There needs to be more than just "disillusioned with promises" for people who were loyal to suddenly turn.
Remember that they left molthune after however many years of mistreatment and only because their general told them to. {. . .}
That depends upon how loyal they really were to start with. Many of them might just be going along with Azaersi because they can't come up with anything better, and some of them may be just looking for an excuse to quit.
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Tonya Woldridge moved this thread to the Ironfang Invasion adventure path forum, so this is now an appropriate thread for posting spoiler-laden information about my campaign and the progress on removing slavery from General Azaersi's plans.
We had no game sessions during the holidays of December 25 and 31. On the January 7 game session, the android Casandalee landed her spaceship outside Longshadow again. She had a gift of two cannons with gunpowder and cannonballs and was dropping off three ysoki musketeers from Numeria who would train the Longshadow smelters in advanced steel smelting and their defenders in handling the cannon. Casandalee also reported that officially Numeria was neutral in the Ironfang-Nirmathi war and had given a gift of sixteen flintlock muskets to the Ironfang Legion camp in the Valley of Aloi and three other ysoki musketeers to train them. Their goal was to encourage industry rather than take sides.
However, slaveholding cultures resist industrialization, so unofficially and secretly, the party would have Numerian aid. Casandalee provided aerial photographs of the Valley of Aloi and of an Ironfang supply train taking livestock and grain to Fort Phaendar. Casandalee dropped the party, three shepherds, and two Longshadow defenders Miriam Kems and Cirieo Thessadin near the supply train to reclaim the supplies stolen from farms near Longshadow. Battling the defenders of the supply train (two 9th-level wolfrider troops, three 7th-level Winter Hags, two 7th-level Stheno Cultists, and eight 9th-level Ironfang Hill Giants) took the rest of that session and the January 14 session.
For the January 21 session, I prepared for the beginning of the 4th module, Siege of Stone, at the Valley of Aloi and the Morlock Warrens. Instead, the party went to Ecru, because that conquered village was between Longshadow and the Valley of Aloi. The party had Ekhinos, the minotaur assistant of Commander Repral, in tow and several dwarven and human refugees from Ecru would be following soon.
I had the map of Ecru from its conversion to a Ironfang Munitions Camp in Assault on Longshadow and improvised the rest, The place was no longer a munitions camp. Instead, it was a staging area for patrols by 9th-level Hobgoblin Formations, with a few Ironfang Engineers left in charge. And they had five human slaves to cook and clean.
The party scouted Ecru and then approached openly. The two most charismatic PCs, rogue/sorcerer Sam and sorcerer Honey, talked to an engineer in a good cop bad cop mixture of reassurances and threats. One Hobgoblin Formation attacked the catfolk monk, and the monk, aided with long-distance focus and cantrip spells from the druid and sorcerer, killed the formation in two rounds. This proved to the hobgoblins that the visiting party was the infamous Small Boots, the unstoppable Chernasardo Elite. (The earliest Ironfang reports on the party had no surviving Ironfang witnesses, so they became know to the Ironfangs as "Small Boots" due to the small footprints they left behind. Everyone in the party except for a skinny elf is size Small.)
Sam told the engineers in charge that the Ironfang Legion would be allowed to leave Ecru alive, but they would have to leave. The engineers pointed out that patrols would be returning all day, so they had no way to leave immediately. The party was willing to wait a day. When the dwarves arrived, Sam forced them to talk with the engineers on how they could help each other if peace was declared. And the freed human slaves took the boat back to Longshadow.
The following morning, Ekhinos received his daily Sending from cleric Repral and informed Repral of the events in Ecru. Repral replied with a hasty second Sending, "Dwarves? Are they willing to take in more dwarves?" The party had to cast a Sending of their own, via a Wayfinder with the correct ioun stone, to recieve a clarification. Repral said, "Azaersi is working out trade with Numeria. She wants to free all captured dwarves. Her advisors are arguing. Send freed dwarves to Ecru as compromise."
I had planned that the first step in ending slavery in Oprak would be freeing all the enslaved dwarves. General Azaersi hates humans, and hobgoblins in general hate elves. but they have no specific hate against dwarves. The dwarves had been treated as enemies merely because they were the original residents of captured land. In a few months Azaersi would be convinced by the Numerians to free to dwarves to reopen their mines so that Oprak would have minerals to trade. The players activities pushed me into having this happen immediately. Otherwise, a struggle over Ecru would further delay the adventure in Siege of Stone. Commander Repral carefully left out that the refugee miners returning to Ecru also included a few humans. Azaersi is going to present the loss of Ecru not as a loss, but as setting up a dwarven village in Oprak.
The players then chose to climb a mountain pass into the Valley of Aloi rather than enter through the well-patrolled mouth of the valley. Siege of Stone had the Ironfang camp at the valley evacuated, but I don't see why the Ironfang Legion would abandon that territory, so I left the camp there. They encountered some goblins spying on them from the mountains and managed to persuade one named Tuwo to talk to them.
When I started the campaign in October 2019, one player decided to play a goblin alchemist named Tak. We set Tak's tribe at the mouth of the Valley of Aloi, so that the initial appearance of the Ironfang Legion there would send Tak and nine other refugee goblins fleeing to Phaendar. That player soon moved away, so Tak became an NPC. But the goblin refugees were part of the beginning of our campaign.
The Ironfang Legion had captured most of Tak's tribe and made them slaves at first. But greater barghest Azlowe said that goblins were a supreme race and could not be slaves. The player had set up Tak's tribe as peaceful alchemists and herbalists, so the Ironfang Legion failed to train them as soldiers. Finally, they just kicked them out. Ogre mage Origa's ogre tribe discovered them and learned that the Ironfang Legion let them freely roam the valley, so she agreed to feed and protect them in exchange for them spying on the Ironfang Legion for Origa.
Tuwo gave the party her spy report on the Ironfang camp in exchange for news of their ten lost tribe members who had settled at their new home at Misthome.
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Friday, January 28, 2022
With the information from Tuwo, the party crossed the valley of Aloi without another encounter. My effort in porting Rift Drakes to PF2 went to waste.
They reached the dwarven ruins on the surface that led to the Morlock Warrens. I decided to provide a map of the ruins, so I copied Markarth from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The morlocks had trapped almost every building, so exploration was about finding and disabling traps. Plaques in Silverblood Inn explained why the dwarves abandoned the outpost, but the party could read only the abbreviated version in the Elven lenguage. The party's Surival checks provided clues that some morlocks lived in Cidhna Mine and that a passage to the Morlock Warrens was in the Markarth Warrens. Instead, they used Passwall to enter the sealed main passage in Understone Keep.
I had worked out a ritual by which the druid could transform her Roc animal companion into a Cave Pterosaur animal companion to fit into underground passages. She used that there. The champion left her velociraptor animal companion unchanged.
The party entered the Morlock Warrens in room G%, the Waterfall, rather than G6, the Western Watchpost, due to taking an unexpected passage. They saw the murals in G3, Scrawling Hall, before proceeding to G6. They encountered a Morlock Creeper, creature 8, named Krisknife. He was the designated guardian of the doves, "The morlocks find the birds’ droppings useful enough for fertilizing their fungal garden and brewing poisons that they refrain from harassing the doves." Krisknife exclaimed, "You can't hurt to poopy birds!" and stabbed the goblin champion Tikti for 10 damage. Krisknife had rolled lowest on initiative, so we ended the session there.
Friday, February 4, 2022
The first two PCs in the initiative, the two rogues, spoke Undercommon and decided to use Diplomacy on Krisknife to explain that they were peaceful visitors. They both rolled natural 20s! So Krisknife asked, "Are you supplicants to see our goddess, the World Serpent?" I had anticipated the party would try to finesse their way through the morlocks with Deception and Diplomacy, but I had not expected it to happen that quickly.
Krisknife reassured the Morlock Battle Dancers guarding the area and guided the party one level down to the morlock creeper oracle Iuwlas, the high priest of the World Serpent Zanathura. The PCs had no trouble with the climb down, because they had all invested in Athletics. Iuwlas was in G10, the Waterfall Shrine, practicing songs on his battle lute. The party persuaded Iuwlas to take them to the World Serpent, though Iuwlas had argued for visting chief Graz first.
Iuwlas guided them to G12, the Fissure Room, and explained they would have to climb down the fissure. Sam the rogue/sorcerer looked at the green, glowing crystals in the walls and made a Recall Knowledge Arcana check to identify them. Then he yelled, "Those are Blightburn crystals. Get out of here quickly!" Sam dived into the fissure, relying on his Acrobatics to let him grab the side before he exceeded the limit of his Catfall. Most of the party followed and jumped into the fissure, too. The goblin champion Tikti instead used her climb speed to descend the fissure, and the leshy sorcerer Honey transform into a brass dragon and grabbed Tikti's velociraptor Liklik before flying down.
Three people who jumped into the fissure failed the DC 25 Acrobatics check and fell the full 80-foot distance. Tqo took 40 bludgeoning damage each, about a quarter of their hit points, but the monk with Catfall took less. I ruled that Tikti, Honey, and Liklik were too slow and had to roll a DC 32 Fortitude save against Blightburn Sickness. Tikti made her save, but Honey and Liklik failed.
Afterwards, Sam's player joked, "Remember the motherly question that if your friends all jumped off a cliff, would you? The answer for this party is YES."
Iuwlas had not yet warned them about the room G13 at the bottom of the fissure, and its two Titan Centipedes, gargantuan creature 9. He climbed down and yelled that the centipedes would not follow them down the hallway to the northwest. Most of the party rolled initiative in the high 30s and had time to run to that hallway before the centipedes could react. The elf ranger Zinfandel had an action left to shoot an arrow into a centipede from the hallway. The dragon-form sorcerer Honey took time to hit both centipedes with her breath weapon before depositing herself and Liklik in the hallway. The catfolk monk Ren'zar-jo took the time for a flurry of blows and another attack against the arrow-shot centipede, but that left his movement five feet short of the hallway. So the centipede struck back for about 20 damage. Finally, the minotaur NPC Ekhinos used his Powerful Charge to charge toward that centipede near the hallway and his horn damage knocked it unconscious. On his last action he Strode into the hallway. The 2nd centipede decided to not step over its unconscious and bleeding sibling to attack the monk.
The next round, Iuwlas rushed back to the entrance to the hallway, saying that they could fight the sacred centipedes but not kill them. He cast a ranged 1st-level Heal spell on the the downed centipede to save it. The gnome druid Stormdancer saw enough for her Religion check to identify Iuwlas as an oracle rather than a cleric. The notion that Zanathura had some way of granting divine spells had worried him.
The hallway widened into a room with morlocks copying ancient dwarven notes onto fresh paper. Honey reverted to her natural form and decided to perform a Ward Medic group Treat Wounds on the injured party members. Iuwlas was glad for the extra time to talk to the World Serpent in the room ahead.
The party came before Zanathura, the World Serpent. Some early good Diplomacy improved her attitude from Indifferent to Friendly. Yet she was vague about anything related to General Azaersi, the Stone Road, and the Ironfang Invasion. Eventually, Sam rolled well on Perception and realized her deception. She was an actor, not Zanathura.
The party asked that the morlock guards leave so that they could reveal secret techniques. Zanathura dismissed them, though Iuwlas remained. While the monk Ren'zar-jo engaged in acrobatic performance as a distraction, Sam used Biographical Eye and Honey used Read Aura on the false Zanathura. Sam learned that she was an actor from the Maelstrom and Honey found Change Shape magic. Honey dispelled the magic and Zanathura transformed to different serpentine creature, an Imentesh.
The imentesh Camus confessed that over a year ago, the real Zanathura had performed a Planar Binding ritual to hire him to impersonate Zanathura during her absence. Her instructions had been to protect her notes and keep the morlocks worshipful of her. Zanathura occassional sent a messenger with further instructions, such as sending morlocks to help the war effort. Iuwlas knew, because Zanathura had needed him as a fourth secondary caster for the ritual, while General Azaersi and her hobgoblin and medusa companions served as the other three secondary casters.
The party bargained with Camus for a copy of Zanathura's notes on the Stone Road. Camus took payment in art, so Sam acted out a play for him. Camus told them that the easy way to Kraggodan was the Long Walk. The Morlock Warrens had a connecting passage to that underground dwarven road. They asked about signposts on the way, since no-one in the party could read Dwarven, and Camus assured them that they did not need signposts, because they could ask the many duergar that traveled the road. Oops.
The party also made their usual argument that the Ironfang Invasion was unnecessary and Nirmathis could find an accommodation with the monstrous humanoids who wanted fair treatment. Iuwlas surprised them by not caring about fair treatment. All the morlocks wanted was food and their goddess. They were in the war only because Zanathura ordered it. And Camus said that Zanathura desired only political power and powerful dwarven artifacts.
Sam used his Greater Pendant of the Occult to send a message to their svirfneblin trader associate Novvi. She knew how to deal with duergar, despite being an enemy species to them. While waiting for a reply, the medically-trained PCs treated and cured the Blightburn Sickness on Honey and Liklik.
The party leveled up to 13th level.
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I made a major change in the Morlock Warrens. They were supposed to be led by a CR 9 simulacrum of Zanathura, but the PF2 Simulacrum ritual could make only a 4th-level copy, way too weak for the role. I asked my wife (Sam's player) for advice, offering suggestions such as another dark naga, a shape changer, a construct, or a more powerful Simulacrum spell. She liked the shape changer, because the party had already encountered doppelgangers. The encoutners with the morlocks were easy, CR 10 against an 11th-level party, and rather than beefing them up to be equally easy against an oversized 12th-level party, I decided to go for the comedy of an actor who could not resist teaching dance and painting and music to the morlocks in the name of worshipping Zanathura. I replaced the Morlock Destroyers CR 8 with Morlock Battle Dancers, creature 9, armed with deadly blightburn longspears. The party got to see them dance, but not see them fight.
The morlocks don't want slaves. In H.G. Wells' The Time Machine the morlocks were ruthless, cannabalistic descendents of oppressed workers, so their culture is closer to slaves than to slavemasters. But likewise, they did not care about Azaersi's nation of Oprak, either.
Nevertheless, Camus's introduction of art to the morlocks was an example of culture change.
On the Long Walk the party will encounter duergar and caligni. The duergar are another slaveholding culture, so the slavery issue will return.
The caligni are a more interesting case. Their history changed between Pathfinder 1st Edition and Pathfinder 2nd Edition.
The name "caligni" is an ancient term for the races now collectively known as dark folk, sometimes still used by dark folk communities to refer to themselves. Untold generations ago, these subterranean dwellers aspired to grand destinies, and might have achieved them if not for the planned degeneration meted out by their controllers, the owbs. Yet even today, dark folk are sometimes born bearing an uncanny likeness to the ancients that dark stalkers still imitate. Throwbacks to the time before owb tampering, these individuals—called simply "caligni"—might be born from any dark folk race, reminders of their people’s half-remembered dreams.
...
The origins of the dark stalkers and the dark creepers are shrouded in mystery, made more difficult to decipher by the fact that the dark stalkers do not keep records of their history. Many scholars believe that, just as the drow descended from elves, so too must the dark folk have descended from humanity, their eerie powers and spell-like abilities the result of generation upon generation of devotion to profane and sinister magic. Alas, the truth of the race’s history may never be known.
Calignis lurk in subterranean cities, creeping to the surface to steal, stalk, or make mischief. Each caligni serves in a specific role and grows into a specific form as determined by supernatural traditions and influences in caligni society. Regardless of their size or role, all calignis are gaunt, with pale flesh and white eyes. Some surface dwellers call the caligni “dark folk,” a term they dislike because it doesn’t reflect either their appearance or character, only their environment.
...
The calignis are descendants of humans who, millennia ago, fled underground to escape a devastating cataclysm and begged malevolent, shadowy demigods known only as the Forsaken for salvation. The Forsaken warped the refugees into tough survivors, but at a price: every caligni that dies combusts in a burst of energy that provides a scrap of soul energy to the Forsaken. The greatest irony of the caligni's bargain is that the Forsaken themselves mysteriously vanished long ago and no longer answer pleas or prayers. Today, caligni still burst into light upon death, but their soul energy no longer feeds a mysterious pantheon of shadowy divinities.
They are a caste-based culture, with each one born or raised in a role of Caller, Creeper, Dancer, Slayer, Stalker, or Vanguard. For example, the vanguards are born blind. The PF1 caligni traveling with Novvi are throwbacks to the base caligni form; in the PF2 interpretation they are more like casteless rebels.
I returned to this thread because I wanted to explain how I handled the slavery issue now that we finally reached the end of the Ironfang Invasion adventure path. But the session-by-session chronicle I was telling is a loose thread that I should wrap up. I will try to restrict myself to slavery-related stories.
Siege of Stone
Kisegar - Debt Slave
The party entered an ancient dwarven waystation off the side of the Long Walk. The morlock caves resided beneath the ruins of an ancient dwarven town, so I figured that that town would have some kind of entry area for people traveling the Long Walk to ascend to that dwarven town. And at that waystation, the party encountered EVENT 1: MILITARY PATROL (CR 13), a squad of beetle-riding duegar who regularly patrolled this section of the Long Walk. (After the Remaster, Duergar will be renamed Hryngar, but here they are still Duergar.)
I made a mistake and built the waystation too big on my battlemap. Thus, the party did not encounter the patrol all together, instead, the patrol had time to spread out on their chores, such as watering their mounts at a large underground pond. Two party members made themselves known to the duergar from the far side of the pond. Captain Flendak Derth sent duergar hunter Kisegar to talk to them while he rallied his scattered troops together. Kisegar was serving the patrol in involuntary servitude to pay off a gambling debt. When Kisegar learned that the party was friendly and generous and anti-slavery, she suggested that they give her money to pay off her debt to free her.
Captain Derth was hostile to the party because they lacked official travel permits and contained gnomes. The duerager were at war with the deep gnomes. Worse, the party tried to pass themselves off a a cirsus troop, but the toil-obsessed Droskar-worshipping duergar view entertainment as an immoral laziness. A fight broke out. The party subdued him easily while trying to explain that they would have permits soon. Kisegar--the most experienced conscious member of the patrol--proposed a truce and accepted money from the party (which was going into her own pocket). The patrol departed to the north to report.
Palies and Caleb - Rebels
A few hours later, the caligni showed up with the party's official travel permits and disguises so that the two gnomes could look like caligni children. The caligni were supposed to be an unexpected encounter, EVENT 3: TRADER IN THE DARK, in which the party comes across their deep gnome trader friend Novvi traveling in a caligni caravan protected by two shadow collector fey Palies and Caleb. However, my players had been smart enough to contact Novvi via Sending and ask her to be their guide in the Darklands. Thus, I reworked the module's chance encounter into a planned rendevous.
I converted Palies and Caleb into caligni themselves, a mother and her son. Novvi was co-owner in the caravan with Palies, but she disguised as a caligni child to avoid conflict with gnome-hating duergar patrols. And the orc inventor Arkus was with them, being inventive as usual. He had temporarily joined the party at the final part of the 2nd module, Fangs of War for the Guns & Gears playtest of the Inventor class. Arkus was a explorer from a deep orc tribe in the Darklands and had visited the surface to investigate the Ironfang Invasion, which had some effects even in the Darklands. The party introduced him to Novvi in the Misthome caves so that he could return home along her trade route. Instead, he had been traveling with Novvi.
The caravan was a land train consisting of six wagons pulled by a tractor. That was not in the module, either, but when I updated Arkus from playtest inventor to official rules inventor, I gave him the vehicle mechanic archetype, too. So I wanted him to be driving the tractor. He had also rebuilt its drive train of the caligni tractor to move twice as fast. The entire module {i]Siege of Stone[/i] was a side quest to the party, who preferred to be on the battlefield stopping the invasion. A fast caravan reduced their travel time by three days to keep the players happier.
Calgni do not take slaves, but they have an oppressive and toxic caste-system culture, so I view them as a contrast that shows that slavery is not the only form of oppression. Palies and Caleb were rebels against the caligni culture.
Calignis lurk in subterranean cities, creeping to the surface to steal, stalk, or make mischief. Each caligni serves in a specific role and grows into a specific form as determined by supernatural traditions and influences in caligni society. Regardless of their size or role, all calignis are gaunt, with pale flesh and white eyes. Some surface dwellers call the caligni “dark folk,” a term they dislike because it doesn’t reflect either their appearance or character, only their environment.
The highest caste of caligni are the Caligni Caller. They perform the ritual that determines a baby caligni's final form and caste. Palies, a high-caste Caligni Stalker librarian, had angered the local caller and he took revenge by dedicating her newborn son Caleb as a low-caste Calign Creeper. Palies lost her husband and her librarian job, so she had purchased a tractor with her last funds and become a traveling merchant. Secretly, she had wanted an excuse to leave the city, because she had learned from her studies how to overcome the infant caste-setting ritual and gave Caleb treatments to grow up big and healthy instead.
Rovalda - Slavemaster
The caravan had some encounters with wildlife as the Long Walk road passed through some natural caverns, but after two days they reached the cavern of the Five-Eyed Matron, named after a weird statue there, that was a crossroads of many tunnels. They encounters a group of duergar pilgrims of Droskar there, led by aristocrat Rovalda, a 13th-level psychic. Rovalda was upset, because her four trox slaves had taken advantage of a distraction to escape. She did not know which tunnel they had taken.
Rovalda saw the elf Zinfandel in the party. She held the stereotype that all surface elves were expert trackers, and demanded that Zinfandel help her track down her escaped slaves. Zinfandel actually was a master tracker, and he pretended to agree. He examined all the tunnels for tracks, and determined that the trox had gone down the tunnel to the Crystal Cavern. However, Zinfandel told Rovalda that the trox had gone down the tunnel to the Windy Reach.
Alas, Rovalda insisted that Zinfandel accompany them in recovering the slaves, so a fight broke out and Rovalda and her guards were defeated in one and a half rounds. None died; rather, the fight ended with Rovalda begging for mercy. The party lectured her that a true follower of Droskar, god of toil, would perform their labors themselves rather than relying on slaves. They made her swear to Droskar to finish her pilgrimage like a common laborer and to never own slaves again.
Kharazhar and Channelvar - Escaped Slaves
The module's next section was the Crystal Cavern, but in my campaign the caravan and the party continued down another side tunnel to Arkus's home village Novrock. That is an interesting setting suggested by Arkus's player, an orc tribe that honors survival rather than warfare. But the only thing related to slavery there is that it had an associated trox village consisting of former slaves and their descendants. The Novrock orcs viewed escaping slavery as an honorable survival challenge, so they respected the trox.
After visiting the orcs and splitting off from the caligni caravan, the party resumed their predetermined path to the Crystal Cavern. They fought some Carnivorous Crystals and then reached the cave of the spirit nagas Synvaar and Sylyeese. The nagas had taken in the two trox slaves Kharazhar and Channelvar after the other two trox slaves had been eaten by the Carnivorous Crystals. The nagas intended that the trox would remain as worshipers and servants to their exalted naganess. But the party gave them directions to the trox village near Novrock orc village and pointed out that the route was temporarily cleared of danger.
The rest of Siege of Stone had no more slaves. The party later found some petrified people and restored them with Stone to Flesh.
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Prisoners of the Blight
Prisoners of the Blight began in Kraggodan and then skipped 70-miles northward to the the center of the Fangwood. The players requested some homebrew content of that journey through Ironfang-conquered territory.
Villagers - Slaves and Blight Victims
I gave the party a map of the Stone Towers, so they headed to one on the way north, next to the Gloaming Woods. I made up Larb Village, and they fought the Ironfang Legion garrison there to free captive villagers. And they closed the Stone Road in the tower there, because I had given them the knowledge how to do that as a reward for their investigation in Siege of Stone.
Some villagers had fled the Ironfang Invasion to hide in the Gloaming Woods. They discovered a patch of darkblight infection there and five villagers had caught darkblight. The party had to learn to cure it, which required both removing a curse and curing the disease. The primal casters trained in Medicine had no trouble with curing disease, but Remove Curse is not on the primal spell list. The druid had multiclassed to cleric, but could not cast 4th-level divine spells. They obtained wands and scrolls of Remove Curse from the city of Longshadow and all the villagers were cured, mostly one per day due to the wand's daily use limitation. A side detail is that the first person to catch the darkblight in the Gloaming Woods had involuntarily become a cleric of Cyth-V'Sug and the party had to persuade her to risk the wrath of Cyth-V'Sug to accept a cure. They did it by feeding her delicious waffles, inspiring a longing for the good things of her former life.
Taurgreth, Afet, Dontat, Emnas, and Hadar - Controlled
Gendowyn and other fey - Imprisoned
Prisoners of the Blight dealt with the subjects of Queen Arlantia, the self-styled Princess of the Blasted Heath. When Arlantia had overthrown and imprisoned Gendowyn, Lady of Fangwood, seven centuries ago, the fey of Gendowyn's court had fought back, but the current-day fey accepted Arlantia as their ruler. The strong among them vied for status in Arlantia's court rather than seeking a better ruler. The party avoided fighting them; instead, they claimed they were emissaries from Nirmathas. The only fights were with unintelligent wildlife, and even then, the vine leshy Honey talked with unintelligent Viper Vines and persuaded them not to attack.
We don't see any enslavement until deep in Queen Arlantia's lair. The hobgoblin emissaries from the Ironfang Legion, spymaster Taurgreth and his four bodyguard commandos Afet, Dontat, Emnas, and Hadar, were mind-controlled by the blight. Arlantia had given them orders to fight the visitors for Nirmathas to the death to see who was better. Taurgreth died in the fight, but the party managed to knock the commandos unconscious and cure them of the blight and the mind control.
The commandos teamed up with the party to defeat Arlantia, well, except I added a plot twist that sent them all to Gendowyn's prison, the inescapable Demiplane of Exile. After the party freed everyone from the demiplane through clever use of class abilities to contact their dimension-traveling friends in Numeria, the commandos returned to the Ironfang Legion while the party returned to Queen Arlantia's lair to take her down. Gossamer, the former leader of a fey rebellion against Queen Arlantia, accompanied them and deliberately left Gendowyn behind with the Numerians because she was too important to risk.
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Vault of the Onyx Citadel
Humans of Phaendar - Slaves
In Vault of the Onyx Citadel slavery comes up in PART 2: HOMECOMING, where the party finally takes back Phaendar, the village where the adventure path started, from the Ironfang Legion and frees their former Phaendar neighbors from forced labor in captivity.
Back in the opening post of this thread, I said:
The party insisted that the Ironfang Legion would have to free all the villagers that they had captured and enslaved, as a necessary condition for the truce.
The Ironfang Legion did not agree. No truce was made, but the withdrawal took place regardless. And the party attacked Phaendar, killed half the Ironfang Legion troops garrisoned there, and freed all the villagers in forced labor there. No truce meant they could attack in good conscience.
My players were so concerned about the humans captive in Phaendar that they had freed them right before Siege of Stone, two modules early! Their rescue, in which the party dug a tunnel beneath fortified Phaendar with a Dig-Widget, and then sent the slaves down the tunnel and loaded them onto flatboats floating down the Marideth River is a wonderful story, but it would be out of order to tell it here.
Ironfang Veterans - War Prisoners
Since we had run the attack on Phaendar early, I invented a substitute battle for the beginning of Vault of the Onyx Citadel. During the international war council in PART 1: ALLIES AND ENEMIES the fey representative Gossamer was supposed to say, “While you quarrel over every fraction of silver, the fey of the Fangwood have learned of an onyx tower within our realm! Everyone should be ashamed that while we talk, the Accressiel Court alone takes action to push back against the Legion!”
Sigh. I knew that my players' reaction would be, "Tell us the location. We will join the battle!" So I homebrewed the battle. The Ironfang Legion was not attacking the Fangwood itself. They were attacking the Nirmathi town of Emberville, located in some cleared land that that Gendowyn still considered within the Fangwood.
The party joined in, and half the Ironfang troops in Emberville died quickly. The other half surrendered.
What is the party supposed to do with prisoners of war who are too powerful to be contained by ordinary prisons? For the battle, the party found eight 16th-level Colossal-sized troops of 32 veteran soldiers, but that meant that each veteran was a 6th-level individual.
Fortunately, the Lastwall representative Daq Sontine offered to take the prisoners to Lastwall. Thus, the party did not have to guard prisoners. The commander of the troops, 16th-level halfling tiefling Richelle Redrage, was sent to Numeria to be watched over by 18th-level Val Baine.
Pech Smiths of Stonehone - Unpaid Labor
In PART 3: ENTERING THE VAULT the PCs are supposed to arrive at Stonehome as their starting place in the Vault on the Elemental Plane on Earth due to a chance misalignment of their Stone Road opened by the Sardonyx Shard. My players did not use a Stone Road. Instead, they had requested a ride on Casandalee's Numerian dimension-hopping ship Skipping Stone using the Sardonyx Shard as a precise planar key. The magical trickster Sam was legendary in Arcana and had realized that the Onyx Citadel would be able to detect them using the Sardonyx Shard to open a Stone Road to the Vault. Thus, they cheated to sneak into the Vault.
I love the resourcefulness and cleverness of my players, but it meant a lot of rewriting. The party spent a few days secretly sabotaging the geomantic nexuses of the Vault with Numerian nanotechnology and I put a seventh geomantic nexus next to Stonehome to give them a reason to visit there. The Vault Keeper Ziguch the Seventh Facet had escaped captivity by the Ironfang Legion in the Onyx Citadel by teleporting to the Sand Nexus. He left a note that he was going to the abandoned research station nearby. The party figured out that the research station was drawing power from the nexus and found it by tracking the invisible power flow.
The caves around the research station were Stonehome, the village of the pechs. In the module as written, the party would arrive at Stonehome just as the Ironfang Legion--who had been ignoring the pechs for over a year--decided to subdue the pech village by sending a CR 16 shaitan and two iron golems. I instead decided that the Ironfang Legion had subdued Stonehome long before, and were forcing the pech smiths to forge enchanted weapons for the Ironfang soldiers. That explained how the Ironfang veteran soldiers who attacked Emberville had so many enchanted weapons.
The shaitan Shaakhib, a local hireling of the Ironfang Legion, showed up with two iron golems pulling wagons to collect this month's weapons. The party pretended to be interdimensional explorers (no one had informed Shaakhib about the Chernasardo Elite party that regularly battled the Ironfang Legion in Nirmathas) and argued with Shaakhib that the pechs should be paid for their labor. Shaakhib had boasted of his martial prowess, so the party challenged him to spar with the catfolk monk Ren'zar-jo with the wages for the pechs as the stakes. Ren'zar-jo won easily, and Shaakhib paid the pechs for this month's weapons out of his own wealth.
This is also when the Ironfang Legion learned that the party was in the Vault. The legion did not entirely trust Shaakhib, so they scryed on him with a crystal ball. Party members with magical senses spotted the scrying and dispelled it, but their enemy had a glimpse of them. The Ironfang Legion sent Kraelos and his cavalry to defeat the party, but the ride there took hours.
Ziguch the Seventh Facet and the Endless Storm - Controlled and Controller
The grateful pechs showed the party the secret entrance to the research station. After dealing with traps, the party talked to the hobgoblin lab subject Oktar, who explained that Ziguch was an evil experimenter working with a 20th-level Immortal Ichor named the Endless Storm. (Oktar had been in a regeneration tube so long that he had not heard of the Chernasardo Elite either.) The party fought past some constructs and confronted Ziguch and the Endless Storm. Sense Motive checks quickly revealed that Ziguch was mentally dominated by the Endless Storm, so they killed the ichor and left Ziguch alive and free.
I rewrote the story of how Ziguch the Seventh Facet had ended up controlled. The Ironfang Legion had overrun the Onyx Citadel where the four Vault Keepers lived and captured Ziguch. The dark naga researcher Zanathura had Ziguch guarded so that he could not use his innate Teleport spell, but Ziguch had made a deal with the Endless Storm--used as a divine power source by the Vault Keepers--for an instant teleport for both to escape. And then the Endless Storm charmed and dominated Ziguch until the Vault Keeper was his mind-controlled minion and his hands for his evil experiments.
Cathzoom the Breaking Wave - Slave
After the party left Stonehome and defeated Kraelos between Stonehome and the Onyx Citadel, they decided to camp for the night in a forest beside Lake Argent in a camouflaged Resplendent Mansion. But the crystal ball operators of the Ironfang Legion were actively scrying for them and eventually succeeded. Too bad Scrying provides an image but not a location. The Ironfang Legion sent a boat out to check all the forests along Lake Argent. The party lured the boat to the shore and beat up the troops on it. Now they had a boat to reach the island of the Onyx Citadel rather than using the well-guarded bridge.
For the boat, I gave the Ironfang Legion a high-tech hovercraft. It could be driven only by a trained technological pilot, so I added a second surviving Vault Keeper named Cathzoom the Breaking Wave. The party not only freed him, but also contacted Ziguch via Sending so that the two could re-unite.
The guard assigned to prevent Cathzoom from using his innate Teleport was Hadar, one of the hobgoblin commandos that the party had rescued and allied with in the lair of Queen Arlantia. Back in the lair the commandos had reverently wrapped the dead body of Taurgreth and tucked it into their bag of holding. General Azaersi asked Azlowe, the high prienst of Hadregash, to resurrect spymaster Taurgreth when the commandos brought back his body. And the commandos were re-assigned to work for Azlowe, who did not trust them and put them on slave-supervision duty. The party released Hadar and the surviving troops to walk home, because the walk was long enough that the party would invade the Onyx Citadel before the hobgoblins arrived. Cathzoom drove the party in the hovercraft to another hiding spot to finish their night's rest.
Humans in the Onyx Citadel - Slaves
Ziguch had given the party the full floor plans for the Onyx Citadel, including the secret doors. Thus, the party flew up to the Onyx Tower invisibly and entered by the third floor, bypassing the forces on the first and second floors. One empty hallway had been converted to a mess hall with human slaves serving food to hobgoblin troops. When the party broke in, the slaves ran down to the second floor. The PCs commented that that was the safest action, because both sides were throwing area-of-effect spells that would have instantly killed the low-level human slaves. The party faced too many dangers to take freed slaves into tow.
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Ending Slavery
The truce negotiations after the assault on Longshaodw had failed over slavery. The hobgoblins would not give up due to their cultural adherence to Hadregash, barghest hero-god of dominion and slavery. Then the adventure path sent the party away from the Ironfang Invasion in the next two modules, Siege of Stone and Prisoners of the Blight. Slavery and captivity did come up with other people, such as the duergar of the Darklands. When the party resumed fighting the Ironfang Legion in the homebrew journey to Larb Village, the homebrew battle at Emberville, and at the Onxy Citadel, the hobgoblin slaveholding-culture was not immediately relevant. It really mattered only during treaty negotiations. However, I had to make sure the end-of-game treaty negotiations would not stall over this issue, because otherwise the war would not end.
I resolved the hobgoblin adherence to Hadregash in a classical fantasy style. The party killed Hadregash.
How can mortals kill a god in Pathfinder? (Ren'zar-jo's player linked to the video DargothWave to express this sentiment.) Well, the party contained a god of their own. Many levels ago, when gods such as Gendowyn became involved in the campaign, the leshy PC Twining Gold-Flame Honeysuckle expressed a dream of becoming the god of familiars. Her backstory is that she had started as a familiar. Thus, I created a Godhood Archetype for her. She needed a source of divine energy. The description of Immortal Ichor says, "An immortal ichor is an intelligent mass of blood from a dead evil deity." When the party defeated the immortal ichor Endless Storm at the Stonehome research station, the god Grandmother Spider in Anadi form appeared in the room for cleanup. But instead of using a celestial mop, she instructed Honey to fetch some soil, mixed the remains with it, and let Honey sink her roots into it to absorb the divine energy. And the player retrained one of Honey's underperforming class feats to the Godhood Dedication. Honey became a fledgling god but still could be killed by mortal means.
The champion in the party followed Grandmother Spider, so I asked if she wanted to talk to her god. The player of the champion dislikes the talking part of roleplaying, so she passed.
In the Onyx Citadel, the party was trying for minimum encounters against Ironfang troops. They had Kraelos's key to open doors. As they advanced toward the Transposition Engine room where the main villains worked, they locked the doors behind them and also jammed the locks via Thievery checks. But barghest high priest Azlowe had a barghest's Dimension Door innate ability, so he could catch up to the party. A 20th-level cleric is outmatched by a 19th-level party with seven members, so Azlowe cast one of his strongest spells, Avatar, to channel the power of his god Hadregash into himself. Instead, Azlowe disappeared and a 23rd-level avatar of Hadregash appeared. Hadregash personally wanted to kill Honey before she became an immortal.
An oversized 19th-level party could handle a 23rd-level enemy, but some PCs would die in the battle. To keep Honey alive, the god Chaldira appeared to Honey in a secret vision and explained that a coalition of gods was supporting her in her battle against Hadregash. Each god would grant her one favor to keep her alive and winning. However, the favor had to be invisible to Hadregash or else he would ask for similar favors from his divine allies, so it had to be something like restoring hit points, restoring a spell slot, or slightly altering the effects of a spell such as removing the Incapacitation trait. The gods who aided Honey were Chaldira (The Calamitous Turn), Chohar (The Golden Lion), Droskar (The Dark Smith), and Cayden Cailean (The Accidental God). Gendowyn (Lady of the Fangwood) showed up in the last vision, but had very little to do, so she just restored everyone's focus points for the upcoming battles.
I underestimated how good my players are at keeping each other alive. The champion stepped up and prevented or absorbed most of the damage Hadregash dealt to Honey. A lucky roll let the magical trickster rogue frighten Hadregash with a Demoralize, which let the ranger and thief rogue hit him with abilities that made him flat-footed. Honey buffed the party and blinded Hadregash with a de-incapacitated spell, and cast Regenerate on herself to make herself tougher to kill. Others positioned themselves between Hadregash and Honey so that he either had to spend actions on Shoving them or use ranged spell attacks on Honey. Sometimes, he attacked Honey's defenders instead, but he was blind by then.
When the avatar of Hadregash dropped unconscious and dying, an avatar of Lamashtu appeared. That avatar had no stats, because the party could not defeat her. Lamashtu told them that Hadregash would be out of circulation for a while, until he gave up that slavery notion. Lamashtu wants a tooth-and-claw world in which horrendous monsters fight for dominance and survival. Slaveholding is not a fight. It is deliberately keeping another creature too weak to fight. Lamashtu was pleased that the party had treated two clerics of Lamashtu with respect and had taken down Hadregash for his flaws, but she would handle him at this point.
Honey asked Lamashtu if she could eat Hadregash. Lamashtu slit the throat of the avatar herself and offered the body to Honey. Azlowe reappeared unharmed. Lamashtu instructed him to warn his underlings that Hadregash's clerics would be cut off from divine magic, but they could rededicate themselves to Lamashtu or another barghest hero-god to regain their magic. She teleported Azlowe out of the room to spread this message and disappeared herself.
The party leveled up to 20th level. Honey retrained more class feats (I am quite lax about retraining feats) to met the prerequisites for capstone 20th-level Godhood feat. She is now an immortal god, with an afterlife and spells to grant, but personally only as powerful as a 20th-level character.
I figure that the loss of Hadregash as an active god will undermine the beliefs that he spread among the hobgoblins.
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Negotiations
The party continued down to the Transposition Engine room. In the room before it, they met spymaster Taurgreth and some lower-level minions. Taurgreth know better than to fight the party, because he had already lost to them once. But he sent a secret message to Azaersi to warn her that they were coming. And he warned the party that Azaersi appeared to be under Zanathura's Dominate spell.
The party entered the Transposition Engine room to prepared opposition. But Sam and Ren'zar-jo's first actions were to jump over the line of opponents to stop Zanathura before she could destroy Molthune and Nirmathas with the engine, and Honey's first action was to dispel the Dominate on Azaersi. Zanathura was prepared with Time Stop and Bilocation to activate the engine, but her hasty method had inadequate protective shields and would kill thousands of underprotected hobgoblins. This sent Azaersi against her, she told her troops to stand down, and she helped knock Zanathura unconscious. Then Azaersi and the party had to work together to deactivate the engine.
Thus, the adventure path ended with cooperation. That was my plan, bwahaha, because it gave the best chance for a treaty.
The Numerian strix skald Kirii joined the treaty negotiation. Casandalee had shown up in the Vault on the Skipping Stone that morning to check on the progress in sabotaging the geomentic nexuses and learned that the assault on the Onyx Citadel would be that day. Casandalee had volunteered to drive the hovercraft to deliver the party to the island of the Onyx Citadel, because she was a high-tech pilot, while her copilot returned to Numeria to fetch more help. The Numerian nanotechnology at the geomantic nexuses could shut down the Transposition Engine remotely, but the task was best supervised by a high-level expert in technology. The party and Kirii were careful not to mention this backup plan to Azaersi, because that might ruin the spirit of cooperation.
After my Iron Gods campaign the PC Kirii had become a 20th-level professional diplomat. The same player from Iron Gods ran Kirii after I told her the goals of the Numerians, Kirii had an offer for the Ironfang Legion, in some ways a similar offer to the one Molthuni General Lord Vetrigan Sebine had given her a decade ago, though he had failed to live up to his promise. Kirii would need troops. In 300 years a space fleet of the Dominion of the Black would arrive at Golarion. The Golarians would be ready for them with a bigger space fleet, but they would prefer experienced warriors piloting the fleet. An Androffan space station was in orbit around Golarion's sun (we had a strange ending to the Iron Gods adventure path) and that could be their new home where they would learn technology. Then the hobgoblin pilots would go into suspended animation for 270 years while the Golarion space fleet was built. Some hobgoblins could instead stay awake and raise families of technology-savvy descendents to team up with the Ironfang Legion.
The remaining members of the Ironfang Legion who did not want to go into space could return to Nirmathas. The party and Azaersi negotiated land south of the Marideth River and north of the Deepcut River for the Ironfang Legion to settle in. Their homeland Oprak would be a province of Nirmathas, not an independent country, but that meant that Nirmathas promised to protect them against retribution. Nirmathas does not allow slavery, so their war captives would go free.
That is as far as the negotiations went. Next week he players and I might roleplay more negotiations about how Nirmathas and Molthune react to the agreement, or we might immediately move on to a followup quest involving Argwyn from pages 66-57 of Vault of the Onyx Citadel. The party has to kill a false god.
I was surprised that Azaersi survived the battle. The party planned ahead with their goal being the prevention of the Onyx Citadel crashing down to destroy Nirmathas and Molthune, and part of their plan was to get Azaersi on their side immediately. Once I saw that, I manipulated events (i.e., the inadequate shields and pre-programmed transposition engine) to create emergency cooperation between the party and Azaersi. This made future cooperation from Azaersi on the treaty more plausible.
Kraggodan, Nirmathas, or Molthune will probably demand that General Azaersi be punished for the invasion: this issue was discussed earlier in this thread. I figure that Kraggodan will satisfied to receive Zanathura (still alive) for her theft of the Onyx Key. Azaersi will agree to that so long as Kraggodan promises to not execute her and releases Dendrak in exchange. Nirmathas lacks a strong central government that can override the decisions that the party makes in the name of Nirmathas. And Nirmathas loves to snub the demands of Molthune. But if negotiations go sour in the next game session, then Azaersi can disappear from the face of Golarion and live in the space station for the rest of her life--which will be very long because she will be in suspended animation after she is trained in technology. She will make a good run on her name Aza the Immortal (page 5 of Trail of the Hunted).
In summary the party ended enslavement by the Ironfang Legion through:
1) Killing an avatar of Hadregash to remove slavery from his religion.
2) The Numerians offering the Ironfang Legion a non-slaveholding job on a space station.
3) #2 reduced the size of Oprak so that it became a province of Nirmathas.
4) Two local goddesses, Gendowyn and Honey, object to slavery.
When I made the list of gods who would covertly support Honey during her battle with Hadregash, I checked the gods with the Family domain and the Toil domain, the two domains that Honey's player had already chosen (Family represents the relationship between familiar and partner, and toil represents their partnership). The evil dwarven god Droskar was on the Toil list, and I decided that he liked the party's theological argument to Rovalda that a follower of Droskar should toil themselves rather than lazily assign work to slaves. Thus, we have an excuse why the Duergar/Hryngar might give up slavery themselves.
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Game Session on Friday, August 11, 2023
I began with a recap of the negotiations and asked the players if they wanted to add any more negotiations, such as with the nations of Nirmathas and Molthune. They said that they were happy for me to invent a resolution rather than roleplay it, but they had some questions, such as why General Azaersi was so quick to agree to a treaty?
I read them some lines from the module, such as the final paragraph, and they were aghast. The module expected that the party would agree to a ceasefire while leaving the Ironfang Legion in control of the territory they had conquered, the slaves they had captured, the Onyx Key and its ability to make Stone Roads, the Onyx Citadel, and all its weapons? With no reparations? My players pointed out that their characters were killers of armies. The battle at Emberville against 16th-level veteran troop units had proven that--and a party sticking closer to the module as written would have proven that at Phaendar. How could PCs who had such an advantage agree to simply "No more fighting" as the final conclusion?
The Lost Omens World Guide fixed that a little. Its map shows that Oprak has different boundaries from the territory illustrated in the SOUTHERN NIRMATHAS AND IRONFANG TERRITORIES map on the inside front cover of Vault of the Onyx Citadel. Apparently, the Ironfang Legion retreated to the Mindspin Mountains and built a fresh new capital city named Hunthul there.
Azaersi’s legion rapidly conquered much of southwestern Nirmathas, and she would have extended her domain further if a group of heroes had not raised a militia to halt her advance. The militia commanders eventually confronted Azaersi in the Onyx Citadel and convinced her that her relentless warmongering would bring nothing but destruction to her people. Exhausted by the toll the war had taken on her army, her friendships, and herself, Azaersi elected to withdraw her troops into the mountains and use the Onyx Citadel to establish Oprak as a homeland for hobgoblins and other creatures seen as monsters.
Azaersi carved her lands on Golarion from a sparsely inhabited section of the Mindspin Mountains between Nirmathas and Nidal.
I mentioned before how that "sparsely inhabited" phrase bothered me. I recently watched a TED-Ed YouTube video, One of history's most dangerous myths - Anneliese Mehnert about the Empty Land Myth that clarified my unease. The Ironfang Legion was making excuses that the people they conquered were too few to matter.
My players also wondered why Azaersi was so quick to believe Numerian diplomat Kirii after she had been betrayed by humans on a similar deal. The Numerians were strangers to Azaersi. One of the reasons I had selected Kirii as the person to make the offer is that she is a strix, a species with a reputation for hating humans (Kirii in our Iron Gods backstory came from a separate tribe in the Shudderwood in Ustalav, which as willing to work with humans to fight off the demons of the Worldwound, but Azaersi never heard of that tribe). And Kirii had the Legendary Negotiation feat And so did Sam, Honey, and Val Baine: our roleplaying has lots of diplomacy. That much persuasive skill from non-humans was enough to sway Azaersi. (Val was the only human in the negotiations, and she was a sylph-like mutant so not fully human.)
The party did care about the human slaves in the Onyx Citadel. Azaersi offered to send them back via a Stone Road, but the slaves trusted Kirii's offer of a lift back on the Numerian dimension-hopping spaceship Skipping Stone better. The party returned via their own Plane Shift spell and met the Skipping Stone at Longshadow. The slaves had come from villages near Longshadow, such as Ecru. Familiar NPCs from Longshadow stepped up to help the freed slaves.
Honey had taken the skill feat Evangelize and was trying it out to spread the new religion of Honey, goddess of familiars and animal companions, service, pride, and personal growth, in Longshadow. Summoner Cirieo Thessaddin was interested. The other players took this opportunity to ask tough questions, such as, "What about undead familiars?" Honey explained that animating undead directly as a familiar would be an unacceptable involuntary relationship, but accepting a willing existing undead creature as a familiar would be acceptable in her religion.
The party got a good night's sleep in Longshadow and Sam used his Greater Pendant of the Occult to update people across Nirmathas. This included Gendowyn, so in the morning, Sam was greeted by the fey harmona Thornbill with an invitation to Gendowyn's court to discuss an urgent mission.
The party fast-traveled to the Blighted Region--at the end of Prisoners of the Blight Gendowyn had gifted them with a Major Staff of Nature's Cunning that also had a mass Tree Stride that can carry up to 15 people and extradimensional Bags of Holding. I described how she had cleared way the Blight from around the ruins of the Old Palace and had preserved the unblighted Giant Sundew (a modified Giant Flytrap with acid powers) that the party had taken pains to not kill. She explained that she has been focussing her efforts on restoring this central blighted region, but other parts of the Fangwood needed immediate attention. Deadeye's Gulch in the southeastern Marideth River Valley was infested with undead and she felt a flicker of her own power behind it. The god Cyth-V'sug had once turned her own power against her, and she feared this was a remnant. She had sent Thornbill to investigate, and a wight had cast a 9th-level Massacre spell at him, so she wanted high-level characters to deal with this matter.
The elf ranger Zinfandel had heard of Deadeye's Gulch, now called Deadeye's Haunt, back during the war council at the beginning of Vault of the Onyx Citadel. He had taken that opportunity in Nirmathas' capital Tamran to look through old military records about his sister Carmenere. who had disappeared while fighting for the Nirmathi side during the Nirmathi war for independence. Her last known location was Deadeye's Gulch, soon before the accidental war crime that had cursed the valley and given rise to undead there. The party volunteered to deal with the problem at Deadeye's Haunt.
They went to the village Acorn's Rest near Deadeye's Haunt and learned that previous attempts to kill off the undead had made no progress, so people instead avoided the place, except for a few daring hunters. And the hunters reported that the undead there had become much more powerful a little over one week ago, the day that the party had freed Gendowyn and killed Queen Arlantia.
The party went to the valley (I copied a similar valley in Canada off of Google Maps) and fought five Dragonscarred Dead and two homemade 16th-level undead that I call Zombie Ranger and Bear. This was a 21-xp encounter, less than Trivial Threat, but I wanted to show that the weak fringes of the valley were more than the locals could handle. And since those were intelligent undead, they shouted slogans such as, "Protect the Fangwood for Argwyn!" The druid who had cursed the valley was Jet Rivenwoad, so who was Argwyn?
Thus, the party has moved past further negotiations and moved into Continuing The Campaign pages 66-67, greatly modified to mix with Zinfandel's backstory.
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Game Session on Friday, August 18, 2023
We had stopped last week, August 11, when the last of the Dragonscarred Dead and the two active homebrew 16th-level 380-hp Zombie Ranger and Bear pairs were destroyed, but Ren'zar-jo was standing next to a mound that Zinfandel had realized was a Zombie Ranger and Bear pair in hidden form. Since I used a green polar bear as my zombie bear, I figured that they could curl up with the ranger underneath to magically look like a grassy mound.
Sam had the first turn and advanced. Zinfandel had the next turn, and he shot the hidden Zombie Ranger and Bear pair to reveal its location. The party was still Hasted, so Zinfandel got in five shots for about 80 damage.
Honey had a 9th-level Implosion spell active from last week, and the Effortless Concentration sorcerer feat to sustain it every turn as a free action. But Implosion can hit each target only once, so she hit the newly revealed Zombie Ranger and Bear pair for 75 damage with Implosion and then used all three of her actions to Stride forward. In the long run, Sam and Honey were the trail breakers, but Sam was sneaking and Honey was in the open, so Honey with the weak AC of a sorcerer became the favorite first target of new opponents.
Other party members attacked the Zombie Ranger and Bear pair, so the zombie pair survived only to Ren'zar-jo's turn. Those PCs did not advance forward as fast as Sam and Honey due to their attacks. The gnome rogue Binny remained elusive rather than attacking because her player was absent that week. Mere 16th-level opponents were easily overcome by the six active members of the 20th-level party, so the party did not need Binny to be active. This area was supposed to represent the trivial-threat perimeter of Deadeye's Haunt.
The next opponent was a 16th-level Undead Trebuchet, based on the 13th-level Animated Trebuchet and aided by two 14th-level Zombie Siege Engineers who could load and repair the trebuchet with their actions. Sam performed a stealthy Disable Device action on the trebuchet's arm, letting the other players approach with fewer stones lobbed at them, but the siege engineers quickly repaired it. Honey took some damage from a catapulted stone, but she got three Implosions against that crew. Zinfandel was still rooted in the spot where she had begun the game session, because with a high-level ranger's ability to see through the forest and shoot far without penalty, she could attack the opponents from there.
The rest of the Lower Deadeye's Gulch map held another Zombie Ranger and Bear pair and another Undead Trebuchet with two Zombie Siege Engineers. Zinfandel finally had to advance, but she had the ability to move through the difficult terrain of the forest at full speed rather that following the curve of the Deadeye's Gulch's stream, and she was a fleet elf under a Haste spell, so she did so quickly.
Amusingly, Honey managed to keep sustaining the Implosion against a different target every turn. Her initial 1-minute Haste spell ran out on the last round on that map, and the Implosion would have run out the next round, so that was 9 targets.
The party advanced to the next map, Upper Deadeye's Gulch, which I had built around the Sacred Spring map from 2-Minute Tabletop. The spring was serving as the shrine to Erastil mentioned in the backstory of Deadeye's Haunt. And near it was 20th-level graveknight druid Jet Rivenwoad. Closer to the party were two 18th-level druid wights.
One wight cast 9th-level Storm of Vengeance on the entire party, starting with lightning. The entire party made their saves, some for half damage and others for no damage (high Dexterity and evasion are pretty common among them). The other wight self-buffed and moved toward the party. Honey cast mass Haste again and the buffed wight became the target of many ranged attacks and died at the monk Ren'zar-jo's fists.
We ended there for the night.
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Game Session on Friday, August 25, 2023 - End of Campaign
We knew at the beginning of the game session that it would be the last one in our Ironfang Invasion campaign. We had finished the adventure path and Binny's player is leaving for college this week. Thus, we played for speed.
The party had just killed one druid wight. The other one sustained its Storm of Vengeance for acid rain this time, because it had no saves. Only Stormdancer, riding his roc animal companion was out of the area of the storm and avoided damage. Then the wight Strode over to Ren'zar-jo and hit him with a claw Strike. Ren'zar-jo failed the DC 38 Fortitude save against the wight's Drain Life by rolling a natural 2 (and spent a hero point for a reroll and rolled a natural 3) and became drained 1. Finally, the enemy was leaving a mark on the party! The graveknight Jet Rivenwoad cast Fly on herself and flew toward the party.
Zinfandel spotted Rivenwoad through the trees--she was only 10 feet up--and shot at her instead of the wight. But the big effect was Honey's Summon Kaiju to summon Vorgozen the Shapeless Feeder and its Pollute Magic effect. Since Rivenwoad had a Fly spell on her, she had to save versus sickness and she failed for Sickened 2. The wight had no spells on it and was unaffected.
Binny shot the wight from stealth, making it flat-footed with her Precise Debilitation. The champion Tikti Strode to the wight and dealt enough damage that Ren'zar-jo was able to kill it with enough actions left over to move to the top of a broken catapult next to Rivenwoad.
Rivenwoad tried to shake off the sickness and failed twice. She spent the rest of her turn monologueing about how she and Deadeye's Gulch were a monument to the crimes of both Nirmathas and Molthune, mentioned that even if they killed her she would return, but Argwyn would return first.
Then Rivenwoad took a bunch of ranged attacks. Sam paused before his attack to ask if anyone needed Rivenwoad alive (er, animated), but no-one had a reason. Ren'zar-jo could reach her from atop the catapult, so he finished her.
The party Treated Wounds and examined the sacred spring for clues about the curse of undeath on the valley. They determine that it had been dedicated to Gendowyn before being re-dedicated to Erastil and had been a magical repository to help the Fangwood flourish. And they saw that it could serve as a portal. They were reluctant to enter the portal, since they had once been caught in a portal trap, but that seemed the only next step. They dived in.
The next map was the Glowing Grotto representing a waystation inside the portal. Four winged elf angels with ghost-touch halberds guarded the passage. One was named Carmenere. Zinfandel's player instantly recognized the clue and Zinfandel greeted his long-lost sister despite her growing wings.
The four guardian elves explained that they had been a scouting party for North Molthune (now called Nirmathas) during the war of independence when their forces had mistaken Rivenwoad's druids for Molthune soldiers, spilled the blood of innocents, and earned Rivenwoad's dying curse. Learning of the friendly fire afterwards, they had scouted to the sacred spring and been greeted by an angel. The angel explained that the curse had opened a portal to a pocket dimension of negative energy, void, and shadow. Undead shadow monsters would invade this plan unless they volunteered to serve as powerful einherji who could stop the monsters before they exited the portal. The angel explained that they would return to mortal form when the portal closed. By the old prophecies, this would happen in 260 years, but prophecies were no longer reliable in the Age of Lost Omens. The four elf scouts agreed.
And thus I explained the undocumented disappearance of Zinfandel's sister from Zinfandel's backstory.
A winged elf Pomelo explained that they had fought a great number of undead in the first decade, such as dread wraiths, but then the enemies had thinned down to mostly shadow creatures. In recent years a betobeto-san named Donnelly stopped in for conversation, but was willing to sink back to the shadow pocket rather than fight his way to the material world. Donnelly had explained that the demigod Argwyn was trapped in the shadow pocket.
Argwyn is from the Continuing the Campaign section of Vault of the Onyx Citadel. It said that she would arrive from the First World and claim to be Gendowyn's daughter.
The reality is—as ever, regarding fey—a complex blend of truth and lie. Argwyn arrived from the First World and indeed bears Gendowyn’s blood, but her home is deep within the Fangwood itself. This unusual fey is Arlantia’s greatest abomination: a fusion of her own dryad spirit and the near-divine essence stolen from Gendowyn over her centuries of imprisonment. Arlantia had hoped their “daughter” would be able to walk through the wards placed by the dwarves of Kraggodan and carry a new version of her Darkblight—deceptively beautiful blood-red flowers and vines—to new regions of the forest, but human greed destroyed the wards without requiring her involvement. As with many of her schemes, Arlantia eventually forgot about this project and left her bastard child sealed within the fungal heart of Arhlantu—until the PCs’ arrival removed Arlantia from the picture and shattered the heart.
Thus, Argwyn was a demigod like Gendowyn and Honey, a CR 23/MR 10 challenge on her stat block. I had replaced the Gendowyn's captivity within the fungal heart of Arhlantu with exile to a demiplane that did not allow planeshift magic (this was the portal trap I had sprung on the party previously. They escaped with Gendowyn and all the other prisoners). I rewrote Argwyn's origin, see below, but she is still technically Gendowyn's dark descendant.
The party dived into the Glowing Grotto's pool to enter the shadow pocket dimension. I assembled a map from three 2-Minute Tabletop images: Sacred Spring (Night), Luminescent Cave, and Cavern Fungiwood. They arrived at the Nighttime Sacred Spring and talked to two betobeto-san there, Donnelly and Minerva. Donnelly explained that he had been there for only several years, but Argwyn had been there for centuries, so he was uncertain of her origin. The owb prophet in the Luminescent Cave would know more, but owbs tell half-truths to manipulate people. However, in the past week Argwyn began gathering an army of shadow creatures.
The party talked to the Owb Prophet. It said that Argwyn had been tossed into emptiness by her creator Cyth-V'Sug (the fungus god behind the darkblignt infestation in the Fangwood) and had been awaken by the owb so that they could bargain for divine favors from her. The shadow pocket formed around her. It also said that it would tell them how to remove the curse on Deadeye's Gulch if they killed the caligni caravan master Palies, who was a heretic against the owb teachings. The party had met Palies on the Long Walk in Siege of Stone and refused to kill her. The owb prophet used its Shadow's Swiftness ability to vanish to the Shadow Plane.
Further into the Luminescent Cave the party encountered four 17th-level Alapolo and four 18th-level homebrew Shadow Dog Packs. I had built this encounter as a combat challenge. Instead, Sam danced with the Alapolo shadow fey and used his Animal Lore from his Animal Whisperer background to befriend the dogs--his first chance to use it in all 20 levels of play! The party passed them peacefully.
In the Cavern Fungiwood they encountered two Namorrodor, which they recognized as a kind of shadowy undead. Zinfandel killed one with his longbow and damaged the other, and Honey finished the other. They were only 5th level, thrown in for undead flavor.
Finally, the party reached 23rd-level Argwyn and her 20th-level Shadow Worm. And they talked to her.
Argwyn explained that her time in the shadow pocket was over. Once Arlantia, queen of the Fangwood, died, she would return to the Fangwood to rule in her place as Cyth-V'Sug intended. Arlantia's death eight days ago had been unexpectedly early, since an owb prophecy said that Queen Arlantia would rule for 900 years until she died in battle with the god Aroden, so Argwyn needed to recruit an army first, but all she had gathered so far was the alapolo, the shadow dogs, and the shadow worm. In a few more weeks she would have a big enough army storm through the portal and claim the Fangwood.
The party pointed out that Gendowyn had alreay returned to rule the Fangwood again. Argwyn said that Cyth-V'Sug had created her from Gendowyn's shadow as a Reflection. She had defeated Gendowyn once already, in a surprise attack while Gendowyn battled Arlantia. Argwyn was sure that Gendowyn must hate her, so the two would have to battle. After all, Arlantia had rejected her as a potential rival for the throne of the Fangwood's Accressiel Court,, so Cyth-V'Sug had cast her into emptiness to wait until she had a role again.
The party asked her to meet with Gendowyn before declaring war on her, so they led her and her pet Shadow Worm to the Sacred Spring portal. The winged elf guardians refused to let Argwyn and her worm pass peacefully, so Sam decided to see whether they were close enough to the material world to get a Sending spell through and succeeded in contacting Gendowyn. An hour later, Gendowyn and the harmona Thornbill appeared in the Glowing Grotto via the sacred spring. During that hour, the water portal from the Glowing Grotto to the shadow pocket dried up.
Gendowyn and Argwyn were barely introduced to each other when the Glowing Grotto vanished and everyone there appeared in Deadeye's Grotto beside the sacred spring. The wing elves reverted to ordinary elves, though one demonstrated that as a reward for service, they could temporarily conjure wings again. Sam felt bad about leaving behind the shadow dogs, so he and Honey made a quick plane shift to the shadow pocket again, but instead appeared on the Shadow Plane among the alapolo and the shadow dogs. The shadow pocket had collapsed in Argwyn's absence and dumped its inhabitants into the Shadow Plane. Sam and Honey took the alapolo and the shadow dogs back with them to Deadeye's Gulch.
Some magical investigation revealed that the curse on Deadeye's Gulch had collapsed, too, without the dark negative energies from the emptiness of the shadow pocket. Destroyed undead, including Jet Rivenwoad, would stay destroyed. Jet Rivenwoad's soul was finally freed to Erastil's afterlife.
Gendowyn, Honey, and Argwyn came to an agreement to work together as the Fangwood pantheon. Zinfandel cooked waffles for everyone to celebrate.
The campaign had begun in October 2019, so it had run for 3 years and 10 months, the longest campaign that I had every run. Binny, Sam, Stormdancer, and Zinfandel had begun at 1st level, Tikti joined at 3rd level, and Honey and Ren'zar-jo joined at 6th level. They finished at 20th level with 779 more xp earned in 20th-level adventuring.
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Epilogue
My wife asked the other players what their characters would do in the following years.
Stormdancer's player said Stormdancer would return to her home in the plains south of Phaendar to serve as the local druid again. Her range of druidic stewardship would be greatly extended because she could fly farther on her roc companion Roxie.
Zinfandel's player said that Zinfandel would escort his sister Carmenere home to see their parents again after 60 years. Then he would continue to serve as a Chernasardo Ranger.
Ren'zar-jo's player said that Ren'zar-jo would resume his journey to Andoran. Given that he had ended up in Nirmathas on his first attempt to visit Andoran, we joked that he would overshoot and end up in Galt.
Honey's player said Honey would follow Ren'zar-jo. However, she would have duties in the Fangwood, so she would often Tree Stride back again. She also needed to travel around the outer planes in order to arrange afterlife residences for her followers.
Tikti's player didn't say anything.
Binny's player said that Binny would return to delivering messages, this time with her jubjub bird companion Jubby. We tossed that idea around and it grew into Binny running a Monster-Rider Messenger Service, in which the messengers would ride huge monster companions in order to avoid trouble. Some hobgoblin former soldiers would seek that career, since it would be more impressive than farming and less alien than training in a space station.
Sam's player said that Sam would continue his goal of becoming a chergl. Back at 5th level, in order to get into a fey-only festival, Sam had pretended to be a fey, inventing a fey species, chergl, from pure imagination. Ever since, he maintained the ruse that he was a chergl. When he met people from Phaendar who had known that he was a halfling, the story grew that he was a chergl pretending to be a halfling. Gendowyn was fine with the claim, seeing fey as a state of mind. And he took the Fey Life as the first step toward becoming a fey. I declared that with three demigods viewing Sam as fey, one of them with the change domain, then yes, he was a chergl. Then Sam's player declared that Sam would try recruiting some of the alapolo into becoming chergls, too.
As the GM, I looked ahead to the political situation. The Ironfang Legion would settle down in south of the Marideth River and north of the Deepcut River with their west border reaching over the mountains to Nidal and call their province Oprak to agree with the Lost Omens World Guide as much as this campaign allows. Phaendar is in the region, but it would be part of the Chernasardo Trade Cooperative that maintains safe trade routes through all the provinces of Nirmathas. South of the Deepcut River would be the the Kraggodan Protectorate. North of the Marideth River would be the Hill Country. All of the Fangwood would be the Fangwood, officially governed by Gendowyn but unofficially the non-fey non-druid peoples there would be handled by the Open Trade Cooperative. And east of the Fangwood would be the Coastal Province, which includes the cities of Tamran and Crowstump.
Thus, Nirmathas would be divided into five provinces and one cooperative each with a stronger self-government than Nirmathas had previously with more focus on coordinated defense. The improved defense would stop the raids from Molthune, but Molthune would be largely unchanged.
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The Fangwood Pantheon
The Archives of Nethys currently lists 266 gods of Golarion. This Ironfang Invasion campaign added two more gods to my personal version of Golarion. And Gendowyn herself changed a little, because she is no longer so angry at the victims of Cyth-V'Sug's darkblight. She is more angry at Cyth-V'Sug directly.
I dropped the gods' alignments and allowed Follower Alignments in anticipation of alignments leaving PF2 during the Remaster and replaced them with a Afterlife location. Though Gendowyn is CN, CG Elysium seems more suitable as her afterlife.
Gendowyn (Lady of the Fangwood)
Source Knights of Lastwall pg. 55, Gods & Magic pg. 130 2.0
The fey queen Gendowyn might seem an unusual divine patron for the Knights of Lastwall, but it makes perfect sense to her devotees. Gendowyn is a living manifestation and representation of the natural world, a world in which the undead simply have no place. While her personal morality represents the inscrutable whims and caprices of the First World from which she hails, she recognizes the aligned goals she shares with her knightly followers and bestows her divine blessings upon them in turn.
Category Other Gods
Edicts Preserve primal areas, protect the forest from corruption especially by agents of Cyth V'sug (changed from original source), protect those who placate you with offerings
Anathema Parley or make a deal with fiends, forgive those who deceive you, harm an innocent child
Areas of Concern Fangwood Forest
Afterlife Elysium
Pantheons Fangwood
Devotee Benefits
Divine Ability Dexterity or Charisma
Divine Font heal
Divine Skill Stealth
Favored Weapon whip
Domains earth, family, luck, nature
Cleric Spells 1st: summon fey, 2nd: barkskin, 5th: tree stride
Gold-Flame Honeysuckle (Granddaughter Vine)
Born as a Twining Gold-Flame Honeysuckle vine in the Fangwood, Gold-Flame Honeysuckle was awakened by a Leaf-Order druid healer as a familiar. After the death of the druid she retained her charmingly cute leshy form and continued as a healer. Yet she stepped up as an adventurer and freed the goddess Gendowyn from imprisonment, helped her restore the Fangwood, fought hostile gods, and grew into godhood. Gendowyn, Lady of Fangwood, views Honey as her granddaughter.
Category Other Gods
Edicts keep loyal to worthy leaders, seek self-improvement, display pride in service
Anathema request involuntary service, punish followers for the flaws of their leader including yourself, use up your followers instead of supporting their growth
Areas of Concern service, pride, personal growth, familiars and animal companions
Afterlife May accompany a leader or follower to any afterlife
Pantheons Fangwood
Devotee Benefits
Divine Ability Wisdom or Charisma
Divine Font heal
Divine Skill Medicine
Favored Weapon Choose one unarmed strike, such as fist, claws, or jaws
Domains change, confidence, family, toil
Cleric Spells 1st: juvenile companion, 3rd: haste, 6th: dragon form
Argwyn (Shadow of Fangwood)
Created by Cyth-V'Sug from Gendowyn's shadow as a weapon for the usurper dryad Arlantia to use against Gendowyn, Argwyn was cast into emptiness after that battle. A demiplane of fungus-strewn shadow formed around her, awakening Argwyn and attracting creatures from the Shadow Plane such as alapopo, owb, and wraiths. She waited for centuries to claim the Fangwood upon Queen Arlantia's death, but Gold-Flame Honeysuckle and her companions rescued Gendowyn before they destroyed Arlantia. Yet rather than destroying Argwyn, Gendowyn and Gold-Flame Honeysuckle accepted Argwyn as a person. She represents the deadly unseen side of the Fangwood.
Category Other Gods
Edicts nurture fungus and other lowly elements of the forest, seek to understand your enemies, put the past behind you
Anathema abandon allies except under dire circumstances, advance while unready, scoff at the lowly
Areas of Concern shadow and fey creatures, winning fights, Fangwood Forest
Afterlife Maelstrom
Pantheons Fangwood
Devotee Benefits
Divine Ability Constitution or Dexterity
Divine Font harm
Divine Skill Stealth
Favored Weapon dancer's spear
Domains darkness, decay, nature, wood
Cleric Spells 1st: pest form, 2nd: darkness, 4th: life-draining roots