing rampage against the demons who had overrun Golarion, armed with his trusty blunderbuss, gatling crossbow, and the Big Fricking Sword 9000. I seem to recall his crusade getting started immediately after getting equipped with his new weaponry, as a demonic bulldozer (or, “Helldozer”) smashed through the wall and ran over the scientists who woke him up. Cid quickly blasted the demonically-possessed vehicle with a barrage of attacks form his new weapons, and then advanced out into the wasteland.
Following the trail leading to an ominous fortress in the distance, Cid entered to find himself in an ampitheater where Elzeer Ka was waiting for him. The demon general welcomed him, and then announced that a demonstration of his latest horror, just for Cid, was now ready to be unveiled. Calling out to the nearby stage, Elzeer Ka sat back as the curtains rose to reveal . . . Steve Jobs! (Cid’s player had mentioned once that he found the late Apple CEO’s appearance unsettling for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on – so, let a good rat bastard DM, I had him make a cameo appearance here). The CEO went on a brief spiel about how happy he was to be here in the future, and unveiled his latest invention – the iPaladin! Cue the cloning tube on-stage swinging open to reveal Abigail, who mechanically stepped out to join Steve while declaring in a Siri-style voice “Hi! I’m Abby!”
Screaming in horror at the abomination before him, Cid unleashed the BFS 9000, and destroyed the entire amiptheather in a barrage of wild slashes with the massive weapon, obliterating them all as the ceiling collapsed in on their heads. Cue the static as we switched to another channel.
Now we follow Rholand caught in media res as part of some sort of musical theater production. Unfortunately for him, his latest production “Curse of the Crimson Throne” was heavily in the red, his lead actress Ileosa was a spoiled, drunken diva, and his primary source of funding, a fat-cat by the name of Togomor, was riding his ass about opening night being a smashing success – because if not, Rholand’s theater company was out of business and Rholand was out on the streets!
Fed up with Ileosa’s drunken demands, Rholand ultimately fires her, leaving him without a leading lady . . . at least until he manages to convince Togomor’s nerdy wallflower secretary, Gwen’vor’stila, to try out for the part. She is predictably horrible at the role, not being able to act her way out of a paper bag, but she’s all that Rholand has to work with. And in typical 90s high school movie fashion, once you get the glasses off her face and straighten out her hair, she’s at least charming and cute if not drop-dead gorgeous.
So opening night comes around with Rholand having to fill-in for the leading man, and in the opening act goes out on stage to meet “Queen Ileosa” for the first time (a rehash of meeting the queen in Book One), only for Gwen to trip over the hem of her dress and come tumbling head over heels down the stairs on stage to land unceremoniously at Rholand’s feet. She then ad-libs a line, offering Rholand her hand with a false chipper “Mind giving me a hand up?” The play continues from there, with Gwen continuing to give a horrible but heart-felt performance, and the crowd unexpectedly eating the performance up as they see the play as a comedy rather than the intended drama Rholand had planned after Gwen’s unintentional prat-fall to start the show off. In the end, the performance is a rousing success, and Rholand is able to pay back the seething Togomor’s investment with ease.
The channel changes one final time to the scene of a black-and-white noir flick, in the city of Kaer Maga. Ronda (Oliver’s former bard henchwoman-turned-kobold) is the star of this show rather than Oliver, as she gets her first big case with her new detective agency within the city. It was getting rather late at this point in the session, so things got a bit blurred and rushed, but basically her case involved a goofy mix of aliens and terminator as someone was infesting the city of Kaer Maga with Grey Maidens, by turning various members of the city into Grey Maidens (hence the title of this “show” being “Ronda the Kobold in – The Case of the Grey Goo Maidens”). And basically they were replicating out of control, and the only way to stop them before they converted the entire city into more Grey Maidens was to kill the original one (like some sort of vampire or werewolf curse I guess). Cue Ronda somehow tracking down Sabrina to a warehouse and blowing it up, thus causing all of the Grey Maiden “copies” to melt into goo . . . or did they all die, as horror movie ending style a grey-maiden silhouette can be seen in the distance!
And thus ended the silliness of yet another April Fools game!
And now for something a little more serious the following week, as the party ventured into the Valley of the Ascendant Spire for real.
We started with the group down on the ground heading into the cave that the devils had been guarding (and yet refused to enter for some odd reason) – which was Cid, Oli, Vaz’em, and the NPC menagerie of Vox, Laori, and Cyrus. The cave proved to be fairly shallow, as it almost immediately opened into a tunnel leading further into the darkness. Following the tunnel which they hoped would turn out to be a passage into the Valley itself, the party was almost immediately confronted with shades from their past. Each PC found themselves confronted with a trio of NPCs from earlier in the campaign in rapid succession, questioning their decisions and forcing each PC to justify themselves (or not) as they saw fit.
These shades were essentially a security mechanism for the Valley, and the main reason why the devils were avoiding the tunnel. Good-aligned characters would be permitted passage unmolested, while neutral characters (which everyone present qualified as) would be tested and questioned by the shades to judge whether they were repentant for past wrongs and thus were here to be cleansed/redeemed. Unrepentant and Evil-aligned characters, such as Laori, however . . . well, you’ll read in a bit what happens to them.
Oliver was confronted with shades of Gaedren Lamm (of course), his old buddy Dodger, and Cressida Kroft. Oliver wasn’t particularly apologetic (and was definitely foul and rude to Lamm, as expected) to any of the shades confronting him, but he was at least conflicted enough for the shades to deem him “too unrepentant” to fail and be barred from the valley.
Vaz’em was confronted by Adonis Kreed and Marlessa, then Melyia Arkona, and finally Cinnabar. While Vaz’em was a hired killer with hands stained with blood, most of the blood recently was in defense of Korvosa and its people, and so he also got a pass . . . much like Oliver, begrudgingly by the shades.
Finally, Cid saw shades of those who he had killed with his own hands – Jostiliana, Isabelle the maid from the castle that they hunted down early in Book Three, and finally . . . Abigail. While he was most sorrowful over the still-recent mercy killing of Abigial, Cid also regretted killing Isabelle (also arguably a mercy killing given what the Grey Maidens would have done to her), and even Jostiliana got some modicum of sympathy. The shades judged him to be the best candidate for redemption in the Valley – which wasn’t unexpected given this was Cid’s redemption arc anyway, and he had been making steady efforts to go from LN (with evil tendencies given his Hellknight status) to LG. The shades gave him some supportive words and urged him to step forward into the valley to be fully repent of his sins before fading away.
As they came out of their respective spirit-generated dazes, our heroes found Vox and Cyrus similarly shaken, having been confronted with their own past mistakes. Laori, however, was . . . sound asleep? It did not seem like a particularly troubling slumber, either, as the elf cleric was relaxed and did not seem to be having any sort of troubling nightmare, she just was sound asleep, and nothing the party did could seem to rouse her. It seems that Evil creatures, upon entering this tunnel/the Valley of the Ascendant Spire, fell into a deep sleep – a magical defense for the Valley that could allow its defenders to easily deal with any malign creatures coming to attack it, killing them as mercifully as possible while they slumbered unaware.
With Laori out of commission for an unknown amount of time, Cid scooped her up into his arms and carried her the rest of the way out of the tunnel and into the sunlit exit to the passage that the party could now see awaiting for them ahead. Upon exiting the tunnel, they found themselves on the outskirts of a small valley tucked into the mountains, a serene set of well-maintained farmlands and orchards surrounding a large twisted spire of rock jutting up into the sky in the rough middle of the Valley – supposedly the fossilized remains of Ragathiel’s wing, torn off by his father Dispaster (I think it’s Dispater rather than Asmodeus in the lore?) as he renounced his evil past and became an Empyrean Lord. As they are taking in the sights, they are greeted by a pair of humans, who introduce themselves as Ignatius and Agatha and welcome them to the Valley to be cleansed of their past sins. As the pair explain that they are humans who have also found their way here to be redeemed of past sins, there is a brief flash of a teleportation spell before a tall, muscular humanoid with the head of a dog appears, a massive greatsword slung across his back.
The hound archon introduces himself as Duras, explaining that he is alerted whenever new arrivals step into the Valley (and to dispose of any evil-doers coming to cause mischief and ending up asleep on the Valley’s doorstep). He also explains to the party that Laori is merely asleep, and that it is a defense of the Valley, but she will be otherwise unharmed by the experience – so long as the party takes her with them when they leave this place.
Cid then asks to speak with Eurydice, the angel who had directed him to come here, and it directed to the top of the spire. A scaffolding walkway has been built up in a looping path around the outside of the spire, leading up to a sort of treehouse near the top of it, which is apparently where Eurydice lives and welcomes visitors. As petitioners seeking redemption and help with their devil pursuers, Cid, Vox, and Cyrus are permitted entry up to speak with her, Cid continuing to lug Laori along, while Vaz’em and Oliver, not particularly seeking redemption themselves (at least at this moment) wait down at the base of the Spire.
It's a long but not especially arduous climb up and around the spire to Eurydice’s house at the pinnacle, where the strange masked angel greets Cid and the others warmly, explaining that now that they are here, she can begin to help them free their souls from the contract that binds them to Belzeragna. And with Cid having finally successfully arrived at his destination and the focal point for his “I’m Special” personal quest in Book Four at last, we closed out the session.
And now we reach the meat of Cid’s “I’m special” quest, as he formally redeems him Cecil-from-Final- Fantasy-IV style and rejects his evil past in favor of a brighter future. Along with some *very* interesting revelations and wild conspiracy-theory confirmations!
So after Eurydice’s welcome is out of the way, talk briefly turns to making sure Laori was alright, and Cid gets directed to carry her into a spartan but homey bedroom where there is a cot to leave her and essentially sleep off the protective enchantment of the Valley.
Discussion then turns to breaking the hold that Belzeragna holds over the souls of Cid, Cyrus, and Vox. While not an expert on infernal contracts, the masked angel does have an idea of where to start – namely, summoning an infernal arbiter from the Hells itself to adjudicate the legality of said contracts. Cid already knew from his conversations with Sial (a former Asmodean infernal contract writer) that his contract, the clauses of which that consign his soul to damnation in Belzeragna via invisible ink, are considered outdated and considered obsolete by the Hells, as Asmodeus has outlawed such puerile trickery in the favor of fairly open deals – sign away your soul, in return get X, with only the minor details really getting interpreted “creatively”. Unfortunately, Sial no longer had any contacts in the Hells after switching his allegiances to Zon-Kuthon, and just being a mortal dude had no power to dissolve the contracts. Hence Eurydice’s plans to summon an infernal arbiter to flat-out confirm whether or not the Hellknights’ contracts were even valid to begin with.
Cid voices a few objections to the plan of summoning a devil into such a holy place of redemption, but Eurydice points out that the Valley has always served as a bridge between the Hells and the Heavens due to Ragathiel’s ascension, and so is sort of a “neutral ground” where both sides are welcome to come and meet in peace. And besides, the infernal envoy Eurydice would be summoning will be bound within a summoning circle and thus unable to inflict any harm to them or the Valley (something something pride before a fall). Leading the group into another room of the tree house with a sand-filled pit, Eurydice begins to trace out the necessary runes and arcane barriers of a summoning circle, revealing that the still somewhat mysterious angel has some knowledge of arcane magics . . . and said knowledge looks eerily similar to the methods employed by the Order of the Nail magi (themselves as the group learned back in Kaer Maga, a twisted offshoot of ancient arcane knights from Thassilon, which the Belzeragna devils apparently preserved and evolved into the magus techniques they passed along to the Order’s Hellknights).
Activating the circle after completing it, the room darkens for a moment before a pillar of smoke boils up from the floor, a man with hooved feet and wearing a well-tailored three-piece suit stepping out of the gloom as the smoke filled up a cylinder-sized space within the room, bound by the runic circle. Larenthon, a contract devil from Asmodeus’s infernal contracts and acquisitions, introduced himself and greeted Eurydice warmly, suggesting that this was not the first time they had spoken. The devil’s jovial mood darkens as Eurydice explains what the devil has been summoned for, and Sial’s statements on current infernal law are confirmed, straight from the devil’s mouth – binding souls using trickery such as clauses written in invisible ink are now officially forbidden by Asmodeus’ agents – the devils have no need for such things these days, as they are doing EXCELLENT business in Cheliax and elsewhere just through (vaguely) open deals. Of course, what a devil considers an “open and equal” contract is rather prone to legalistic interpretation, but blatant trickery like invisible clauses in a contract that involve the sale of a soul at least are now considered verboten.
Unfortunately, while Cid could repeat the once-hidden clauses in his contract that were revealed to him in Belzeragna, he did not have the actual signed infernal contract in hand. And after mentally checking with his subordinates back in Hell, Larenthon could confirm that neither was the contract stored properly in the archives of the Hells’, incensing the devil further. A copy of all infernal contracts was ordered to be stored in Asmodeus’ vaults so as to be at least vaguely under his purview and review – by not having a copy of these contracts stored there, whoever was making these contracts was doing so behind Asmodeus’ back.
But despite these contracts being considered illegal and void by the Hells, without the actual contract in hand Larenthon was unable or unwilling to break it’s magic. Instead he advocated getting the enforcer of these contracts – a devil known as Mavrokeras – to appear and justify the legal standing of these contracts. Cid only knew of this devil by reputation, but Eurydice again seemed to know more than she first let on as she reluctantly thanked Larenthon for his time and asked him to stay as an official representative of the Hells, which Belzeragna *should* technically have fealty to. The infernal arbiter politely allowed himself to be shunted to a secondary magic circle that Eurydice sketched out before redrawing the primary one and using it to bring forth this Mavrokeras.
Cue the appearance of a hulking (mechanically Huge) form covered in plate armor, some sort of blackish oil occasionally leaking out through the joints in the armor – Mavrokeras, Belzeragna’s enforcer. Again, Mavrokeras greeted Eurydice with some level of familiarity, implying a joint history that Eurydice seemed ashamed of (she wasn’t here in the valley of redemption for no reason, after all!) The armored hulk then turned its venomous gaze on Cid, promising him that his rebellious flight was at an end, and one way or the other he would find himself back in Belzeragna for good by nightfall. Rather than be intimidated Cid was his usual blunt, snarky self, taunting back that Mavrokeras’ hunters hadn’t gotten the job done yet, prompting the infernal warlord to remark that perhaps then it was time he got involved personally.
Eurydice managed to get the conversation back on track by bringing up Cid’s contract with Belzeragna, which Mavrokeras insisted for perfectly legal despite the invisible ink chicanery as per ancient Hellish law. Cue Larenthon speaking up here about how such laws had been since updated and changed, and Mavrokeras arguing that despite the “updates” made by Asmodeus the ancient infernal laws were still valid – i.e. get the souls through the gates of Hell by whatever means necessary. There was also some prompting from Larenthon about under whose authority Mavrokeras was operating under, which the armored monstrosity refused to answer (incensing Larenthon even further).
Cue some taunting arguments from Cid (using this song as a hilarious backdrop for) about how Mavrokeras created this problem for himself by revealing the truth to Cid upon his death. If he had never discovered that his soul had been damned using trickery in his contract, he likely never would have recanted his dark path and attempted to redeem himself in the first place. But Mavrokeras’ devils couldn’t help themselves, and had spilled the beans to Cid the instant he died the first time all the way back in Book Three during the Palin Cove Punishers fight.) This seemed to finally push the diabolical general to his breaking point, as he ominously announced that their contracts didn’t matter anyway – they were all bound to the darkness, inexorably drawn to it, and they would ultimately end up in Belzeragna anyway as they could not resist the temptations of its power. And to prove that they would forever damn themselves, all things being equal, Mavrokeras proposed a martial trial by combat to settle the matter. An ancient rite as noted by Larenthon, but one still occasionally permitted by even the Hells to settle contract disputes. After glancing at Cid and the other two Hellknights, and getting only nods of confirmation in return, Eurydice agrees to Mavrokeras’s terms – if they failed to defeat his champions, then their contracts stood and their souls would be consigned back to Belzeragna, where as if Cid and company own, then their contracts would be revoked by Mavrokeras and they were would freed from damnation – to Belzeragna, at least.
At which point Mavrokeras announced that his chosen champions were already present, and spoke a word of arcane power that despite the summoning circle’s wards seemed to trigger something within each of the Hellknights. Cid, Cyrus, and Vox all collapse convulsing to the floor as their guts writhe in sudden agony, forcing them to expel a thick vicious black goo from their mouths – not entirely dissimilar to the oil leaking out from Mavrokeras’s armor. The puked-up oil slicks grew and changed shape, becoming humanoid and solidifying into exact copies of Cid, Vox, and Cyrus in their original human forms, though clearly twisted and pure evil judging by their malevolent grins.
Here was the consequence of each of them consuming the goblet of blood from Leo Astares, the Armor of Skulls corrupted founder of their order, during their post-death dream sequences – each of them had been forced to drink his Kazavon-infused blood, further cementing the hold that Belzeragna had on them, and now that corruption was before them in the flesh, as a literal avatar of what they once were as Hellknights.
Everyone squares off against their evil twin, the two Cids tossing taunts back and forth at each other non-stop. Here was their chance to prove that they had truly risen above the evil people that they had once been. And as the rather spot-on (imo) theme music for this duel kicked in, the battle for their souls began.
Cid got off to a good start, nearly cutting his evil twin in half with a hallmark Shocking Grasp crit . . . except that the avatar for his corrupted past was not so easily overcome (in large part due to the cheatering going on by Belzeragna/Kazavon/the DM here, by giving Evil Cid something like DR 10 and basically complete immunity to his spells (both due to Kazavon’s influence giving Evil Cid immunity to electricity, and also just in general “your spells came from the Hells, and now you’re rejecting those gifts, so f&~* you buddy they don’t work on me” – this included ignoring Cid’s own defensive spells entirely, such as the Mirror Image Cid threw up before closing in).
Cid gave it his all against his diabolical doppleganger, but things swiftly turned against him as Evil Cid got his own turn and displayed that he could ignore Cid’s illusionary doubles, which tended to spell a whole lot of trouble for the magus in the past whenever some opponent could get around them. After taking an equally nasty series of hits and heavily wounded, the redemption-seeking magus fought on, glancing around to see that Vox and Cyrus were similarly faltering against their evil doubles. In the end, the power that they had gained from Belzeragna could not save them from Belzeragna. Evil Cid’s blade bit deep into Cid’s chest yet again, and the magus collapsed to the floor in a pool of his own blood, a final strike to the back damning his soul for good. Or at least, so it seemed to those watching the duel from the sidelines. But while mortal power and strength from infernal contracts alone could not save Cid’s soul, there was still the possibility for another Power to intervene and offer a final hope for salvation. And so She did.
Rather than the fiery torture chambers of Belzeragna, Cid awoke to find himself standing in a grey empty expanse – perhaps a section of Pharsma’s Boneyard borrowed for the occasion, or perhaps simply a construct of his mind. A blindingly bright pillar of light shined down on him from above, spotlighting him in the empty gloom. But he wasn’t alone, as a figure stepping out from around behind him into his field of vision, moving up to the edge of the bright pillar of light . . . Abigail?
The being who at least looked like Abigail prior to her vampification lightly chastised Cid for getting baited into a fight to the death when it should have been obvious that Mavrokeras would cheat, and joked about what was She going to do with him when he kept getting into trouble like this. Rather guarded as he strongly suspected another trick of some sort, and a little peeved at whoever it was taking Abigail’s face, Cid was his usual snarky self in response. At least until “Abigail” apologized, stating that She had hoped by adopting a face familiar to Cid it would set him more at ease, and answered his questions of “well, who was she then” by intimating that She was the one he had been seeking aid from all this time, and who he had been referred to by Densa after his brief contact with her in the Acropolis – Sarenrae, goddess of light, mercy, and redemption!
As with Desna before her, Cid was considerably more respectful once he realized that he was talking to a goddess, especially the one that he had been turning for aid. Sarenrae explained that She was aware of Cid’s efforts to become a better person, and that he was making positive in-roads on convincing others to change from their Evil ways as well (i.e. Laori). Cue further chastisement at Cid’s choice to sleep with Laori, however, and so soon after Abigail’s death – Cid had made things considerably more complicated (and soap opera melodramatic, Cid’s player and mine’s mutual guilty pleasure!) by doing that. More than he knew, unfortunately, but Sarenrae was happy to explain the situation to him.
The goddess cautioned that he would likely find this revelation guilt-inducing, but it was necessary in order for him to understand the entire situation so that he could try to fix it. While Her vision of the Abyss was limited, the goddess was nonetheless always aware of Her ardent followers, and so one of them suddenly appearing in the depths of that dark place caught her attention. With a gesture from the goddess, the grey void around Cid shimmered and vanished, replaced by the far more disturbing fleshy wastes of the Abyss. Hurdled a short distance away in a shallow cave cut into a fleshy cliff was a bloodied and bruised figure – another Abigail, the real one this time. Victae hadn’t been bluffing when he had taunted that he had condemned Abigail’s soul to the Abyss as part of turning her into a vampire after all.
As Cid continued to watch, there was the scrape of a shoe on the fleshy stone outside the cave, and a man with long fiery red hair and wearing a well-tailored suit stepped into view of the huddled and terrified Abigail within the cave. I believe this was only the character’s second appearance “on-screen” in the entire campaign, and the first in his human guise and so Sarenrae pointed the man out to Cid and explained that man was one of the demon lord Baphomet’s most cunning and dangerous generals, the balor lord Elzeer-Ka. The same Elzeer-Ka who had attempted to invade Korvosa during the course of Book Three as a result of the planar portal being opened by the Rovagug cult. And the same Elzeer-Ka who had cast a long shadow over Abigail’s family. In terms of appearance and venomous civility displayed here by Elzeer-Ka, I like to use this scene of Ardyn from Final Fantasy Kingsglaive as an example (whose likeness I used as Elzeer-Ka’s human guise here).
Cooing over the already-injured paladin, the balor general held out his hands from his sides in a placating gesture, explaining that he was simply a potential friend who wanted to help. Given the current state poor Abigail found herself in, she could certainly use a friend right now. Particularly when her previous friends had all abandoned her to this horrid fate. Mmm, but was that simply an unfortunate turn of events that had befallen her, or had she been merely replaced? Cue Elzeer-Ka summoning his own little globe of clairvoyance, showing Cid’s bedroom after Abigail’s funeral . . . in bed . . . with Laori. Perhaps it was the lingering effects of being a vampire, the corrupting effects of the Abyss already starting their twisting of her soul, or just good old-fashioned soap opera betrayal-induced rage, but Abigial immediately went from distrustful of Elzeer-Ka’s offer to howling in rage that she was going to kill Cid for this!
Sarenrae went on to explain that while she could no longer detect Abigail’s soul after it ventured deeper into the Abyss’s many layers, but She was aware where Elzeer-Ka would take her – to his fortress in the Rift of Eons, a strange layer of the Abyss where time flowed at a greatly accelerated rate. The few days that had passed since Abigail’s death on the mortal plane would be stretched into week, months, possibly even years there – plenty of time for Elzeer-Ka to further twist Abigail’s soul with more poisonous words of betrayal and abandonment. It would be up to Cid, assuming he survived this duel, whether or not he wished to pursue an attempt at rescuing Abigail from this fate, but he was going to have to act immediately if he wanted any hope of success.
But wait! As usual, there was *more* complications to this situation! Now we come to the real roller coaster into insanity moment of the session, as Sarenrae went on to explain Elzeer-Ka’s motivations for “helping” Abigail. The balor had long cast a shadow over Abigail’s family, due to the fact that Abigail’s mother had once been a cultist of Baphomet and a loyal servant of Elzeer-Ka . . . until Sergio and the other Starweavers at that time drove his cult out of Kaer Maga and convinced Abigail’s mother to abandon her service to the Abyss. An unusually cunning and deceptive balor, rather than outright destroying his enemies Elzeer-Ka often liked to corrupt and use his enemies against each other. Which explained his interest in Abigail – ever the opportunist, he was now attempting to replace her mother with a new servant in Abigail.
But that was not the start of Elzeer-Ka’s revenge against Sergio and the Starweavers, as Sarenrae gestured and the scene around them changed again, this time from the Abyss to the streets of Kaer Maga (an only marginal improvement in order and cleanliness, it must be said). Cid saw another familiar face step into the nearby alleyway ahead of them – Nicodemus, the slaver who Abigail thought had abducted her younger sister Lucinda and sold her off (as the party had learned after dealing with him back in Kaer Maga, Nicodemus had sold her off to some place in Nidal). And slung over one of Nicodemus’s shoulders was an unconscious young girl that Sarenrae again helpfully identified as Lucinda Nightstar – Abigail’s sister. Stepping fully into the alleyway now, Nicodemus dropped the child onto the filthy cobblestone at the luxury-shoed feet of Elzeer-Ka. The two discuss business for a moment, the balor gifting Nicodemus with a hefty sack of coins and remarking that he was planning on taking the girl to see Nidal, which was absolutely dreadful this time of year.
Cue the scene shifting again, this time to a gothic manor of some sort, and Elzeer-Ka meeting with a pair of elven nobles, pushing the shy young girl out from behind his legs to them. Here was the daughter that they had requested, since they were unable to have children of their own. But no! This child was a human – they had specified an elven child! A human brat simply would not do! People would talk, and the name of House Vaus would forever be a source of mockery then!
Struggling to hide his irritation now, Elzeer-Ka took the child and left, prompting another scene shift to some dark and dismal druid’s grove. Elzeer-Ka hands a bag of money off to an unscrupulous druid, who carries the struggling Lucinda into a nearby pool of water and drowns her. Then casts reincarnate. Lucinda comes back up as a young dwarf child. Back under the water she goes, drowned again. Reincarnated again, halfling, drowned. Kobold, drowned, half-orc, drowned. Over and over again until finally a young elven girl with bluish-black hair bobs up gasping to the surface.
Again Elzeer-Ka takes the reborn Lucinda before the Vaus couple, and again they sneeringly explain that no, this won’t do either! They wanted a young lady, a daughter they could show off at all their parties, not some brat that they had to raise and educate themselves! Elzeer-Ka again leaves with the elven girl in tow, presumably going to the Rift of Eons where time (conveniently) flows much faster. The scene fades back in to show Elzeer-Ka arriving back again a third time, this time with a slightly younger but still identifiably Laori, who he presents as the new Vaus daughter.
This time, the snobby nobles accept the balor lord’s “gift” of a daughter, although it predictably doesn’t end well for them. Again some unspecified time later, the scene shifts again to show the manor in flames, the Vaus family brutally cut apart and decorating the rapidly-combusting building with their pieces. Covered in blood and numbly holding a large knife, Laori Vaus stumbles through the snow just outside the manor, collapsing at the feet of a waiting Elzeer-Ka, enjoying the show of the manor burning down. Stroking the elven girl’s hair, Elzeer-Ka compliments “his” daughter on her fine work, clearly having implanted some sort of Suggestion-magic to brainwash her into some sort of sleeper-agent time bomb to destroy the Vaus family from within (presumably another of his many enemies who had slighted him at some point or another). In an unusual display of “mercy”, Elzeer-Ka then magically commands Laori to *Forget*, implanting the memory that it was an orc attack that butchered her “family” instead. He then gets her up on her feet and sets her off down the road, where she runs afoul of another band of slavers, who take her in to ultimately sell off to the local Church of Zon-Kuthon as a sacrifice (and setting her on the path that led to her eventually becoming a cleric of Zon-Kuthon in the Brotherhood of Bones instead).
Yes indeed, it wasn’t bad enough that Cid had decided to cure his grief over Abigail’s death by jumping into bed with her rival for his affections, that same woman happened to be Abigail’s long-lost sister Lucinda, reincarnated and twisted by Elzeer-Ka into Laori Vaus (cue the dramatic soap music!) And now Elzeer-Ka was endeavoring to complete his destruction of the Nightstar family by corrupting Abigail as well. Understandably freaked out by this discovery, Cid vows to do whatever he can do to ensure that Abigail is saved – after all, her long-lost sister has finally been found!
With his time growing short indeed, Sarenrae had Cid voice a new oath to replace the one he had sworn upon becoming a Hellknight – typical Sarenrae stuff, like offering mercy to those who ask for it, endeavoring to see the potential good in people, etc. etc. And then after taking Sarenrae’s offered hand, Cid’s surroundings went from drab grey to blinding white. Cid the Hellknight magus died . . . and Cid the paladin of Sarenrae rose in his place (thus fulfilling the Fey Seer’s prophecy to Cid way back near the start of Book Four that “one shall rise, and one shall fall” (which could also, unplanned at the time by the DM, have been referring to Abigail’s own descent into the Abyss and Cid/Laori’s redemption).
Back in the cabin atop the Ascendant Spire, the mocking laughter of Evil Cid slowed to a halt as it sensed . . . something . . . shift in the dark air of the cabin. Mavrokeras likewise snarled within his imprisoning summoning circle as he felt the briefest touch of a holy presence dispel the menacing gloom. And then Cid sat up, asking if his evil doppleganger would like to try that again. Elsewhere in the room, Vox and Cyrus likewise picked themselves up and dusted the blood off their clothes, all three Hellknights miraculously healed (both of them later confirming with Cid that Sarenrae had also spoken with them and offered them an escape from their certain damnation).
Cue the power-up theme music as the duel(s) resumed, although this time with much different results. Turns out DR/Regeneration Good doesn’t work so well when your opponent has Smite Evil, as Cid slashed his opponent nearly in half with the first smite-evil powered hit. The duel didn’t last much longer past that initial clash, Evil Cid howling in pain and rage as the real Cid’s new holy powers quickly proved a match for the infernal magics available to old Cid. With a final follow-up blow, Cid cleaved his doppleganger in half completely, splattering the black ooze across the floor as the humanoid form crumpled back into a foul-smelling mess. Evil Vox and Cyrus quickly followed suit, leaving the reborn Hellknights victorious in their joint duel to spare their souls.
Seething within his summoning circle, Mavrokeras declared that while the duel might have gone in their favor (somehow, despite his cheating with the evil clones), they all still belonged to Belzeragna, and Mavrokeras would be dragging them all screaming back there personally! Guess devils are just sore losers like that, but as it turns out this wasn’t just an empty threat. Digging into his armored wrist, Marvokers clawed open his flesh with the claw-like gauntlet, turning the slow oozing drip of black oil from his armor into a torrenting spray of foulness onto the sand beneath him. That corrupting ooze sank down into the sand, staining it black, and then starting to melt down through the floor as a violent shudder passed through the Ascendent Spire as some sort of alchemical reaction occurred. Once a piece of an archfiend, the calcified flesh of Ragathiel’s torn wing reacted with the corruption in Mavrokeras’s blood, and began to awaken! The treehouse began to come apart around them as more violent tremors passed through the Spire, and the summoning circle was disrupted enough that Mavrokeras was able to teleport away. Larenthon likewise decided that this seemed like a good time to leave as well, and disappeared back off to the Hells to report to his immediate supervisor that things were not going according to Asmodesus’s plans in Varisia.
Down in the Valley, Oliver and Vaz’em are roused from this bored passing of the time as rifts began to tear themselves open in the ground around them, belching forth smoke and then hunched, misshapen figures with bat-wings (proto-devils, as I called them . . . really just reskinned gargolyes basically). It seems that the peace of the Valley had been broken, and once again our heroes would have to fight their way out of a death trap – in the next session!
While I may have heavily stacked the deck against Cid in this duel, I was very relieved that he did lose “by the dice” here despite getting his evil copy down to a quarter-or-so HP and it did not require an even heavier finger on the scales to say “no, actually you lose”. (Losing here also helped sell the power-up bit of him turning into a paladin by getting back up and utterly destroying his previously “nigh-invincible” evil clone with Smite Evil.)
Player advocates can cry foul here a bit if you wish, but Cid’s story has been angled to be a sort of cross between Faust and Final Fantasy 4’s Cecil for a long time. And so while outwitting the devil and using his own power against him to win could have been a valid story beat, the through-line I’ve always been aiming for is closer to Faust - of Cid making the mistake of selling his soul for power, realizing his mistake and attempting to redeem himself, but ultimately failing to save himself through his own strength. It’s not until after he gets essentially a merciful “hand up” through Divine Intervention that he actually can escape damnation. Which also sort of resonates with a recurring theme of the entire campaign in that no one – not even the PCs - can actually save themselves. It’s only through the help of others that each character (again, even the PCs!) can be saved and escape from the various perils they find themselves in.
Which probably makes it a good thing that my players have been going around helping every NPC they come across that has even a cat up in a tree, despite Sial’s sneering over it. :D
I freely admit that Laori’s extremely convoluted backstory is soap opera-rific. However, Cid’s player quite a long time ago had blindly speculated that Laori was Abigail’s long-lost sister Lucinda, shortly after arriving in Kaer Maga and learning about what happened to her when Abigial was a child (i.e. kidnapped by Nicodemus and sold off to Nidal). I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense, in that Lucinda was sent to Nidal, and Laori is from Nidal, but everything else is of course wrong – Lucinda was a human, Laori is an elf, and also something like 100+ in elf years, not mid-20s like she should be in order to be Lucinda’s proper age in human years.
But I think it should be clear by now that I like wild, convoluted backstories for my NPCs, and honestly while I had wanted Lucinda to make an appearance at some point, I had no idea who she could be, so . . . I tossed Cid’s player a bone and had his wild theory be the correct one! It just required the convoluted twisted plan of a demon general, a ridiculous time dilation planar adventure, and a horrific series of reincarnations! Not a problem at all for this DM!
And, of course, having learned NOTHING from this experience, Cid’s player immediately started plotting how he could turn this into a knock-off Sister Wives episode *face palm*.