| Bjørn Røyrvik |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's that time again! The time where I ambush an unsuspecting Adventure Path, abduct it and brutally alter it to fit my particular needs....
OK, that came off a bit darker than intended, but the fact remains that these things rarely come out looking the way they did going in. Strap in, this one is liable to be the shortest AP on record. It might well have been over in a single session had most of it not been busy doing other stuff before the AP got started.
Othariel Ainamar, Princess of the new Thunder Rift principality has spent a lot of time thinking about where she went wrong. Her last foray into the future to see how her domain was getting along found it nearly broken, having almost instantly failed to resist a variety of threats, leading to the ascension of Ileosa as queen.
After much deliberation Othariel decides that the best way to prevent future problems is two-fold. Wendar she plies with more diplomacy and gifts to keep the future king from wanting to renege on their deal. Preventing Glantri aggression is handled by building up a stronger Thunder Rift, militarily and magically. Rather than standard armed forces she wants adventurers, thinking that quality over quantity is the best way to keep the Rift safe. To this end she institutes public support for young adventurers to go out and gain experience and riches. Yes, the 'queen' sends out calls for adventurers to go off and do good and get money in return.
The idea is for the adventurers to come back to the Rift to settle down when they retire from that life, hopefully giving the Rift a solid foundation of moderately leveled ex-adventurers (and, if lucky, a small cadre or mid-to-high level people) to keep the place safe. She realizes this will likely lead the Rift to becoming more militant than she'd like, but even rich 20th level people can only do so much to make dreams a reality.
She spends some years organizing this and dealing with the public discontent (primarily parents who don't like the leader encouraging their children to leave their work and go off and die in some foreign country) until the system seems to be working smoothly. There is naturally a number of young adventurers that do not come back. Othariel tries to bring them back to life when possible (Ultimate Mercy is very nice for this), but some leave and are never heard from again. Others survive but do not want to return to the backwater that is the Thunder Rift once they have experienced the wider world. Still, things seem to be heading in generally the right way. Once this has been going smoothly for some years Othariel takes her cohort Grund, the ogre barbarian-paladin and heads to the future to see how things are going.
Othariel and Grund arrive in the mountains surrounding the Thunder Rift, wearing disguises. She hoped to arrive some 300 years after she left but she suspects the two of them would still be instantly recognized if they show up looking as they usually do. Othariel looks like a silver-haired young elf warrior with a bow, and Grund uses his Hat of Disguise+ (which allows him to change size as well as the normal effects) to look like a human man. Heading into the Thunder Rift they are pleased to see that the first two people to greet them are a pair of border guards, a halfling and a goblin, and the two seen perfectly at ease with each other.
They travel to the major settlements of the Rift and see how things have changed. The Rift seems far more densely populated than it was when they left, which comes at the expense of the vast tracts of woodland and empty plains that were there. There are members of a variety of races living in the towns, but it appears as though the majority of a race's population still dwells in their ancestral areas with few outsiders among them. This is about what Othariel realistically hoped for. Her ridiculous Diplomacy skill lets her find out that racial tension still exists to a degree but hasn't turned violent on any significant level for nearly 200 years, which gives her hope that her vision of a peaceful multi-racial society may last a while. She learns that the Order of Thunder, her gang of paladins trained as peacekeepers and magistrates, now allows non-paladins in their number and often hires out as a mercenary group. To her relief they still seem to be mostly decent folks and do not have the shady reputation many mercenaries have. At least not within the Thunder Rift. Most of them are currently on a mission outside the Rift, lead by Othariel's daughter, leaving the Thunder Rift low on defenders. The greatest surprise in their travel through the Rift was a large temple to the Immortal Ranya in the capital of Stormhold. Othariel and Grund spend many minutes staring at it unable to quite believe it. They decide to leave it alone and go on.
They come to the small town of Phaendar, a relatively new settlement name after the local archmage Phaendar who once saved the locals from a band of roving owlbears. Here they take part in the festivities going on. They roll low enough on their Perception checks that they do not notice the commotion outside until the door to the local watering hole explodes inward and Aubbrin the Green has a ballista bolt in her chest. Othariel moves to the door to block anyone trying to come in and channels, bringing Aubrin to full HP. Grund kills a hobgoblin with an arrow. Othariel fires up her auras and orders everyone in the tavern to stay there until they take care of things. The two split up and start killing the hobgoblins with ease. They can't help but notice the big stone tower in the middle of town that wasn't there before but do not immediately make a bee-line for it, electing to drive off the invaders first. It does not take long before the hobgoblins realize that opposition in this backwater is far greater than initial scouting reported, and retreat. Othariel takes Grund and flies after them once they see the invaders are heading towards the Tower.
We end the session there because much of it was spent writing up Grund so Ranyar's player could play him, Othariel's player trying to figure out what to do to avoid future disasters, and wandering around the future Thunder Rift to see how it looked.
I've altered the Ironfang to be basically raiders from the Adri Varma who found a powerful artifact from the age of Elemental Lords. They are not tied to any major political player in the area except incidentally, and not as of yet looking for a home. They have strict and decent rules for how to scout areas, what to do if faced with surprise resistance, and strict orders to pull out and destroy the tower if it seems likely that strong opposition will capture it. It takes some time to do these things but Othariel and Grund will have to work fast if they want to stop it (and they don't know they have to).
The Ironfang send out scouts well in advance and try to determine risk-reward of a place. So far the Thunder Rift seems ripe for the picking with most of its leaders and warriors gone. Advance troops will move to strategic locations with an onyx shard, then set up the tower and raiders come through. Since most of the Ironfang is low-level mooks, they do the bulk of the raiding. In the central cavern is a rapid response force of the higher-level Ironfang, ready to head out and stop any intruders that may make it into a Tower, and possibly help overwhelm any stiff pockets of resistance outside once the rest of the target areas are secure. The main tower is situated well outside the intended raid area and the leaders spend their time here and in the Vault, only rarely going to an actual raid target.
The session went pretty much as I assumed it would: Othariel and Grund wiping out the invaders with ease and heading straight for the onyx tower when the opportunity presented itself. If they manage to stop the invaders from destroying the tower and cutting off the raiding force, this AP will probably be over next session. Otherwise it might take a couple more. In any case, the Ironfang is not committed to taking over the Thunder Rift, so will happily leave and find easier targets if they seem to have bitten off more than they can chew. It may take a little while before they realize the exact power of those trying to stop them, however, and Othariel and Grund can do some serious damage before the Ironfang realize how badly they are threatened.
| Bjørn Røyrvik |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The Ironfang do have contiongencies for the surprise appearance of powerful opponents. In this case the cast of the Phaendar occupation force from Book 6 was ready to sally forth and take the PCs. This was not their brightest idea, considering the opposition. They let the PCs come in, then closed the doors and tried to hurt them. Only the munitions folks managed to do noteworthy damage, the Shadows barely scratched the elf and ogre, and poor Scabvestin was utterly useless, failing every feint, flubbing every attack.
Further in the tunnel some scouts watched the brief exchange of weapons and ran back to the Onyx Vault to warn of some serious problems coming this way. They were too late to break contact with the onyx tower in Phaendar. The heroes come running full tilt towards the heart of the Ironfang!
This is when I mess up; it was only a matter of time. I had misread or mislabeled where the transportation tunnels end up when putting the maps on Roll20 and writing things in my notes, and I sent them straight to the final confrontation with Azerasi rather than the actual transportation point. One would think that I would notice something like that pretty soon as I looked at the maps, but the fight was well under way before I started thinking that this had not gone quite the way I thought it would when prepping (I blame poor sleep and a fuzzy head).
I only understood what had happened when I wondered why there seemed to be no reinforcements nearby to help Azaersi, looked at the maps and saw the nice little kill box of enemies positioned around the actual portals.
Ah well, the PC and her cohort still took a beating, forcing Othariel to use a Time Stop and two Heal scrolls to stay alive. Azaersi was basically a non-issue in combat, rolling poorly enough that her only reliable way of hitting Othariel without leaving herself open to devastating full attacks from an irate, smiting paladin was to use Combat Expertise and Perfect Thrust.
The golems were the main damage dealers of the combat, doing enough damage to Grund to require some serious healing - fortunately he can rage cycle for temp HP.
Next session, more combat, an extended mop up of the high level Ironfang which may well see our heroes having to display some discretion for rest and healing to survive, then mop up of the ca. 2000 mook troops in the rest of the Thunder Rift. So we might possibly equal our CotCT time for number of sessions used to finish the AP, but not beat it.
| Bjørn Røyrvik |
The small group of Ironfang Shadows left from last session tries filling Othariel with arrows but fails its morale check when they see her snipe their Witcheater support to death with two arrows and they run. The paladins catch up with them when they team up with the tarnished smiths and their watcher. Azlowe the greater barghest also shows up but these are still nothing more than speed bumps for our heroes. The pair make their way out to the mustering area and are met by the full might of the rest of the high-level Ironfang troops, minus the command squads for the other raiding parties.
This seems like it could be more than the PCs could handle. The fell rider troops with their powerful leader charge in but due to poor rolls do not do much damage. The Shadows hurt Othariel and Grund takes a lot of damage from the Munitions Officers. The first round sees them nearly kill the CR17 cavalier boss who finishes the job on himself thanks to his Vicious weapon. Once the honor guard and the rest of the hobgoblin commanders and troops have piled in close enough Othariel lets loose with a Holy Word at CL 23. This is enough to kill off the troops and paralyze everything else in range, with only the ranged opponents spared.
Grund finishes off the paralyzed Henja and Drakestomper, and Othariel demands that the Ironfang surrender. They do not like this but like dying even less so the surviving commander asks what terms Othariel offers.
Othariel learns who the Ironfang are and what they do. She is displeased but does not want to commit war crimes, especially when she learns that there is a small nation of civilians on the other side of one of the Onyx towers. She decides that mercy is the way to go, giving them all a stern talking-to and a warning to find better ways to live. She allows the Ironfang to keep what gear they have on their persons and what mundane supplies there are in the citadel and towers but keeps the treasure and loot of the fallen. She is shown how to operate the Onyx Key and opens Roads to the other Towers in the Thunder Rift. The raiding parties come back full of high spirits and laden with loot only to find an unamused pair of paladins staring them down and a shamefaced Ironfang commander informing them that the the Ironfang has been beaten and they are lucky to get away with their lives.
After sending the Ironfang home and destroying the Onyx Tower in their village, Othariel returns to the Thunder Rift with the ill-gotten gains and assures the people that everything is fine. The remnants of the Order of Thunder left to guard the Rift did get in some hard blows against the Ironfang but the hobgoblins had scouted well and judged the capabilities of the defenders well enough that there was nothing they could do to stop the raid. Othariel's reappearance as the legendary founder of the realm was at first met with disbelief, then jubilation as she wanders the Rift and returns stolen items, heals the wounded and even manages to bring some fallen citizens back from the dead. The rest of the Ironfang treasure (and there was a surprising amount of wealth here), minus some expenses and a little reward to upgrade some of Grund's stuff, is given to the Rift to help them rebuild and hopefully soothe some rattled nerves.
Othariel also hangs around long enough to meet her daughter Rahnee, current ruler of the Rift. Rahnee and her closest companions returned to the Thunder Rift with impressive speed, only to find everything handled by mommy. To Othariel's surprise Rahnee is put out by the whole thing. Rahnee is upset that her mother was gone for 300 years without any sign that she was alive (no one else knows that Othariel traveled in time), then she comes back and basically takes care of a mess that was Rahnee's responsibility and making it look as though Rahnee needed someone to change her diapers and wipe her arse.
Othariel is saddened by this and considers using time travel to fix more things. She should know by now that messing with time too much will only make things more difficult. Perhaps this will be the seed of her next adventure.
Anyway, that was our version of Ironfang Invasion and quite possibly the last AP I will adapt for this particular campaign. OTOH I have said similar things before, so there may be more poor adventure paths put through the wringer.