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Hi there! So, I've recently decided to run a pickup game of Rise of the Runelords in PF2e, and I'm very excited about it!
That being said, I'm the kind of GM that loves to take a perfectly good AP, tear it apart, and reconstitute it as her own thing. I'm allergic to someone else doing my work for me. Rise of the Runelords is a complicated adventure path very rooted in its era, and there are a few elements in particular I want to tweak. I do really love this AP, and this thread is not meant to condemn, only to play around a little with six great books.
1. Its focus on pure-evil ancestries and a lot of sapient living beings becoming cannon fodder.
2. A tendency towards grossout horror at the expense of dysmorphism and obesity.
3. What feels to me like a slight vagueness of theme and storyline, i.e., "wait, we're fighting who now?"
I know a couple of these "problems" might be polarizing, so to be clear, I'm not here to judge! Lots of people aren't bothered by this stuff, for a whole host of perfectly good reasons. I just know it won't mesh with my group's playstyle.
Besides, I like messing around with stuff! I'll be tampering with other plot beats, too. For instance, I'm thinking a lot about Nualia. Nualia is a complicated character, a victim of abuse and manipulation from all corners of her life. She's also a terrible person, of course, who's made terrible choices. Still, I like injecting nuance into characters like this, so I may give her a path to redemption or a path to escaping and becoming a recurring villain depending on the choices the PCs make.
I figure sharing this might be helpful to some people, and y'all might have ideas I haven't thought of. I haven't been able to find many other threads talking about some of these problems, so I decided to start my own.
But anyways, let's start off with the big one.
So, we have a few aspects to take care of--how to integrate goblin PCs, how to move on from the idea that goblins are pure evil, and how to avoid it being a bummer when you're punting enemies off of bridges.
Part One: Your Friendly Neighborhood Goblins
Here's the thing: Every goblin tribe is different. Most reasonable people in Sandpoint know this. The Licktoads might be a little annoying, but they don't usually pick serious fights, aside from the odd band of bored youths hassling travelers. The Mosswoods are mostly too busy with their little feuding families to focus on anything else--a problem the Sandpoint locals can relate to. The Birdcrunchers sometimes even trade with Sandpoint, though they mostly seem to just want to be left alone.
The Varisians have a complicated history with the goblin tribes. The Varisians were here first, but the goblins were here second, and things haven't always been cozy between the two. There's a big reason the Varisians didn't totally hate the idea of a town being built here: Sandpoint forms a handy buffer against goblin mischief.
There are two tribes of special importance. The first is the Seven Tooth tribe. The Seven Tooths? They get along with Sandpdoint just fine. They're not quite locals, but they're regulars, and it's not uncommon for Seven Tooth goblins to spend time in the town itself. Prejudices are mostly playful, with plenty of rueful jokes about the goblins exposing the town's waste--"The worst thing about the Seven Teeth is you'll throw something away one week, and the next week one of those damn goblins will be trying to sell it right back to you, only now it works better and costs double."
But for the most part, the Seven Tooths are as much a part of the town as the traveling Varisians. They especially enjoy a friendly rapport with many local Gozrehns, since they're keeping the beaches clean. This is the tribe most goblin PCs are likely to hail from.
And then there are the Thistletops.
Part Two: Everybody Hates the Thistletops.
The Thistletops have always been the heels of the Lost Coast goblinkin, but especially in the last five years (which is a long time, to a goblin!). The Thistletops are mean. The Thistletops are militant. Any goblin can join the Thistletops, provided they're willing to go through cruel hazings, but the only goblins who want to are the goblins who want to push other people around. Some say the Thistletops are more a cult than a tribe, that whoever sits in the chieftain's throne can hear the whispers of an ancient goblin patron speaking to them from below the island. Few goblins can agree on whether this patron is foul or fair.
Most of the time, the Thistletops are too busy pushing other goblin tribes around to bother with Sandpoint. The fact that they've managed to organize a raid--and that goblins from other tribes seem to be leaving their tribes to sign up en masse--should be extremely alarming to any goblin PCs, as well as any goblin experts like Shalelu.
In reality, the Thistletops have recently acquired something of a divine mandate with Nualia's arrival. This has caused a religious schism and a massive uptick in recruitment, with moderates like Gogmurt the Druid being purged from the ranks and new arrivals from other tribes being put through heavy indoctrination. The priestess of the Mother of Monsters, blessed by demons and bearing the approval of The Voice Below, has managed to redirect all of the Thistletops' hunger for domination onto a single target: Sandpoint.
But for one month, his voice became a scream.
The chieftain at the time was a relatively mild-mannered goblin named Hakul, respected for his clever tricks and scary wolf-like eidolon. But the barghest's voice shattered his mind. Then it reshaped it, and the tribe followed suit. Through the violence of the past five years, three chieftains have come and gone since Hakul, each more angry and bloodthirsty than the last. It's to the point that the new chief, Ripnugget, is too stripped of empathy to even hear the barghest's voice anymore. It doesn't matter. This is how the Thistletops choose their leaders now. The druids and oracles wield less influence every year.
So, sure, they're a bunch of jerks and bullies. But why are they so stupid?
Part Three: They're Nihilists, Donny
It's tough being a goblin. You get drafted into bloody war after bloody to lose again and again, your life expectancy in a best-case scenario is 50 years, you're small enough to be picked up by large birds, and you probably lack the strength to actually open that pickle jar.
On the other hand, you're pretty close to unkillable, almost never alone, and you can always just smash the jar and pluck the pickles out with a knife.
Goblin culture is bent towards hedonistic nihilism, a "life-is-short-so-let's-have-some-fun" mentality. Worrying too much about the future is seen as fussy and embarrassing, even rude. Expressing a desire to die of old age is almost taboo. What's the difference between dying in an explosion at 30 and dying of old age at 38? Many goblin philosophers don't see one--or at least, not one of consequence. If there is a difference, it's that one makes a much better story than the other.
And stories? Stories don't live fifty years. Stories live forever.
The phrase to remember in any goblin raid, especially a violent one, is "If I die, I die." Killing a raiding goblin isn't seen as murder to other raiders, even though they might grieve. It's seen as fair play, and the risk is part of what makes a truly destructive raid exciting. Laughing in the face of death is what got goblin conscripts through the Goblinblood Wars with even a little sanity intact.
Sandpoint's neighbors don't really have much of a raiding tradition, aside from the odd gaggle of festival crashers. Violent raids in particular have been going out of fashion for years. Most goblins see violent raids as old-fashioned, cruel, and only joyous for the raiders. The Goblinblood Wars were a long time ago. The old resentment of longshanks no longer burns bright enough to make dead children funny.
But the Thistletops want to reclaim their "old ways". So this is a very old-fashioned raid.
Something to note is that raiding goblins are rarely totally lucid. It's not always just alcohol. There are drugs and poisons that can make a goblin downright berserk, dispensing of inhibitions and turning the goblin into a being of pure irrational emotion. It's part of the fun, sometimes, as long as you don't indulge too often. The effects become more permanent over time, take more of a toll on your good sense.
The Thistletop goblins the players encounter are, in the vast majority of encounters, high as extremely violent kites.
Goblins taken prisoner sober up after an hour or two. They don't regret what they did, but they are more lucid, and a little less likely to drown themselves in rain barrels.
But the important thing to remember is this: Goblins on a violent raid don't see death as a tragedy. It's almost more rude if you don't fight back. It's okay to laugh, at least a little bit. It's what the deceased would have wanted.
Part Four: It's Complicated
Throughout Burnt Offerings, the PCs will have the chance to meet goblins who aren't violent and deranged. A Seven Tooth representative will likely be present when they meet with Hemlock, Shalelu and Deverin. Gogmurt will be a morally gray figure, a druid who counseled Ripnugget against his reckless course but is definitely a bit of a jerk. The ten new recruits the PCs encounter camping outside the Thistletop base form a social encounter, a chance to learn a little about what's going on between the tribes and convince the arrivals to ditch Ripnugget while they still can.
Notably, there will be a few goblin babies in the cages, and this can be an example of the cruel survival-of-the-fittest "parenting" practiced by the Thistletops, a chance to take these children to another goblin tribe when it's all over. Goblins aren't always the most attentive parents--it's why most goblins get raised by the whole tribe--but cages are not normal. Not anymore.
For the most part, the Thistletop goblins are pretty awful, maybe irredeemable. The gleeful bouts of animal cruelty, the abuse of children, the cult-like devotion to Nualia and Malfeshnekor... figuring out what to do with the Thistletop survivors will be a challenge for the PCs.
One helpful element, though, will be removing Malfeshnekor from the equation. The barghest's voice has guided chieftains of the Thistletops towards wickedness for years, to the extent that Ripnugget, who never heard the creature's silken voice in his ear, was nonetheless sculpted by its values. With Malfeshnekor gone and the tribe disbanded, the legacy of Thistletop can hopefully become nothing but an unpleasant memory to the goblins of the Lost Coast.
Other tribes will now act to absorb the less awful Thistletop survivors into their ranks, de-indoctrinating them through simple exposure to a less brutal ideology. The worst of the worst will face exile or imprisonment, although they might just destroy each other first.
Part Five: So, What Does This Mean For Goblin PCs?
So, how is a goblin likely to interact with Burnt Offerings?
First, they have to decide their tribe of origin. It's probably best to avoid having any PCs hail from Thistletop, unless the PC is joining later in the adventure or wants to have left a few years ago. Otherwise, they might know too much about what's to come. The Seven Tooths are a perfect pick, assuming they don't want to just be a goblin who grew up in town.
Of course, if the Seven Teeth are going to be emphasized, we may need to flesh out a couple goblin background characters.
Neeka has recently used a go-between to purchase and lodge a horse at the Goblin Squash Stables, and she has taken great pleasure in insisting on going into the staple to 'check up on my horse' every few weeks, claiming that Hosk obviously knows much less about horses than her. She doesn't ride it, naturally. It's just for bragging rights, and to torment the owner. This might put her in harm's way when tensions start to rise after the raid.
Mavvi: A Seven Tooth goblin trader and tinkerer known for the hard bargains she drives. She's very competitive over the loot found in the junkyard, and Mavvi is always ready to fight if another goblin wants something that she already called dibs on. Mavvi is known to be Neeka's lover, and when she is one of the Skinsaw Man's first victims, Neeka will be quick to accuse Hosk of the murder.
Koruvus: Koruvus is an anomaly among the Seven Tooths, a warrior in a tribe of scavengers. Many goblins admire him and excuse his arrogant temper. They see him as their best counter to the Thistletop goblins' mockery of their tribe as a bunch of weaklings. Koruvus might serve as a rival, someone you can introduce in the first couple scenes to push the goblin PC around, especially if they're an alchemist or other non-martial class. Investigating his disappearance might make for a great motivation, too.
Whether Koruvus signed on with the Thistletops, or brashly tried to conquer the Catacombs of Wrath alone out of envy for the goblin's PC's new celebrity, defeating his corrupted form can serve as a form of catharsis for the PC--or a moment of pity for a former enemy. Alternatively, Koruvus could be a "big brother"-type figure to the PC, or even a parent, if you'd rather twist the knife in a different direction. There are tons of options for this guy.
And that's all for now! I went on a bit longer than I intended. I'll try to do more later. I'm admittedly a little daunted by Book Four, which makes some choices with coding that are going to be hard to dial back without a complete rewrite. As for focusing the themes more, I have plenty of ideas, but I need time to sort through them in my brain.
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Oh, also, I'm not gonna lie--I'm probably going to be genderflipping a lot of characters for the simple reason that my group likes romantic and sexual tension in their games, even especially with villains, and everyone in this group is sapphic. Some characters might be played up more or given more attention for this blatantly indulgent reason. It's part of why I encouraged one PC to put the sad dead aasimar girl as a lost (unrequited) love in their backstory. I already have Aldern Foxglove and at least 1-2 of the survivors of the Hook Mountain Massacre in my sights. As if they haven't been through enough!
At least Karzoug is probably safe. For now.
Oh, also, I'm not gonna lie--I'm probably going to be genderflipping a lot of characters for the simple reason that my group likes romantic and sexual tension in their games,
evenespecially with villains, and everyone in this group is sapphic. Some characters might be played up more or given more attention for this blatantly indulgent reason. It's part of why I encouraged one PC to put the sad dead aasimar girl as a lost (unrequited) love in their backstory. I already have Aldern Foxglove and at least 1-2 of the survivors of the Hook Mountain Massacre in my sights. As if they haven't been through enough!At least Karzoug is probably safe. For now.
That being said, I like how you've set up these goblins. Definitely not my cuppa .
Are you planning on doing this over PbP, a virtual tabletop, locally?
I'm admittedly a little daunted by Book Four, which makes some choices with coding that are going to be hard to dial back without a complete rewrite.
Book 4 is Fortress of the Stone Giants, right? I might be misreading it, but I'm not really seeing how it has harmful coding any more than the Skinsaw Cult is harmful coding against Magnimarans. Bear in mind, the stone giants gathered at Jorgenfist are not exactly representative of the stone giants of the Storval Plateau as a whole - they're violent iconoclasts, acting out against the traditions of the stone giants, and the book states that most of the stone giants find even the name Jorgenfist, which is their name for the fortress that guards the afterlife, blasphemous. That easily lends itself to a similar treatment to what you gave the Thistletop goblins.
Furthermore, the violent departure from the stone giants' culture would draw the ire of deities like Minderhal - while he is evil, the actions of Mokmurian and his iconoclasts would be completely anathema to him, and I can easily picture stone giant clerics of Minderhal arriving at Sandpoint after the attack to help rebuild and provide some of the information the captive giants could (obviously, with more of an 'impetuous child' outlook on Mokmurian rather than the 'visionary leader' viewpoint his own followers have).
Similarly, a few of the named stone giants (most notably Galenmir and Conna) are neutral rather than evil and rankle at some of their ruler's decisions, and of the stone giant tribes gathered under Mokmurian's banner, the Valissgander and Kavarvatti tribes are noted to chafe under their evil leaders, the Crannoch tribe's leader is nonevil, and the Jormunsir tribe is implied to be Minderhalites (which as mentioned before would mean revulsion with Mokmurian's chaotic ways) - fertile ground for the PCs to turn them against their overlord. In the Concluding the Adventure section, it also mentions that most of the Jorgenfist giants are nonevil and that once Mokmurian is dead, they return to their tribes, seeking forgiveness from their elders.
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Oh, 100%, the adventure makes every effort to clarify the nuances of the situation. On the other hand:
- It falls into the Age of Worms trap of, "The PCs only meet the NPC who explains these nuances after probably killing a ton of them."
- It's never not going to be awkward to have an adventure where the villains you're killing en masse are a culture of ex-slaves being manipulated by their old slaver.
- Many of the stone giants are visually coded, to my eyes, as indigenous peoples--maybe Aboriginal people, but I'm not sure. The art of Mokmurian's mother is the most blatant here. It's an awkward confluence with the above and below elements.
- Unless I misunderstood, these rogue stone giants explicitly seem to be eating humanoids. Making them cannibals interacts really weirdly with everything else I've listed.
I don't think these are necessarily the fault of the writers or artists, they're just, you know, a bunch of individual choices that added up to something I'm not sure will feel fun.
In Age of Worms, Book Three, you're put in a similar situation with a tribe of lizardfolk written as natives resisting imperialism--you only find out the nuances of the situation after already killing dozens of indigenous people who are being manipulated by a dragon. I made tweaks to that to try to flip the script, and I might try the same here, but I'll need to take more time examining the text. I like a lot of your ideas! It seems very tweakable.
I'll also admit that I'm not super concerned about harmful coding against Magnimar. I can't tell who they're meant to be coded as, but it doesn't seem to be tied to any punching-down stereotypes last I checked? I did skim that section.
Are you planning on doing this over PbP, a virtual tabletop, locally?
Locally! It's going to be my first in-person game in years, and my first time ever running or playing in a PF2 game in-person. I'm very excited.
Oh, and Bjorn, I am toying with some plans for Shayliss. I don't hate the original encounter she's in, but I'm still deciding whether I'm comfortable roleplaying that in a mixed group. If not, I may go with Plan B. B for Bird.
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The way I was reading the module, all the giant camps at area A2 were meant to convey that taking the fortress head-on would be a suicidally stupid idea - the module almost forces players to find alternate ways in (calculating the entirety of the Jorgenfist camps, it comes out to a total CR of around 22 - enough to theoretically defeat some of the weaker Spawn of Rovagug), and if you do choose to include stone giant traditionalists working with the people of Sandpoint, they could easily tell the PCs about the entrance at A4.
As for the killing-en-masse part, it mentions in the module that Mokmurian has forbid the rank-and-file stone giants from entering the boundaries of Jorgenfist, for fear that they would desert if they knew of the depravities that go on therein. Thus, it follows that all the giants encountered within the fortress - that is, all the giants that the players are meant to directly fight - are members of his inner circle to some extent, and thus are complicit to a greater degree than those outside (the giants in the camps are ex-slaves being manipulated by their former overlords, and if the players follow the module as written, they won't kill any of them, while the giants inside the fortress are by and large collaborators with said overlords, with the exception of Conna and Galenmir if you choose to have either of them side with the PCs). If all goes well, the players won't actually kill any giants except for the evil ones - as mentioned before, only one or two of the giants in Jorgenfist itself could reasonably be considered innocent, and the raid on Sandpoint turns into a rout as soon as either Teraktinus or Longtooth - both high-priority targets and both irredeemably evil - are slain.
This also solves the problem of the cannibalism. Area B5 is a minor part of the module at best, and if you don't want to remove it entirely, you could just present it as the excesses of Karzoug's disciples rather than an integral part of the culture of the stone giants - that was how I had initially read the module in any case. As far as my earlier mention of Magnimar, I realize now that it was poorly worded. All I meant to say is that Karzoug's disciples are to the stone giants what the Skinsaw Cult was to Magnimar - cultist groups turning away from the cultural norms of their society and into depravity.
All good points! I've only read the adventure once, and I definitely missed some of those fine details. Sounds like a great chance for a heist. I might still like to put at least one rebellious stone giant on the outskirts for the PCs to encounter early on. Possibly the undead remnant of Mokmurian's dead wife, if I leave in him murdering her at all. It would be a shame to violate RotRL's iconic motif of "husbands murdering their wives".
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Oh, a few more trivial notes about the goblins--these are less important changes and more just some plot hooks/aesthetic ideas I enjoy.
This is purely just to give my players and myself more flexibility in how goblins are portrayed in the setting. It's hard to find good goblin art if you're confined to just one style or the other. It also gives them a fun expressiveness--a stressed goblin suddenly shifting to her terrifying 'battle face' when someone pushes her too far. Many goblins decide to shave or pluck (or burn off) the hair on their heads, as the follicles get very itchy if they shift too often. Some goblins spend all the time in the battle face, while others consider it vulgar to use outside of battle, or try to avoid showing it for fear of spooking their longshank friends.
The result has been, needless to say, catastrophic for the local ecosystem, not to mention for the goblins occasionally squashed beneath collapsing buildings. Local fey have turned into an exciting 'course hazard' for the goblins as pixies and gremlins work various mischiefs to sabotage the tribe's constant expansion. At this point, most of the goblins just see it as the ultimate contest of art and ingenuity, and have almost completely lost sight of why they started building at all.
But the heads of the families haven't forgotten. The families are taking it very seriously, and none moreso than the tribe's current chieftain, Big Gugmut. Up until now, the Mosswood goblins have enjoyed relatively cordial ties with the local dryads, taking care to build around such trees. A family only incorporates a dryad's tree if that dryad agrees, and great respect is shown to a "patron dryad" when she speaks out to guide the tribe away from the old growth. But Big Gugmut knows there's good timber there--not to mention in the dryads' trees themselves. He is determined that he will not lose the chieftain's seat while he can still swing an axe.
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The other advantage taking the entire AP as a whole is that one can take elements of 'Book 3' and incorporate hints and pointers towards 'Book 4' with a minimum of effort that will make the story flow much more neatly.
It'd also be a good opportunity to introduce any 'renegade' stone giants that are 'on the outs' from the greater community in 'Book 4'.
Geographically they are reasonably 'close' and the area is relatively resource-filled for giants ((part of the reason behind the bads of Book 3 being there)).
Having a few folks who are outliers and/or sympathetic figures helps when it comes to the 'push' point -- they could even show up as an 'emergency cavalry' if the dice go cold for the party and it's favorable to Sandpoint or 'too close to call'.
And there's nothing saying that Mokky's SO didn't catch wind of what was about to go down and GTFO'd.
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Alright, I've finished the backgrounds for this game! A handful of these are taken or adapted from the Series of Dice-Based Events RotRL PF2 conversion, which are in turn mostly adapted from the old Player's Guide campaign traits. I tried to trim them down to backgrounds I felt would tie in thematically as well as mechanically, and I tweaked a lot of bonuses to be sure all the abilities were covered by the smaller aray.
Embarrassingly, I went to all the trouble of fussing with the Sczarni-linked background only to decide I didn't really feel any need to emphasize them at all. I went with Debt to Pay instead.
A couple of these are pretty wordy, and that's mostly because I know my players are willing to wade in exposition. You could definitely trim them down.
Wanted to say I'm delighted by your goblin philosophy and approach to this adventure. I look forward to any other tampering you end up sharing with us. Rise of the Runelords holds some amount of historical interest to me, since I almost ran it once for my table. The gross-out factor and pure evil races you cite were among the main reasons we ended up choosing another at the time.
I don't know that I'll get a chance to run this adventure for a long time coming, but if I do I expect to revisit this thread with great interest.
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Oh, K̸̡̡̲̝̣͍̭̜̭̯̿̓̽̌͛̄͗̇͜ą̶̛̫̗̥̳͙̩̈̄̍͒̀̓̿̔̕̕͝r̶̛͍̠̱͔̹̼̦̭̹̺̼͍̀̌̑̍͐̈́̋͆̀̍͊̚z̷͊̓̀̈́ ̨͎̺̟̪̩͔̑̒̇̌̐͝͝ǒ̴̢̳̩͎͈͔̻͚̼̯̖̼͉͉͐̌́͋̀̈́͛̀͘͘͝͝ṳ̶̖̞̲̫̥͍͍̓̈͂͂ģ̷̼̳̤̼̯̯̈̔̓̄̐̓͒͝ 's cruelty was a beautiful thing. Wretched K̸̡̡̲̝̣͍̭̜̭̯̿̓̽̌͛̄͗̇͜ą̶̛̫̗̥̳͙̩̈̄̍͒̀̓̿̔̕̕͝r̶̛͍̠̱͔̹̼̦̭̹̺̼͍̀̌̑̍͐̈́̋͆̀̍͊̚z̷͊̓̀̈́ ̨͎̺̟̪̩͔̑̒̇̌̐͝͝ǒ̴̢̳̩͎͈͔̻͚̼̯̖̼͉͉͐̌́͋̀̈́͛̀͘͘͝͝ṳ̶̖̞̲̫̥͍͍̓̈͂͂ģ̷̼̳̤̼̯̯̈̔̓̄̐̓͒͝ ! I would devour him! Or her. Or it. I have lost so many names and faces to the years. Even those whom I devoured have grown quiet to me, their dear souls dying flowers. But I remember Xaliasa, who betrayed me and sent me here. Upon his name, and the hope for revenge, I have gnawed for a long, long time.
And I remember My Lady. My Lady, so beautiful, so terrible! Ah! Would that I had been there to devour her before the sky could shatter! One such as her deserved immortality. I would dwell with her inside me for ten eternities had I been allowed, and I would be content. Instead I am left here, and she must have died alone.
Oh, K̸̡̡̲̝̣͍̭̜̭̯̿̓̽̌͛̄͗̇͜ą̶̛̫̗̥̳͙̩̈̄̍͒̀̓̿̔̕̕͝r̶̛͍̠̱͔̹̼̦̭̹̺̼͍̀̌̑̍͐̈́̋͆̀̍͊̚z̷͊̓̀̈́ ̨͎̺̟̪̩͔̑̒̇̌̐͝͝ǒ̴̢̳̩͎͈͔̻͚̼̯̖̼͉͉͐̌́͋̀̈́͛̀͘͘͝͝ṳ̶̖̞̲̫̥͍͍̓̈͂͂ģ̷̼̳̤̼̯̯̈̔̓̄̐̓͒͝ ! Cruel K̸̡̡̲̝̣͍̭̜̭̯̿̓̽̌͛̄͗̇͜ą̶̛̫̗̥̳͙̩̈̄̍͒̀̓̿̔̕̕͝r̶̛͍̠̱͔̹̼̦̭̹̺̼͍̀̌̑̍͐̈́̋͆̀̍͊̚z̷͊̓̀̈́ ̨͎̺̟̪̩͔̑̒̇̌̐͝͝ǒ̴̢̳̩͎͈͔̻͚̼̯̖̼͉͉͐̌́͋̀̈́͛̀͘͘͝͝ṳ̶̖̞̲̫̥͍͍̓̈͂͂ģ̷̼̳̤̼̯̯̈̔̓̄̐̓͒͝ ! To think I once admired his hunger! His punishment of me goes beyond the devices of mortals and into the Hells from which I was rescued by the Mother of Monsters. When I was caught, I thought I would be beaten, and I salivated to imagine the rage of my torturers. But K̸̡̡̲̝̣͍̭̜̭̯̿̓̽̌͛̄͗̇͜ą̶̛̫̗̥̳͙̩̈̄̍͒̀̓̿̔̕̕͝r̶̛͍̠̱͔̹̼̦̭̹̺̼͍̀̌̑̍͐̈́̋͆̀̍͊̚z̷͊̓̀̈́ ̨͎̺̟̪̩͔̑̒̇̌̐͝͝ǒ̴̢̳̩͎͈͔̻͚̼̯̖̼͉͉͐̌́͋̀̈́͛̀͘͘͝͝ṳ̶̖̞̲̫̥͍͍̓̈͂͂ģ̷̼̳̤̼̯̯̈̔̓̄̐̓͒͝ was too clever for me. I was only a Stomach, and a Mouth, and Teeth. I could not begin to imagine what he had in store for me.
I have been imprisoned in mercy. Mercy! The thing I hate most, the killer of hate and the ruiner of war. No doubt he laughed as he turned the key.
My prison, you ask? It is beautiful, and I hate it, as I must hate beautiful things. I call it the Garden. It is not a forest, even though I am surrounded by trees that grow straight into the ceiling, disappearing into a canopy of golden flowers. The walls and ceiling are just shadowy blurs, enough to trick the eye into thinking the Garden continues on and on, that you have stepped from a cave--for I know it is a cave!--into an endless paradise. Birds sing. Wildflowers bloom.
And I can devour none of it. The flowers and trees grow back in seconds. The birds are empty, nothing but clockwork machines that put themselves back together no matter how many times I devour them. It is a hollow paradise, a temple to Greed's folly in owning everything and yet holding nothing. The first time I ate one of the birds, it made me so sick, fluttering and singing its beautiful songs in my gullet, that I disgorged for the first time in my entire existence. I try to smash them apart whenever I see them, but it is not easy anymore.
For my body, too, is a prison. The servants of K̸̡̡̲̝̣͍̭̜̭̯̿̓̽̌͛̄͗̇͜ą̶̛̫̗̥̳͙̩̈̄̍͒̀̓̿̔̕̕͝r̶̛͍̠̱͔̹̼̦̭̹̺̼͍̀̌̑̍͐̈́̋͆̀̍͊̚z̷͊̓̀̈́ ̨͎̺̟̪̩͔̑̒̇̌̐͝͝ǒ̴̢̳̩͎͈͔̻͚̼̯̖̼͉͉͐̌́͋̀̈́͛̀͘͘͝͝ṳ̶̖̞̲̫̥͍͍̓̈͂͂ģ̷̼̳̤̼̯̯̈̔̓̄̐̓͒͝ ensured that this prison would bind me wholly in my weakest form. They dressed me in clothes that will not tatter, clothes I once only wore to deceive foolish mortals.
If you enter my prison, the prison of the Starver, what will you find? A starlit garden beneath the earth, and a wretched little goblin in a pretty dress.
But the Wolf is still here.
Ah, K̸̡̡̲̝̣͍̭̜̭̯̿̓̽̌͛̄͗̇͜ą̶̛̫̗̥̳͙̩̈̄̍͒̀̓̿̔̕̕͝r̶̛͍̠̱͔̹̼̦̭̹̺̼͍̀̌̑̍͐̈́̋͆̀̍͊̚z̷͊̓̀̈́ ̨͎̺̟̪̩͔̑̒̇̌̐͝͝ǒ̴̢̳̩͎͈͔̻͚̼̯̖̼͉͉͐̌́͋̀̈́͛̀͘͘͝͝ṳ̶̖̞̲̫̥͍͍̓̈͂͂ģ̷̼̳̤̼̯̯̈̔̓̄̐̓͒͝ . Poor, foolish K̸̡̡̲̝̣͍̭̜̭̯̿̓̽̌͛̄͗̇͜ą̶̛̫̗̥̳͙̩̈̄̍͒̀̓̿̔̕̕͝r̶̛͍̠̱͔̹̼̦̭̹̺̼͍̀̌̑̍͐̈́̋͆̀̍͊̚z̷͊̓̀̈́ ̨͎̺̟̪̩͔̑̒̇̌̐͝͝ǒ̴̢̳̩͎͈͔̻͚̼̯̖̼͉͉͐̌́͋̀̈́͛̀͘͘͝͝ṳ̶̖̞̲̫̥͍͍̓̈͂͂ģ̷̼̳̤̼̯̯̈̔̓̄̐̓͒͝ . He knew what it meant to eat, but he did not know what it meant to be whole. I was starving, but I was fulfilled, too. I know what I am. I am the Finder of Food. I am Malfeshnekor. I am She, and Her, if you please.
And over the centuries--millennia? eons?--my almighty Wrath blazed through his feeble spell like fire through cobwebs. Many parts of me were burned away as well, but I did not care. The Wolf would not be denied, not even if finding the Wolf again drove me mad. And five years ago, I at last succeeded.
And so It is here, too, now. It is in here with me. We are not united--we cannot be, as long as we are in this prison--but we are allied.
As you enter my prison, perhaps you see a shadow lumbering between the trees. Perhaps you see red eyes in the dark. Perhaps you realize a second before your death that you are Prey.
As if I needed any more reason to love her, Nualia has told me that Xaliasa's little familiar still lives. What joy I feel that even a small scrap of revenge has been saved for me! It is not much, but for thousands of years have I gnawed on nothing but that man's name, like an old flavorless bone. The Starving Wolf is happy to settle for scraps.
Of course, it is possible that I will find someone whose anger smells sweeter. Sometimes, when I taste Nualia, I taste weakness. Nualia's rage is still directed at that silly town, and at her own body. If her hatred for either wavers, will her Wrath turn bitter on my tongue? When the town lies burning, will she still hunger to destroy? When her form is made perfect and foul, will she hate it no longer? I must keep her hatred steady. I must teach her to see enemies everywhere, and I must nurture her belief that her body is broken.
This Tsuto boy is useful for that. He sees only her angelic beauty. When that fails, so will his love, and she will hate him, and we will eat him.
And when we are freed of this prison, we will devour all that you knew, and I will be made whole again.
You are Hunted. You are Meat, and Bones, and Gristle. You are the Heart That Beats Faster When I Am Near.
The goblins of Thistletop are like my children. My beautiful voice is everywhere among them, slithered around babes in their cages and tormented old men in their ravings. The goblins sing my song even now, though they know it not.
Bones I crack.
Flesh I chew.
I am Malfeshnekor.
You are Food.
[Unique] [Large] [Fiend] [Mutant]
Perception +13; darkvision, scent (imprecise) 30 feet
Languages Abyssal, Common, Goblin, Thassilonian
Skills Acrobatics +12, Athletics +12, Deception +15, Diplomacy +14, Intimidation +13, Stealth +13, Survival +14
Str +6, Dex +2, Con +4, Int +3, Wis +3, Cha +5
Split Being The Wolf and the Maiden each roll their own initiative and have their own separate turn, token and positioning. They share a hit point pool, similarly to a summoner and its eidolon. Neither form can Delay. Unless otherwise stated, Malfeshnekor's statistics apply to both forms.
• At the start of the Maiden's turn, she gets 3 actions and no reaction. The Maiden is Small, loses her claw Strike, reduces the damage of her jaws Strike to 1d4+2 (but keeps Knockdown), and her Speed changes to 20 feet.
• At the start of the Wolf's turn, it gets 2 actions and 1 reaction. The Wolf cannot use any spells except invisibility, its Will save lowers to +7, and its Deception, Diplomacy, Int and Cha modifiers drop to -3.
Shared Vulnerability If either of Malfeshnekor's forms is killed by an effect other than hit point damage, the other form instantly dies. If either form is subject to the same effect that affects Hit Points, the effect is applied only once (applying the greater effect, if applicable). Otherwise, effects are applied only to the targeted form. Major mental effects like charm might see some "spillover", such as by inflicting levels of Stupefied, at the GM's discretion.
AC 22; Fort +14, Ref +12, Will +12
HP 123; Resistances fire 8, physical 8 (except magical); Weaknesses good 5, lawful 5
Attack of Opportunity [R]
Mirrored Step [R] (teleportation) Trigger The Maiden casts dimension door to a location within 100 feet of the Wolf. Effect The Wolf teleports to a location of its choosing within 60 feet of both its old location and the Maiden, as if affected by its own dimension door.
Speed 40 feet
Melee [1A] jaws +15 [+10/+5], Damage 2d8+6 piercing plus Knockdown
Melee [1A] claw +15 [+11/+6] (agile), Damage 2d6+6 slashing
Divine Innate Spells DC 22; 4th dimension door (at will); 3rd charm (at will); 2nd invisibility (at will)
Maiden's Gaze [1A] (arcane, concentrate, enchantment, mental, visual) The Maiden's eyelids blink sideways, mutating to hold the symbol of Wrath in their pupils, and she stares at a creature she can see within 30 feet that is friendly or helpful toward her. The target must succeed at a DC 22 Will save or become confused for 1 round. If the creature was already under the effects of Maiden's gaze, a failed save causes it to become permanently confused. After attempting its save, the creature is then temporarily immune until the start of the Maiden's next turn.
Only a restoration or similar, a DC 30 Diplomacy check to soothe the creature performed over the course of 1 hour, or the death of Malfeshnekor can end permanent confusion inflicted by this ability. Any creature targeted by Maiden's gaze may immediately attempt a check to see through Maiden's guile, as above.
Maiden's Guile (enchantment, mental) The Maiden's spells and abilities have no obvious manifestation from her, and seemingly originate from the Wolf. Only those who succeed at a Sense Motive or Occultism-based Recall Knowledge check against her Deception DC can recognize what she's doing. On a critical success, they automatically identify that she and the Wolf are the same being.
Maiden's Warning [1A or 2A] (concentrate) The Maiden warns others "just barely too late" of the Wolf's danger, allowing the Wolf to spend a free action to either Stride (if she spends one action) or Strike or Knockdown (if she spends two). She can't use Maiden's warning again until the start of her next turn.
Definitely not my neatest monster statblock, but this is a complicated monster concept, so some wordcount bloat is inevitable. I'll keep tinkering with it to try to make it easier to run over the next few weeks. I'm committed to the shared statblock gimmick, but mostly just because I think it's a very fun challenge.
Ooooh, I just had some ideas for Hook Mountain. I'll dig into it tomorrow, maybe, or later tonight if I'm autistic enough. For now, my ideas:
That's where the Grauls come in. That's Mama Graul's specialty. Through tortures and mental magics that will not be discussed here, the necromancer breaks people of the notion that they are people at all. The three 'lucky' captives of the Grauls saw limp bodies being carted off to the Kreegs, but those bodies weren't dead. The bodies just thought they were. They are meat.
Now, Mrs. Graul? She's not an ogrekin. She's not slovenly or gross. Actually, she's very neat and clean. She just looks like a sweet old lady, really, and that's actually not entirely off the mark. Mrs. Graul is a sweet hag. And she is, as she assures the PCs, quite vegetarian! She only does butchery as strictly business, a way to keep her influence in the region. The captives she kept--which were captured by her boys, rather than being sent to her by the Kreegs for 'treatment'--are kept there for their own 'protection'!
In truth, obviously, they're delightful guinea pigs for her magic and mind games. They're also leverage. Mrs. Graul wants the nymph's ghost. She wants to see if she can turn it into a witchfire, or something even better, to teach her covensisters a lesson for driving her out. Mama Graul knows the nymph loved one of the men or women in the fort, but herself being totally devoid of love, has no idea which one or how to exploit that. She figures one of these handy captives must know.
Her boys? Not related to her. They're more like adopted employees, ogrekin abandoned by their sires and left to wander the mountains. Graul has twisted their minds worst of all, and while some came to serve her willingly and are basically free-willed, several were captured and magically forced into her cruel service. Unfortunately, unless they can be freed from her magic, this goodness will inevitably be poisoned over time by the sweet hag's powers. The PCs can encounter a band of friendly ogrekin early on who express their terror for 'Mama Graul', the witch of the forests. One of those ogrekin might secretly be one of her spies, declared by his friends to have 'escaped' her control two months ago. In reality, he's just waiting for the opportunity to lead his former friends into her clutches, but he's happy to send the PCs her way first as an appetizer.
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Hey K. Catgirl! Love this first look at the tweaks you're making. I tweaked, revised, and rewrote large chunks of this adventure as well and frequently look back at what could have been done to make a smoother and more enjoyable adventure overall. Like you, I was running a game almost entirely for sapphic players and felt inclined to swap around character genders to decrease repetition (only so many 'Manipulative Woman Controls Man Through Love and Sex' and 'Man Obsessed with Control kills Wife/Consort' narratives you can take in a single adventure) and make the NPCs more interesting for my players.
I'll be keeping an eye on other tweaks you put forward, as I think your outline for the goblin tribes and Mama Graul are excellent changes that keep the adventure intact while making it more palatable for your players (I hadn't figured out how to salvage Graul at all and scrapped the whole section, which was not in the pacing's best interests!).
Cordelia Vianu is another DM doing similar reworks posting in the "This time will be different" thread I see you're already following - they're my current DM. Here's to a hopeful next couple of years while you two run this adventure!
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Thanks to y'all for the kind words! I'm really glad people are finding these ideas interesting, and I love seeing other people's thoughts. By the way, "This time will be different" is such a compelling title for a Rise of the Runelords thread. I'm so intrigued.
I know I said I'd talk about the Grauls more. I did, in fact, lie.
Shayliss still asks the most charming party member to help her with a problem--a bird problem in her attic, she says. Some birds or bats have been nesting up there, and one of them looked frightfully big! Her sister is never around lately, off gallivanting with that sawmill man, and her father is out for the day. She only needs one brave adventurer's help, though! That should be plenty! She leads them up to the attic, and just as in the standard encounter, they see a cot covered in blankets, and not a pigeon in sight. They turn to face Shayliss...
... and she grabs them by the collar, her eyes desperate, her whole body trembling with nerves. You have got to help me, she pleads.
She begins to relay a story from three months back. She was wandering the shoreline late one night, as she's often done lately, when she saw what she thought was a light glinting from a window up above. Only that was impossible. Because she'd found herself wandering onto the beaches beneath Chopper's Isle, and there couldn't be anyone up there but seagulls.
Shayliss always was the worse climber. Her sister is better at most things than her. But she doesn't remember climbing. She just remembers reaching the top.
It was quiet at the top of the hill. Just some clumpy sedge plants, some scraggly trees that were more moss and lichen than wood and leaf at this point. Right in front of her was Jerval Stoot's house, or what was left of it. Shayliss knows she should have been afraid, but she... wasn't. There just didn't seem to be anything to be afraid of. It was a mass of broken bricks and rotting, collapsed thatch. It was a carcass. There was no mysterious light, no snarling knife-swinging ghost.
But there was something there amid the ruins. Something impossible.
At this point, Shayliss shuffles over to the cot and pulls out a beautiful wooden carving of a perched crow.
As Shayliss tries to explain, she's getting more and more agitated. She's blocking the PC's path to the other end of the attic, which is concealed by a blanket. She swears she doesn't remember picking the carving up. She looked at it, and then she was knelt in the middle of the ruins with the bird carving already in her hand.
She doesn't know why she brought it back with her. She woke up in the morning, realized what she'd done, and panicked. She had to keep it up here in the attic. She couldn't--can't--bring herself to throw it away, but she couldn't let anyone see it, either. Her father is pleased to think of her as the low-maintenance daughter, but if he knew... She resolved to leave it up here and never speak of it again.
Then she started waking up on rooftops. It's always after the night of every half-moon, always during the neap tide. She goes to sleep and wakes up with a foul taste in her mouth. At some point, the curtain is lifted, and the PC sees an enormous nest of branches, sedges, bones, and long, oily black feathers.
Shayliss has a bird problem in her attic. Specifically, her.
Depending on how the conversation has gone and the gender of her confidante, she might now burst out that also, she thinks she might be somewhat gay and her father does not know that either!
And this is when Ven Vinder gets home early.
Shayliss has been afflicted with a variation of the werecreature's curse. The next neap tide is in two weeks, so there's still plenty of time before they can even get to Chopper's Isle to investigate/put the carving back. Right now, she needs comfort, and help concealing things from her father. Her avian self seems drawn to the carving, and the PC/s might realize this and take it someplace a little bit more remote or secure for the time being.
In book two, the first two killings occur during the neap tide. If Shayliss has not been 'cured' by then, she might well be the PCs' first prime suspect.
Of course, by then, the curse will have worsened. By then, she might well be a danger to others in her own right.
EDIT: Oh! Also, I realize I never clarified why I am splitting Malfeshnekor. It's not just because I think it would be neat. PF2e (and PF1e, frankly) both discourage single-enemy combats for good reason. A single high-level enemy is more likely to cause deaths, or get instantly shut down by action economy, than two moderate-level enemies. Splitting Malfeshnekor feels like a way to address that problem.
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I still haven't decided whether to post a separate campaign journal thread or just post the summaries here, but I figured I might as well post the "cast" we have right now, since working the PCs into the lore is always a big part of tying the adventures together.
When Paz was very young, her other mother left home. Duty summoned her to the mountains, where an outpost manned by old friends was hard-pressed by a bloodthirsty clan of ogres. They needed her help. She promised to be back by the next solstice, but the next solstice came and went. And then the next. And then the next. Paz's anxieties mounted, but her birth mother swore up and down that the curse wasn't real, that she never should have told Paz those stories to begin with, that there was nothing to be afraid of.
When she was ten years old, her birth mother left, too.
This time it stung worse. Her other mother had had good reasons to go, even if it hurt for those reasons to outweigh her own family. But Paz's birth mother didn't leave for duty. She claimed she had a big find, a major expedition that could let their family live comfortably for the rest of their days. She and a partner set out to supposedly explore the Marching Springs, a mysterious region of Nirmathas supposed to hold a portal to the Elemental Plane of Water. They were supposed to get to Janderhoff, restock, and then keep heading east. Instead, they reached their rendezvous point in Janderhoff, laden with funding from wealthy Magnimar investors... and then turned north, disappearing into lawless lands and vanishing from Paz's life forever.
Paz spent most of her formative years living with Madame Mvashti, a former friend of her parents whose house was really too big for one old lady, anyways. Niska is the woman who raised her, along with the odd visiting druid from out of town. Paz also made a close friend, Aktri, an extroverted goblin scrounger from the Seven Tooth tribe who promised she would never let "the curse" come true. The Seven Tooths and the local druids have always been on fairly good terms, sharing an interest in keeping trash off the beach.
A year ago, Paz left with a friend of Niska's to visit her mother at the outpost. During her journey through Varisia, Paz was beset by countless examples of how humanity mistreated nature. She saw towns belching smoke into the sky, smelting houses pouring toxic waste into the rivers, old-growth forests hacked into splinters to make room for animals that didn't belong there. Her meeting with her mother did not go well. Paz came back haggard and more unsure than ever.
Now back in Diamond Lake, Paz has found that Niska Mvashti's health declined sharply over the last year. She's very worried, both for her adoptive mother and at the chance she'll soon be alone again. She is very eager to finally be reunited with Aktri at the Swallowtail Festival and return to some sense of normalcy. She needs someone to vent to about all this ecological destruction!
Plot Hooks:
Paz is studded with plot hooks. Apart from some little things, like a wallflower's fixation with the local theater, Paz's parents are going to be stand-ins for characters in Book Three and Six--a ranger manning Fort Rannick and one of the two lead explorers caught in the grip of an unnatural blizzard on the way to discovering the Spires of Xin-Shalast.
I honestly think the Vekker brothers are sort of a thematic weak point in the original series--a really cool survival horror adventure that just doesn't have a ton of clear resonance with everything that's come before. They weren't undone by the cruelty of the Runelords or by their greed, but by bad luck and an unrelated monster. Because the timelines lined up, I decided it would be fun to tie a PC directly to one of the explorers. Now the bad decisions of the explorers are something personal.
Aktri's voraciousness for attention, validation and scientific achievement just about consume her nowadays, and it's led to a very dysfunctional relationship with her own tribe that has only worsened as time goes on. It's a vicious cycle--her peers don't understand her, so she tries harder to get their respect. This leads to her being rude and obstinate, so they start to tease and bully her, which leads to her bolstering her self-esteem with even more manic arrogance, and on and on it goes.
Aktri's invention, Thuz, is a bulky, misshapen thing reminiscent of a fusion of horse and chariot (a blatant attempt at one-upping Neeka's horseownership. Aktri found the key to Thuz's creation when she was exploring a place beyond the Seven Tooth's normal scavenging grounds--the Old Light. By a mixture of ingenuity and luck, she actually managed to find something nobody had yet dug up. It looks like a rock about the size of a cat's head, but it's hot to the touch, and seems to pulse faintly with power. She believes it's an engine, or perhaps a battery. A power source, at any rate. It is set into Thuz's forehead, which, considering the seven-pointed star symbol engraved in its center, may well come back to bite her later.
Aktri has a very messy and complicated relationship with Paz, a childhood friend whose return during the festival is bound to end in disaster when Paz sees Aktri's smoke-belching monstrosity. Aktri is not on good terms with Paz's adopted druidic 'family' anymore, and she's changed a lot over the last year. Where before Aktri's extroversion helped draw Paz out, now it leads to her dominating the conversation and talking over the timid gnome. Their friendship might be in trouble.
Campaign Hooks:
Aktri used to date Koruvus, as their egos roughly matched. Obviously, this did not end well, and the goblin hero delights nowadays in constantly showing her up.
The sihedron stone is, in fact, one of four stones that once powered the Hellstorm Flume, possibly imbued with the spirit of an imprisoned demon. Xaliasa personally enchanted these, and at the current time, only one remains intact--the one in Aktri's care. This is the stone Mokmurian's agents will be looking for later. It is possible that the simultaneous shattering of two or more of the others was what created the Sandpoint Devil, a fusion of multiple fiends released too close together. Perhaps this stone might draw the Sandpoint Devil to try to recover its final member. But the Sandpoint Devil isn't real, so why worry about it?
Aktri is likely to learn more and more about Thassilon and rune magic as time goes on, and is currently planning to take Runescarred when an appropriate moment arrives in the campaign. She might well wind up delving too deep into this, and her sins of Greed, Envy and Pride are sure to lead her into trouble.
"Sil", as she will one day prefer to be called, is a hilariously confused young woman completely oblivious to the reason why she's not happy. She's extremely repressed, which is a big part of why she never managed to express her confused feelings for Nualia--they always drifted between "I want her" and "I want to be her, but, um, you know, in a boy way", and she never quite figured out how to separate the two. Perhaps, if either she or Nualia had ever managed to fully confide in the other about their issues with their bodies, they might have recognized something they each had in common, and things could have gone differently.
For the purposes of this thread, Sil will be called Basil and he/him, because I need to train myself to avoid slipping up and accidentally calling him by the right pronouns in front of other players.
Campaign Hooks:
Nualia. Yeah. This is what I meant when I said 'a path to redemption'. Basil wasn't a great friend to Nualia--unrequited love and a repressed sense of self aren't terribly healthy for any friendship, especially with someone as troubled as Nualia. Nualia felt like she barely knew Basil, and the version of Basil she did know just seemed to shallowly admire her from afar, little better than all the rest. She resents Basil for this, but he's also one of the few people left in the world who might be able to reach her now.
Olivia is haunted by an anger phantom eidolon named Isabelle. Both cling to the other to an unhealthy degree--Isabelle consumed by an anger they always suppressed in life, Olivia simply desperate to hold onto her friend for a little while longer. The runewell of Wrath has contorted Isabelle's suppressed frustrations into a rage they can't always control, but it is perhaps both women's Greed--their longing to hold onto one another tighter and tighter, even as the original meaning of their bond slips further and further from their grasp--that could be their undoing.
Plot Hooks:
I actually don't know much about these characters yet. Not even Isabelle's pronouns! I know Olivia is taking Pazuzu Lore, which may help if I do the Shayliss subplot. I am planning to play a lot with their heavy leaning on the sins, though. Malfeshnekor might sense in Olivia a new, more malleable vessel. The codependence between Isabelle and Olivia might also make them exploitable by tempters like Lucrecia who can tell when someone's confusing love and possession.
Olivia's roleplayer is especially thoughtful about their characters, so I'm trusting them a lot to see how they interweave themselves into the campaign. I'm excited!
Thanks to y'all for the kind words! I'm really glad people are finding these ideas interesting, and I love seeing other people's thoughts. By the way, "This time will be different" is such a compelling title for a Rise of the Runelords thread. I'm so intrigued.
I know I said I'd talk about the Grauls more. I did, in fact, lie.
** spoiler omitted **...
As another possibility for Shayliss
Who knows, it might even be a condition brought on by the stress of transforming to a different form the first time. :>
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Beastkin was my first thought before I decided to settle on full-blown lycanthropy! It might be a classic trope, but I'm not tired of it yet. If they manage to cure her, though, that's definitely the heritage I have in mind.
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Beastkin was my first thought before I decided to settle on full-blown lycanthropy! It might be a classic trope, but I'm not tired of it yet. If they manage to cure her, though, that's definitely the heritage I have in mind.
We ran our first session yesterday, and introduced one more PC! I'll try to do the write-up when I can.
It's difficult to know where to begin with Blue Moon. Blue Moon most closely resembles a large, badly-taxidermied barn owl with arms. It stands at two and a half feet tall--although most of its height comes from its legs--and wears a small backpack and healer's kit. Blue Moon's body was crafted to resemble a chickcharney, or so it believes. Its two arms hang limp at its side except when needed.
Blue Moon is a stuffed animal. Its body is filled with fluff, and when it devours seabirds whole--caught with the aid of its trusty bolas--they turn into stuffing in its gullet. For a long while, it lay in the rubble of the Old Light, and time had no meaning. It "awoke" when someone rolled some rocks out of the way, and suddenly there was a world beyond its own static mind. It stayed in the Old Light for several years, lurking towards the top and catching meals with tools it found or fashioned. Recently, though, the Old Light became awfully noisy, so the creature decided to move to that nice remote island nearby.
Chopper's Isle has been the creature's home for the last couple years. It's not too bad. There are plenty of birds to eat, and as long as it stays away from the Bad Parts--the house and the areas underground--the mysteries of the isle only rarely trouble it. Its plush body is at no risk from falling, meaning that every neap tide, it's able to venture into Sandpoint to make necessary purchases and gather information about the world.
Once or twice, the creature has lingered too long and been stranded by the tides. The first time this happened, it did what everyone else did and went to go rent a room. Ameiko Kaijitsu was startled, but very polite, as the strange creature reached up and slid two copper coins and a blue button across the counter.
It was also on this outing that the creature finally learned its name. While lingering under an eave, it heard two Sandpoint residents apparently talking about it, calling it "that terrifying thing that comes into town once in a blue moon." The poppet considered this, and by its own sense of logic, decided that this was quite a fine name for it. Blue Moon. How thoughtful of the locals to provide it with something to introduce itself as. Even though it usually arrived on half-moons, really.
Blue Moon is intensely inquisitive, but quite shy. Its decision to come back into town is for one simple reason: A few months ago, a visitor from town came to its island. Blue Moon doesn't know how the visitor got there, and they were gone before Blue Moon could see who it was.
But it knows one thing: They went straight down into Chopper's basement.
Bad weather and unlucky timing have thus far prevented Blue from venturing into town to investigate the matter, but at long last, the weather is clear and Blue has all the supplies it needs. Blue is ready to get to the bottom of this mystery. Sure hope there aren't a lot of crowds there today!
Campaign Hooks:
Aside from Ameiko Kaijitsu, Blue Moon also managed to befriend Madame Mvashti after encountering her on one of her walks along the coastline. They quite like the old woman, who calls them 'Moon'.
Though it knows it not, Blue Moon was just an ordinary lost doll when it washed up on the shores of the Old Light, buried beneath sand, seaweed, driftwood and fallen rubble. Perhaps some child of the Shackles badly misses their stuffed chickcharney. But five years ago, something in the Old Light came to life, just for a moment. A shard of Xaliasa's soul, awoken by the stirring of the runewells, found in the doll a vessel. The doll still bore faint vestiges of love and longing, just enough of an object signature to draw the shard in.
Blue Moon is not the Scribbler. What Blue Moon has from Xaliasa, if anything, was an obsessive, insatiable curiosity. Still, this connection means that Blue Moon will be as much a target for Mokmurian's agents as the stones--and for Malfeshnekor, Blue Moon will be a perfect chance for some small revenge on Xaliasa's splintered soul.
Blue Moon's hunt is, of course, for Shayliss Vinder, who several months ago ventured to Chopper's Isle and acquired an unfortunate curse. Shayliss is likely to have interesting interactions with both Blue Moon and Olivia.
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Oh, also, a little thing--it's occurred to me that Aktri's current character trajectory almost perfectly mirrors Mokmurian's, and that's an angle that I expect will help a lot in humanizing (goblinizing?) him in the days to come. I'm thinking about emphasizing Mokmurian a lot more early on--maybe giving him access to a teleport spell and letting him show up during Hook Mountain (obviously with a "you aren't worth my time" departure after 1-2 rounds of combat). Of course, cutaway scenes might be best. We'll see.
I don't want to cheapen the big guy! I'd just like the PCs to have some relationship with the villain who is going to initially behave quite a bit like the Big Bad. I'm also thinking about having Karzoug's agents resurrect him after he dies (as much in punishment as anything--the truth is, his Greed was too clouded with Pride and Wrath to help as much as Karzoug had hoped). The PCs will encounter a halfway-runescarred Mokmurian in Xin-Shalast, bitter and broken. He was once a great wizard, a king among giants. Now Karzoug has betrayed him, and he is nothing but a shell of his former glory. He will not allow the heroes to pass until they have either slain him or been slain by him.
Anyways, the campaign journal! Let's hop right to it with SESSION ONE.
Aktri of the Seven Tooth (she/her), Goblin Inventor: An insecure, borderline narcissistic tinkerer who will do anything to secure the admiration and attention of others. Aggressively amoral. Uses her horselike construct companion, Thuz, to offer melee support. She's about to reveal this construct today at the festival.
Wormbasil Deverin ("he/him"), Human Rogue: The mayor's shy, awkward nephew whose best friend/secret crush, Nualia, died in a fire five years ago. Melee and skill monkey.
Olivia Milotti (she/her), Human Summoner: A synthesist summoner haunted by the Wrath Phantom of her friend Isabelle Sera, who was one of Chopper's final victims. Sort of a secondary melee build.
Blue Moon (they/it), Poppet Investigator: A very curious, very polite, kind of terrifying barn owl-like minor cryptid determined to understand its own origins. Trip-focused melee support and skill monkey.
♫ I'll soon be free
from every trial
This body sleeps
in that churchyard
I'll drop the cross
of self-denial
and enter on
my Great Reward.
I'm going there
to see my savior
to sing his praise
forevermore.
I'm only going
over Jordan.
I'm only going
over home. ♫
CHAPTER ONE: FESTIVAL IN FLAMES
First, the cheerful Mayor Deverin takes the stage. She thanks everyone for coming to the festival, offering a playful jab at her nephew—"And I see you under that hood, there, Basil! It’s so weird seeing you in daylight." A young man lingering in the shade of an old oak tree ducks his head in embarrassment. She yields the floor to Sheriff Hemlock, whose grim countenance casts a shadow over the assembly before he even starts to speak.
Hemlock is an awkward public speaker, grumbling and stern. "Please do not climb on structures," he declares, "or jump around near the bonfire. Please do not run near the bonfire. Please be mindful of the noise levels, especially as it gets later in the evening. You might be enjoying the festival, but many will be trying to sleep. And to whoever tied their giant gecko by the pier, please come and collect it. It is eating fishermen's cormorants.
"And finally..." He draws out a long scroll. "I would like to take a moment to remember those who lost their lives in the Sandpoint Fire five years ago. In this spirit, I will now read the names of all thirty of those lost to the Late Unpleasantness."
Offstage, the mayor can be heard whispering "is he serious" to Father Zantus.
He is serious. And by the time he is finished reading--pausing grimly on the final five names of Isabelle Sera, Casp Avertin, Jerval Stoot, Father Tobyn, and Nualia Foundling--his mood has thoroughly infected the crowd. A child can be heard crying. Mayor Kendra Deverin is sweating. In the crowd, a young woman named OLIVIA MILOTTI and a young man named WORMBASIL DEVERIN have pulled their hoods down over their eyes. A fidgety goblin named AKTRI waits impatiently for the moment of silence to end, occasionally shooting glances at the tarp-covered wagon beside her.
Belor Hemlock finally shuffles offstage, belatedly introducing Cyrdak Drokkus. Fortunately, Cyrdak Drokkus, a handsome Taldane man with a dark goatee and a booming voice tuned for the theater, is more than up to the challenge of bringing the crowd’s mood back up.
"Well. Thank you, Sheriff Belor. I would like to thank Sheriff Hemlock for his rousing words, and remind everyone--" He makes a very serious face, pointing to his eyes, then the crowd. "--that if I see anyone running, climbing, screaming, jumping, laughing, dancing, or otherwise trying to enjoy themselves at a festival, I will personally not rest until I see them locked behind bars to the end of their days." The laughter that follows is mostly out of relief, but it rises to a deafening roar of gleeful approval as he adds, "I would also like to take a moment of silence for the residents of our sister town of Diamond Lake. Oh, nothing happened, I just think it's ghastly to imagine living there." Diamond Lake is a crowd-pleasing target, it seems.
After sharing some delightful anecdotes about the construction of the new Cathedral, and some shameless self-promotion of tomorrow night's production ("Belor, your ticket is on me. It's a nice, gloomy opera, you'll love it."), he welcomes Father Zantus to the stage.
Father Zantus, a pleasant-faced Varisian man bearing the prominent symbol of Desna, keeps his keynote speech mercifully short.
"Thank you all for coming, and thank you, Belor and Cyrdak, for sharing with us the two, ah, purposes of today. Desna teaches us that life is made up of meetings and partings. I know I will never forget my mentor, Father Tobyn, nor his adopted daughter, Nualia, a star in the sky that went out too soon. Nor any of those lost." After a pause, his voice lifts. "But today is also one of joy. Tonight, the Cathedral will be consecrated, and we will open a new chapter on our town. And since I’m the last person up here wasting your time, I would like to declare the Swallowtail Festival officially underway!"
At the same time, on the opposite side of the square, Aktri has also noticed the barn owl thing. She's hurrying to drag her covered cart towards the creature to investigate when she hears a loud BONG, followed by some familiar voices. Ravilaktriuntzandi turns to see a brawny, towering goblin toss a mallet aside. Koruvus turns to grin at her as a posse of Seven Tooth admirers exclaim over his prowess. He has just won "The Dragonslayer", a popular high-striker with a puck fashioned like a sword and a brass bell fashioned to resemble a roaring blue dragon. Aktri stops dead in her tracks.
On the other side of the fair, a different kind of showdown is taking place.
Olivia Milotti arrived at an informal 'talent show' being hosted by Cyrdak Drokkus, where a rather doddering-looking noblewoman was completing a pleasant but uninspiring fiddle performance. The noblewomen was quickly heckled off of the stage by an arrogant, spoiled heiress Cyrdak identified as Starling Scarnetti. Olivia watched as Scarlet took the stage and delivered a beautiful solo on a cello that cost more than Olivia's monthly cost-of-living.
Olivia doesn't like drawing attention to herself. But when Starling brazenly declared herself the winner, and nobody seemed particularly eager to challenge her... well, Olivia wasn't willing to let that stand. She drew out her flute, to Cyrdak's clear relief, and made her way to the stage.
Olivia snaps her fingers four times, and on the fourth snap, mists begin to roil around her feet. As Cyrdak shushes Ms. Scarnetti's accusations of cheating, Olivia proceeds to blow Starling's performance out of the water.
Her song is sad, almost haunting. She doesn't seem to take a breath until the very end. A small crowd gathers, and there is respectful applause. It's been a while since Olivia Milotti played for an audience, and it's no secret as to why.
As the performance concludes, Starling's face is bright red. In a fit of indignation, she mutters, "Well, I suppose she's competent enough. But everyone knows she hasn't played the same since Isabelle."
She made the mistake of allowing Olivia to hear this. There is a silence, and then Olivia lets out a long sigh. "Would you say that again?" she asks sweetly.
Starling's head snaps up. "I didn't say anything." Then, after a pause, her face becomes a mask of pitying kindness. "Just, you know, that I'm so glad to see you're performing again. It's been so long, you know, ever since Isabelle... so you know, I'm really happy for you, and I'm going to let you..."
"Ever since she what?"
Starling falters. "I--well, you know. Since she... passed."
Olivia has gone pale. But her voice is like a needle, and she aims it towards blood. "Passed?"
There is a pause.
"...on?" Starling squeaks.
"She was murdered. Her tongue and eyes were pulled out. Stacked. Did you see, by any chance? Any of his victims? Did you? It's a rather grisly sight."
"A-As--as a matter of fact, no, I don't... that would be a matter for the sheriff, I--"
"Oh. So you didn't see the way the blood pooled in her eyes, in the sockets. You didn't feel the chill in the air that night." Olivia's voice drops to just above a whisper, as gentle as morning mist, but she knows Starling can hear her. "You weren't there. You wouldn't know."
Starling is firmly on the defensive now, and it's clear that this is not a position she knows how to navigate it as she blurts, "Well, I don't go staring at dead bodies like--like some sort of freak. I mean, that's not how I spend my days, is all I'm saying. But if you like admiring them so much, I suppose you can go and perform for the graves. The cemetery's right over there."
Olivia's smile is as thin as a knife. "If you like attention so much, why don't you go take the stage? I'm sure everyone would love to hear more of your b$##*%*%."
Starling's sputtering is cut off by Cyrdak's hurried intervention as he thanks Ms. Scarnetti for her family's frequent donations to the theater, then asks her to leave. Starling leaves in a huff, and Cyrdak apologizes deeply to Olivia, thanking her for her beautiful performance.
Olivia's vicious temper seems to swiftly ebb, and she can only awkwardly apologize and thank him as she hurries away from the scene. She clearly doesn't know what to even say to his recommendation to come and play at Cracktooth's sometime.
Meanwhile, Basil's perusal of the shops leads him to a stall labeled (in bright, discordant colors) Magpie Mavvi’s Thalassic Wonders. Two women of the Seven Tooth tribe--Mavvi and Neeka--man this booth, and they eagerly flag down the awkward young man and all-but demand he either buy something or try guessing an object's origins for a chance to win a unique treasure. After a lot of fumbling, Basil winds up retreating, now in possession of some sort of unholy combination of an ocarina and bagpipes.
Neither Basil nor Olivia are looking where they're going as they flee their respective scenes. The two hooded figures crash right into each other, and the ocarina-thing falls to the ground between them.
They're both shy disasters, so the conversation is enormously awkward. After Basil explains how he got the bizarre instrument, Olivia asks to try her hand at it.
She plays it beautifully. Still sadly, though.
At this moment, they hear a gigantic commotion and a cacophony of goblin voices. Paz recognizes one of them, and as she rushes to reunite with her friend, Blue Moon decides to tag along--completely heedless of the shocked gasps and stares of the townsfolk as 'the ghost of Chopper's Isle' emerges in broad daylight.
Paz arrives just as the machine explodes.
Aktri wanted to show Koruvus up. She wanted it so bad. But somehow, some flammable pitch had made its way under the tarp, and when she grandly deployed Thuz to bring its hoof down on the Dragonslayer's lever...
Koruvus and his hangers-on are laughing. Her bluster and bravado only encourage them--aside from Koruvus, many of them consider the loudmouthed Aktri to be the bully, and they love seeing her get humbled. She loudly proclaims her full name--Ravilaktriuntzandi--only for them to start nicknaming her 'Andi' and 'Riunt'. She is enfuriated. Meanwhile, tar, smoke and shrapnel litter the town square next to the church.
It's at exactly this point that Paz and Blue Moon arrive onto the scene. Aktri sees her best friend in the crowd and excitedly runs up to her, but before Paz can say anything, Aktri is already pulling her along and insisting that she has something spectacular to show her, that what she's seeing was just a miscalculation—
Enter Hannah Velerin, a local Gozrehn priestess and environmentalist, who naturally has some very stern words for Aktri about her smoke-spewing murder-contraption. They argue for a little while, until Hannah suggests that it should be destroyed. This angers Aktri, who decides to unveil Thuz in its entirety in a fit of frustration. Thuz is a titanic horse-like monstrosity of twisted metal and cracked stone, billowing pungent smoke and leaking acrid chemicals. A seven-pointed star is carved into its forehead. Its back half is something like a chariot, like someone fused horse and chariot together.
Blue Moon goes up to Thuz. "Hello," it says politely. "My name is Blue Moon. What's yours?"
No response.
Hannah takes her leave. She urges Paz to follow, and there is a clear undercurrent of concern that escalates into disappointment as Paz resignedly stays put. Hannah cautions her against associating with someone like Aktri—it could damage her standing among her fellow naturalists if people see her as making exceptions for friends.
Aktri's mania finally cracks as Sheriff Hemlock enters the scene. Horrified by the sight, he demands Aktri clean all of this up at once. She tries to argue, but he has zero patience, and she finally hangs her head and starts sweeping it up. As an afterthought, he asks her name. She starts to explain it... then glumly mumbles, "It's not important."
Koruvus can be heard chortling, "You can say that again,"
All parties (except Aktri, who's too busy sulking) have their interactions interrupted as they notice a large hay wagon careening down the main town road, heading straight for the town square!
Wormbasil immediately springs into action, grabbing a nearby broom and wedging it into one of the cart's wheels to slow its advance. The broom immediately breaks into splinters, but the wagon starts skidding wildly off-course, slowing down in the process.
He, Paz and Blue Moon notice multiple small figures detaching themselves at this point, skittering away into the alleys. He'd already noticed them riding on the underside of the cart.
Paz ignores this for now and hastily works her druidic magic to conjure a falling, rotting tree out of nowhere. It falls and slams into the cart, breaking off its front two wheels. The cart careens towards the square, its front scraping against the ground, digging up stones and dust. Its momentum is almost killed, but it's heading straight for Aktri and Thuz!
Olivia melds with her eidolon and rushes in to grab Aktri and bring her out of harm's way—the goblin is mildly grumpy about this, but is also very intrigued by the spectral fire and other supernatural effects of the melding. Olivia tersely brushes it off as "a magic trick".
Paz, Blue Moon, and Wormbasil notice the retreat of the creatures, and head off to investigate. Wormbasil follows the wrong set of tracks and ends up reaching a group of children playing a game of "Giants and Towers", while the others follow the tracks--which Paz is able to identify as goblin footprints, over towards the cliff. It's an incredibly dangerous climb to get down there, though, and they don't have time to pursue before they're stopped by the sheriff.
Belor thanks them for their help, although he's troubled by Blue Moon's discovery of a scrap of leather armor clinging to a thornbush. That makes this seem like something more than some neighborhood kids' idea of a practical joke. He promises to send some men to look into it, and urges the conscientious civilians to return to the festival. It's almost lunchtime, after all.
Blue doesn't take fall damage. She and I both knew she could have just kept chasing those goblins, and she showed me mercy and chose not to.
Aktri rolled a 15 on Thuz's Athletics test, then spent a Hero Point and got a natural one. It was meant to be.
Olivia got a 23 on her first Performance with the flute and a 20 on her second with the ocarina. What's funny is that both she and Paz play the flute.
At one point, Neeka and Mavvi launched into an entirely off-the-cuff argument in Goblin about their commitment issues when I accidentally flubbed a normal line referencing their relationship. They're all so attached to these two now.
"Little starveling, son of famine" is pilfered from Kill Six Billion Demons. I decided that each book will open with a brief snippet from Runelord Karzoug's past--this one is from his early beginnings as a lich's slave.
Festival Games
Many of these festival games were stolen outright from this thread. The ones I wrote up or adapted were:
Catch the Greased Pig: Run by Jargie Quinn, who calls the pig Norah Junior. A pig is let loose in a large pen, having been smeared liberally with grease. It's kind of a free for all, with participants trying to grapple the piglet. Stats of a Weak boar with no Ferocity. Fort DC 20, Ref +3.
Magpie Mavvi’s Thalassic Wonders: Mavvi and Neeka have set up a large stall to hock her numerous curiosities and gewgaws—sea glass, glass buoys, jewelry, household tools, and so on. A handful of them are magical, with random quirks and no other effects. If you can guess where she found one or one of the component parts (with a DC 16 Society, Nature or Crafting), you get it for free—otherwise, you have to give her something interesting instead.
Talent Show: Cyrdak Drokkus is hosting a sort of talent show, where anyone can feel free to step up and perform. Currently dominating the stage is spoiled heiress Starling Scarnetti with her very expensive cello-playing. She’ll heckle anyone else who tries to play music. Anyone who wishes can try to compete; she got an 18, though, so she's quite hard to beat. It would be 16 without her expensive instrument.
Lighthouse Smash: Run by Banny Harker, co-owner of the local Lumber Mill, with Katrine Vinder helping out. 1 cp to play, simple ranged attack DC 14.
Critical Success Three hits! You win the silver sling bullet and a toy catapult! (basically a slingshot)
Success Two hits! You win the jade sling bullet!
Failure One hit! You win a sling stone retrieved from the rubble of the Old Light!
Critical Failure No hits.
The Dragonslayer: A popular high striker set up by Naffer Vosk, the shy local gravedigger. Aldrena Foxglove tries this and gets a bad result. It’s a simple DC 14 Athletics test, 1 cp to play (the money goes to the Cathedral).
Critical Success You break the Dragonslayer, and the dragon goes flying up in the air. Vosk looks heartbroken. You win a lesser potion of healing.
Success You slay the dragon! You win a book of Desnan hymns and fables.
Failure Oof, not quite.
Critical Failure There is a 10% chance the hammer hits someone when it flies out of your hand.
The Quiet Places: Anyone trying to avoid the commotion will likely end up near one of these locations:
- The church entrance, where Sister Celia and Sister Giulia (more theft! I have zero shame) are working on preparing the swallowtails for release.
- The restaurant stalls, where Ameiko Kaijitsu (Rusty Dragon), Norah Quinn (Hagfish), Besk Magravi (Risa’s), Gressel Tenniwar (Fatman’s Feedbag), Cracktooth (Cracktooth’s), Alma & Aneka Avertin (Sandpoint Savories), and Garridan Viskalai (White Deer) are hard at work. One of them might strike up a conversation.
- Savah Bevaniky’s armory
- The Kesk’s house, a jewelry shop. Door currently wide open. (Mr. Kesk forgot to lock up again)
The Haycart Encounter
I added this in mostly just for fun; a little teaser at what was to come. I'm very glad they didn't insist on following the lead.
The wagon is basically a complex hazard with a DC 14 Stealth (on a crit success, they notice the two "child-sized figures" clinging to the underside) that requires two DC 15 Thievery or Athletics checks to stop. Already quite battered, its mechanisms only have AC 14, 10 HP and 5 Hardness.
If not stopped by its second turn, the haycart slams into the church and startles the acolytes, causing all the butterflies to be released early inside the Cathedral. This will also make it harder to put out the fire later when the goblins try to burn the Cathedral down using this very haycart.
Session One didn't quite finish the first chapter, so this is To Be Continued!
Oh, and here's the height chart, courtesy of heightcomparisons.com and some pilfered images of a stuffed owl and a horse-cart thing from a video game I haven't played.
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Oh, this is very silly, but I wanted to expand on the options for lunch.
The Hagfish: Hargie Quinn is serving lobster chowder. He's being occasionally helped by his daughter, Norah Quinn. He just really likes the name "Norah". He's in a slightly poor mood after hearing the name of his mother, Kestrel, named among Chopper's victims.
Risa's: Besk Magravi, filling in for his mother, is serving a simple comforting dish of spiced potatoes and cider. Besk is very excited to see customers, and very eager to explain his unique selection process for apples. He only gathers them from wild trees in the Tickwood, as he believes they have the best flavor.
The Fatman's Feedbag: Gressel Tenniwar offers cheesy lagane with stuffed allip peppers. The cheese has basically consumed the dish, and the only other flavor that shines through is being dangerously spicy. Neeka is sure to show up here and show off her utter lack of fear. Gressel is pretty checked out; he's just here because he's expected to be.
Cracktooth's Tavern: "Cracktooth" offers roasted radishes and queenslace carrots in a birch syrup sauce, an eccentric dish he recently learned from a traveling kobold and was eager to try out. A small flavor encounter can play out here--at this stall, a bulky half-orc is seen gripping a child’s arm and reprimanding them. This is Jesk himself, who's only holding the child's arm because in their eagerness to catch an escaped swallowtail, they nearly leaped right into his firepit and sent hot oil flying everywhere. At the end of a stern lecture, Jesk Berinni lets them go--but not before reaching over and gently retrieving the butterfly from where it has settled upon the radishes. He hands it to the child, who eagerly jars it and runs off.
Sandpoint Savories: Alma and Aneka Avertin are serving fresh-baked hallah bread and mincemeat tarts. Aneka is doing most of the work at this stall and is clearly exhausted, while Alma seems distant, frequently glancing towards the Cathedral. The PCs might see Belor Hemlock stop by the cart, but whatever exchange he has with Alma, he quickly takes his leave. Alma has never quite managed to forgive him for being too late to save her son, although Aneka, who was more perceptive of how her brother's mental stability plummeted during the hunt for Chopper, is more understanding.
The White Deer: Garridan Viskalai is serving peppercorn venison with a blueberry-based sauce and roasted camas bulbs on the side. Garridan is still in a sour mood after seeing Hemlock on stage; if the PCs come here and not Sandpoint, they might instead see Belor try to come by the stall and be roughly rebuffed. He tries to be friendly towards patrons, but any negative comments on the food will earn a testy response. He really wanted to use huckleberries, but they just don't grow around Sandpoint, so Arcadian blueberries were a reluctant compromise.
Aktri of the Seven Tooth (she/her), Goblin Inventor: An insecure, borderline narcissistic tinkerer who will do anything to secure the admiration and attention of others. Aggressively amoral. Uses her horselike construct companion, Thuz, to offer melee support. She's about to reveal this construct today at the festival.
If I remember right, the people of Sandpoint would respond very poorly to a Goblin at this point in Varisia's history.
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You might want to read the rest of the thread. ;) Goblins aren't universally enemies of Sandpoint, and the Seven Tooth goblins are frequent visitors to town. A couple Seven Tooth goblins were even among Chopper's victims, foolhardy warriors who heard about the goings-on and wanted to prove their mettle on the streets of Sandpoint.
Our next game will be this Saturday, and my goal is to hit the Swallowtail Release, lunchtime (offering one last chance to introduce some important dynamics, like Aktri's one-sided rivalry with Neeka), and to make it through the whole goblin raid.
Here's what everyone knows.
Belor Hemlock: The bones in Nualia's coffin have been stolen from the Boneyard.
General Populace: Different lines of questioning yield different pieces of information.
- Father Tobyn's health had been getting worse and worse in the weeks leading up to the Fire, with him rarely leaving the chapel. Into this void stepped Abstalar Zantus. A week before the Fire, Abstalar took over sermons outright, telling the congregation that Father Tobyn simply wasn't well. At the time, he was known as Tobyn's likely successor, and everyone was still shaken about the recent reveal of Chopper, so nobody thought much of it. Crit Tidbit: People saw Zantus making visits to Hannah's, indicating that Tobyn's condition must have been so bad that Abstalar needed her help.
- The only person in town known to have hated Father Tobyn is Gorvi, the garbage collector and town drunk. Crit Tidbit: This is despite--or perhaps because--of the kindness Ezekiel always showed her, sometimes hiring her for jobs. One time, about five years ago, the jewelers saw Father Tobyn inviting her into the church during a storm.
- Nualia was an aasimar, beloved by all who knew her, the town's brightest star. She always tried to take care of others, and her loss was devastating. After Chopper emerged, she rarely left the chapel, which was a relief. They all wanted her to be safe.
Wormbasil: After she got pregnant and the guy ditched her, Nualia almost never left her room. Basil believes she miscarried. He also knows that Father Tobyn did not approve of her having sex outside wedlock.
Gorvi: Gorvi detests Tobyn for a very simple reason: According to her, on the night Nualia miscarried, Father Tobyn welcomed her into the chapel, got her extremely drunk (when, she insists, she'd been off the stuff for weeks), and got her to agree to dispose of something--a horrible, demonic thing of claws and teeth and mouths and bones that was nonetheless inescapably recognizable as a fetus. He was offering her a lot of money. Gorvi urgently needed that money. She reluctantly accepted, and saw to it the corpse was burned and disposed of. It's haunted her ever since. Though not a very pleasant woman, Gorvi is terrified to admit what she did and horrified with herself for doing it. DC 22 Diplomacy to get her to admit to all this, lowered to 18 if she is drunk or if Tobyn is being excessively praised around her. On a crit success, she mentions that Tobyn talked a lot about the 'purifying power of flame'.
Hannah Velerin: Around the time of the death of the Chopper, Abstalar Zantus came into Hannah's shop and purchased a bottle of nightswalk hollyhock nectar. It's a sleeping drug. Hannah was getting a lot of requests for that drug in particular during the time of the Chopper, so she didn't think anything of it. On a DC 14 Diplomacy, she remembers that he came in after Chopper's death, which she always found a little curious. If probed about the drug, she mentions that taking it too often, or at too concentrated a dosage, can cause night terrors and paralysis (a DC 16 Crafting check also reveals this information). One other notable detail is that Hannah, the town's midwife, never even heard about Nualia's pregnancy.
Sister Celia: Celia, a soft-spoken gossip with a flirty demeanor, knows that Tobyn was locking Nualia in her bedroom, though she doesn't know why except that Nualia was very ill and suffering very bad nightmares. It eats at her knowing this, because nobody else seems to realize that Nualia must have died trapped in there. She was one of the first on the scene, and she'll never forget the sight of Nualia's charred skeleton lying in the burnt-up remains of the bed. It comforts her a little to know that Nualia must have died peacefully in her sleep, although the sight of Tobyn's remains on the outside of the door--just a charred-black arm--was less comforting. Diplomacy DC 14 to get her to admit everything (Nualia's illness, the locations of the remains) except that Nualia was being locked in her room. That requires a critical success or additional pressures. She is extremely guilty about not having spoken up at the time.
Naffer Vosk: The gravedigger is fiercely loyal to the Cathedral, but in particular to Abstalar Zantus, his close friend. His relationship to Father Tobyn was more complicated. Naffer is a devout adherent of the Prismatic Ray. Father Tobyn, a priest of Sarenrae, did guide him for a time, and he was initially uncomfortable with Abstalar taking over worship so suddenly. But when he asked about it, Abstalar confided something in Naffer that still troubles him deeply: In the last week of his life, Father Tobyn lost his clerical powers. Zantus made him promise to keep this between the two of them, but it eats at Naffer that Abstalar must lie for Tobyn's sake. It's a DC 20 Diplomacy check to get him to reveal this information, but if the PCs indicate they want to clear Father Zantus's name, the DC lowers to 15.
Abstalar Zantus: One morning, a week before the Fire, Abstalar walked into the central chapel and found Father Tobyn on the floor, his hands badly burned. Father Tobyn blurted out that he'd attempted to move the statuette of Sarenrae and it had burned him, just like the sun always did. The words spilled out in a tangled mess, as though he'd been compelled. He seemed shocked at his own candor and refused to say any more. He stopped even leaving the Cathedral. Abstalar had no idea what was going on--had Tobyn broken Sarenrae's edicts? Had Chopper's reign of terror caused a moment of pure hatred in Tobyn strong enough to lose her favor? Tobyn had always had a bit of a temper. Abstalar had to take over Tobyn's duties at once, with little clear explanation.
As for the lethargy poison? Father Tobyn had sent him on this errand several weeks ago, claiming to be having trouble sleeping. Zantus never knew about Nualia's treatment. He was too busy trying to protect the townsfolk to pay attention to dealings in his own church. Only Celia and Wormbasil have the clues to the unsettling truth.
Father Zantus will not reveal what he knows without a DC 24 Diplomacy check. He hates to speak ill of the dead, and he has no desire to cut into fading scars or linger in the past. Only if shown evidence that this information is directly relevant to the current threats (beyond the graverobbing, which he has convinced himself is just goblin superstition) will the DC lower to an 18.
The Truth:
What nobody knows is that during and after her pregnancy, Father Tobyn locked Nualia up and wouldn't allow her to leave, commanding her to pray for salvation. Sarenrae immediately sent him warnings, cursing him to burn under the sun and eventually binding his tongue against lying. But her sense of Lamashtu's hand in these matters, and in Nualia's pregnancy, made her hesitate. Meanwhile, the runewell of wrath, positioned directly beneath the Cathedral, had consumed Father Tobyn. When Nualia miscarried, and Tobyn saw what she had birthed, he resorted to hiring Gorvi to dispose of it and drugging Nualia in a forced sleep (something which almost immediately enraged Sarenrae into taking away his powers fully). He thought Desna would send healing dreams to purify his daughter.
And oh, she dreamed.
Lamashtu filled Nualia's world with nightmares. For weeks, Nualia tossed and turned, drowning in it all until the nightmares seemed to persist even when she was awake. Something inside her shattered over those four weeks.
On the night of the Fire, Nualia managed to steal a syringe of the hated lethargy poison. She plunged it into Father Tobyn's arm, left him in her bedroom, and cut off her own arm outside the locked doors. People assumed the charred bones in her bed were hers, and that the burned remnant of an arm fished from the rubble--still clutching the symbol of Sarenrae--was all that remained of Ezekiel Tobyn.
The directions of the Smuggler's Tunnel are slightly changed so that the runewell of wrath is located directly beneath the Cathedral--the smugglers were trying to dig to the Boneyard as part of a contingency plan involving faking their deaths.
Naffer Vosk's faith has been changed slightly, but only because I already misremembered and portrayed him as a Desnan to the PCs. Tobyn's faith was changed to encourage the "Tobyn burned down the chapel" reading.
Some new characters have been added, and old ones like Gorvi expanded upon. And gender-flipped. I did warn you all.
Two key threads I have yet to finish connecting on this mystery are "how do I make sure they start asking around about this" and "what is their reward for solving the mystery".
Okay, I weighed it, and I am considering the following final twist to Nualia's story.
Father Tobyn's mental state had been collapsing for weeks. Sarenrae had abandoned him, and in her absence his own suppressed anger and self-righteousness had flowed in, swelled by the runewell of wrath to a state of almost madness. There was only one choice left to purify the chapel, save his daughter, recover Sarenrae's favor, and maintain his control over her. He took down the blessed scimitar from the set of relics--heedless of his burning hands--emptied several canisters of oil all over the floors and walls of the chapel, and went to Nualia's bedroom. His daughter was drugged, asleep, helpless--or so he thought.
In truth, "awake" and "asleep" no longer held any real difference to Nualia.
Waking into a living nightmare, her demonic arm all-but hacked away and her father standing over her with a scimitar, something inside Nualia shattered. In spite of her vicious injuries, she fought back, and she managed to overpower the elderly priest. With his own blade, she carved the symbol of Lamashtu in his chest. With his own wound, she channeled Lamashtu's power for the first time.
Father Tobyn's muscles went stiff.
His curses and cries fell away.
With her father paralyzed, Nualia Foundling took the tindertwig and set him ablaze.
- The Cathedral holds relics to every god it honors except Sarenrae, whose blessed scimitar was lost in the blaze. Some people suspect Gorvi, the garbagewoman of stealing and selling it for booze money.
- The fire clearly burned hottest near Nualia's room.
- While many assume the goblins stole "Nualia's bones" and "Tobyn's arm" based on some religious significance, Neeka, if consulted as the local goblin bard, is annoyed at this idea. She may not be Lamashtan, but goblins don't collect the bones of long-dead humans for no reason. There is a custom involving murdering someone in her name, though. It's said that Lamashtu will offer a gift for such a gift, especially if ritually offered the body to "eat" afterward. But the fire was an accident, right? A DC 18 Religion check (or DC 13 Lamashtu Lore) uncovers the same.
- The third entry of Tsuto's journal can be modified to imply he wants to revive Nualia--"hopefully, when all this is over, my beautiful love can be restored to me". He also mentions, "Father Tobyn hasn't exactly been very helpful with that. I don't care much for the new arm." This is alluding to the effects of the sacrifice. He wants Nualia to be beautiful again, and to be his. The Nualia-as-succubus art is still there, too.
Tsuto will refuse to talk about Nualia or Father Tobyn if he can, but he will admit the bones were for some Lamashtan ritual. If the PCs have not yet started investigating the Sandpoint Fire, he will gleefully allude to it not having been an accident. He will also needle Wormbasil about losing Nualia to him. He's very envious of Malfeshnekor's time with Nualia.
Of course, Tsuto isn't made of stone. The PCs can make him talk, although with a +11 Will save and a very high Diplomacy DC, it's not going to be easy. Bringing up what they already know will give bonuses to the attempts, and if they get him to spill, the twist is out.
Oh, gosh, thanks so much! I hope my players enjoy all this!
So, let's get more mechanical for a minute.
I think I'm going to place Nualia's chambers directly behind one of Karzoug's eyes, or maybe the central gemstone. I'll make her chamber a lot bigger, add some more complex features to it related to a mix of Lamashtu and magitech theming, and offer an escape route: The outer wall is translucent from the inside, a deceptively thin two-way mirror. When things start to go south, Nualia smashes through the wall and escapes onto the face of the hill, and now the PCs must pursue her across what might now be a very vertical environment. Or amphibious, if the tide is coming in. The head of Karzoug's statue is overgrown with nettles and vines, and there are craggy islands nearby. Pursuing her is risky, especially if some of the PCs are still fighting her minion/s on the observation deck.
I'm still only spitballing here, but ideas for map features:
• Strange magical implements, now broken and dangerous.
• Maybe the divination powers of the fountain are still active, but on the fritz--if you fall in, you can only see through the statue's eyes, and your vision sometimes flashes with visions of what the statue saw moments before its destruction. Basically, you have to save or be blinded for a round or two, but this effect might actually be useful if Nualia does try to escape.
• A floor design that lets the PCs take the high ground, possibly with a pair of stairs forming parentheses around the main chamber (sort of like in Age of Worms's Dark Cathedral). Maybe even a convenient arcane chandelier to cut or leap onto. We have fun here.
• The shining scimitar of Sarenrae known as Cinder (+1 striking authorized scimitar) upon a small shrine next to Tobyn's urn. Nualia is still looking for a way to wield this weapon; it burns her when she touches it, but turning her father's sword to Lamashtu's service has become an obsession of hers. The sacred relic has struggled long and hard against Nualia's (and Tobyn's) attempts to corrupt it, and by now, its magic has begun to fail. Until "justice has been dealt", its attacks deal an additional 1d6 fire damage to Nualia, fiends, and Tobyn's haunt. This damage ignores fire resistance. When its mission is complete, the scimitar's magic subsides. It turns into a "mere" +1 striking scimitar with a few flavorful quirks.
• A malicious haunt inhabiting the urn containing Father Tobyn's defiled ashes. It will spitefully attack any who try to take the weapon.
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So if you want to include this with Shayliss by the way, the Seven Dooms for Sandpoint Player's Guide does list them as being genderfluid. Granted, that's 17 years after the events of Rise, so they could've learned more about themselves in that time period, but very easy to say they've known for some time during the events of Rise.
Ooh! That's very, very interesting! I will need to figure out what, if anything, I want to do with that.
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Got a new campaign starting up soon and these tweaks are definitely going in. Excellent work and thank you for sharing.
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Ooh! That's very, very interesting! I will need to figure out what, if anything, I want to do with that.
The Sandpoint, Light of the Lost Coast module, Shayliss went by as a woman by day but was a male zeolot vigilante of Calistria by night.
Oh, wow, yeah. That might be a little more than my story's equipped to handle. I do like the idea of her/him maybe developing towards that place by the end, though!
We just had two sessions in two days, so there's going to be a lot to share! Most of it is fighting, but as we take a two-week break, a few players are taking it onto themselves to do short text-based vignettes, so there's more on the way.
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I've been trying to finish writing up Sessions 2 and 3 and 3.5 (virtual interim roleplays between individual PCs); it's just been a busy time! Our next session will likely be this weekend. In the meantime, in light of barghests being fundamentally changed in the new Monster Core and my ongoing effort to cut back on "ancestries of pure evil", here's bugbears.
Her skin relaxes, and her normal face returns to its relaxed state. Some consider her to quite pretty outside of her war-face, but there's almost something more unnerving about her like this. "They ain't goblins. Not even a bit, not even a little itty-bit. Disavow yourselves right away of that thought-line." Her eyes glitter in the dark, and her speech becomes more formal, her voice deepening to the timber of a trained storyteller. "The only goblin in a bugbear is them which it eats.
"They were not always as they seem. Once, they wore their hunger openly. They were creatures of the Underworlds, fiends, as you call them. We do not speak the true name they held, though. Storytellers like me pass it down to one another through song, and I might sing it to you if it were daytime. But the darkness does bad things to the name during the day, and I'm not even sure if the name I have is the right one anymore. We called them many things instead of their real name, and the one you know is 'bugbear'. They were bedtime stories that came true if we weren't careful.
"These things wore the faces of wolves, but they could also wear the faces of our kind to lure us between their waiting teeth. They crept in the shadows of trees then-young and hungered for our fear and our flesh. It is said that they hated light and loathed music, and our storytellers sang to drive them off, lit bright bonfires to beat them back. We learned to see in the dark, made friends with wolves of our own.
"As the years went by, they wore their wolf faces less and less. They studied our tongue and our ways and learned to hide better, hunt better. But they also began to forget. At some point, they lost their wolf faces... and then they began to forget they had ever been wolves at all. Perhaps they were never wolves. Perhaps they were owls, or wildcats, or great spiders. Our stories tell of them as wolves, but in our language, the word for 'wolf' and 'predator' are alike.
"Anyway, they lost their name, and we storytellers do not give it back to them. Some of them know what they once were, but they cannot find their wolf faces, and these bugbears are the worst of them all. But all of them are still hungry. They are still hungry for fear and flesh."
Her voice lowers to a vicious growl. "A bugbear isn't a goblin. A bugbear is teeth, and a mouth, and a stomach."
Neeka goes silent, but there is still a sense of gravity around her, a tangible darkness framing her as her skin peels back and stretches once more into the war-face. She leans in towards the fire, pupils glittering.
"They say some have forgotten totally. Some, especially down in the Mwangi, forgot even their malice and found a patron in Kalekot, the Winnower, and what I hear is that they are now haunted by their own fear. Their stories warn that if they are not careful, one day their wolf faces will find them again. I guess I might call these bugbears goblinkin, if I met one. But the bugbears of Varisia are not in that way. They are still fiends, deep down, and a part of them knows it.
"And that part? It's still hungry."
Oh, stupid little typo that's gonna bother me--that bit in the start should just read "the darkness does bad things to the name", without the "in the day" bit.
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Sorry about the delays; I got super sick and haven't been able to do much of anything. I'll start posting the session summaries for 2-4 as soon as I'm back in one piece and my head has stopped pounding.
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Oh boy. Okay. I finally wrote it up. This is our longest session to date (clocking in at four recorded hours, compared to the other four sessions averaging two and a half hours), so other summaries should be a lot quicker to write up, especially if I can avoid sudden sickness or giant movein dramas! But for now, let's take a look at SESSION TWO!
Aktri of the Seven Tooth (she/her), Goblin Inventor: An insecure, borderline narcissistic tinkerer who will do anything to secure the admiration and attention of others. Revealing her construct, Thuz, didn’t go well, but she’s certain it’s someone else’s fault.
Wormbasil Deverin (he/him), Human Rogue: The mayor's shy, awkward nephew whose best friend/secret crush, Nualia, died in a fire five years ago. He really doesn’t know what to do with himself here.
Olivia Milotti (she/her), Human Summoner: A synthesist summoner haunted by the Wrath Phantom of her friend Isabelle Sera, who was one of Chopper's final victims. She channeled Isabelle earlier to save Aktri, who unfortunately noticed.
Blue Moon (they/it), Poppet Investigator: A very curious, very polite, kind of terrifying barn owl-like minor cryptid determined to understand its own origins. Alternates between intently curious and utterly terrified around strangers.
At noon, Father Zantus and his two acolytes wheel a large covered wagon into the square, and he recounts the short parable of how Desna fell in a terrible battle against a monstrous foe. After falling down to earth, the goddess was discovered and nursed back to health by a young flower-selling child, blind and sickly, who had no idea of her divinity. To express her thanks, Desna transformed the child into a beautiful, immortal swallowtail butterfly, so that they could explore the wonders of the world for all eternity.
As the story draws to a close, Father Zantus and a priestess turn and pull aside the wagon’s cover, releasing the thousand children of Desna—a furious storm of a thousand swallowtail butterflies that swarm into the air in a spiraling riot of color—to a great cheer from the crowd. Throughout the rest of the day, children futilely chase butterflies, never quite quick enough to catch them.
The ‘group’ largely scatters. Paz goes to Sandpoint Savories’s stand just as Sheriff Hemlock exits an apparently cold conversation with Alma Avertin. Alma seems distant, and it’s really her daughter, Aneka, running the stall at the moment. Aneka is very friendly, but very awkward. She can’t quite remember what Paz’s name is, but she remembers it was something like ‘piss’, so she carelessly jokes that she knows ‘what it’s not’ without even thinking. Immediately regretting the remark, she frantically deflects from Paz’s possibly mischievous probing. Paz finally has mercy, gives her actual name, and departing with a hunk of fresh-baked bread.
Meanwhile, Wormbasil heads over to the stall for the Fatman’s Feedbag, where he once again meets Neeka the Bard. Neeka identifies Basil as “that guy who was sexually intimidated by goblin women”. She goes to order a truly inadvisable number of stuffed allip peppers, and goaded by her playful insinuations that he couldn’t handle even one, Wormbasil goes and orders some, too. Sure enough, it hurts like madness. He manages to keep his much smaller meal down, though, and the two of them wind up sitting together as they eat.
Well, it’s more like Wormbasil sits down and Neeka decides to take the seat next to him without asking and then won’t stop talking to him. Still, company is company.
Olivia heads over to the Rusty Dragon’s stand, trusting the easygoing Ameiko to offer her sanctuary. The Rusty Dragon is the one place in town where locals don’t stare at her with pity, or worse, see her as an outlet for their own grief over Isabelle. She suspects Ameiko has something to do with that. She wishes she could get a job there instead of the Feedbag, but failing that, it can at least be a safehaven during the excitement of the festival. She gets some curry salmon and early winterdrop mead, and the two of them chat for a little while. Ameiko asks about the talent show incident, which Olivia is very squirrely about, but Ameiko commends her resounding defeat of Starling. Olivia stays there for a while, with Ameiko switching between helping customers and regaling Olivia with adventuring stories.
Back at the Feedbag’s stall, Aktri turns up just in time to see Neeka licking her plate clean. Neeka cheerfully greets her and brags about her resilience, and Aktri, determined not to be outmatched, goes and fills her own plate with allip peppers. She goes and sits down on the opposite side from Basil, and immediately starts devouring the peppers whole. She seems to have virtually no spice receptors in her mouth.
Neeka is clearly impressed, but her continued bravado—and major exaggerations of her own total—only serve to egg Aktri on. Aktri isn’t content with matching Neeka. She has to win. Aktri is polishing off her eleventh pepper by the time the allip peppers’ infamous pain-phantasms finally start to set in.
It’s around this time that Neeka asks about the explosion she noticed over by the Dragonslayer game. Aktri impulsively tries to play the explosion off as totally intentional, even eagerly agreeing when Neeka asks if she used witchpitch. Mere moments later, though, the question’s full meaning sinks in. Witchpitch is an easily-concocted alchemical firestarter popular among local goblins.
Her paranoia takes over. She starts contradicting herself, loudly accusing Neeka—across the hapless Wormbasil trapped between them—of either sabotaging Thuz or knowing who did. Neeka seems flabbergasted, but she quickly gets annoyed, bluntly telling Aktri that she probably just screwed up the invention herself and should own up to it. Aktri refuses to accept this and stomps off.
During their argument, Neeka off-handedly calls Aktri's tail cute, which causes Aktri to short-circuit for a moment before hastily correcting Neeka—"It's not cute, it's functional!"
Finally, Blue Moon stops by the stall for Risa’s Place, where Risa’s son, Besk Magravi, is serving spiced potatoes and apple cider. Blue Moon, timid as ever, manages to order a cup of cider and some potatoes. As Besk eagerly explains his process for the cider—involving wild Tickwood apples, which he insists have a sort of fey quality you can’t get anywhere else—Blue Moon slides a single button across the counter. Blue doesn’t seem to understand when Besk tries to clarify that the food is free today. The young man finally accepts the… gift?
[smaller][ooc]GM: “Is it, like, a fancy button, or...?”
Blue Moon’s Player: “it’s a button :)”
Also, Besk’s autistic ramble about apple harvesting apparently went on for an uninterrupted twenty seconds. Sometimes you just have to adlib a personality quirk for an NPC.[/ooc][/smaller]
At last, the fuming Aktri runs back into Paz. Paz tries to ask if Aktri is okay, then to express her concerns about her manic friend and the giant equine pollution machine, but Aktri steamrolls over Paz to start venting about the plot she’s sure the other Seven Tooth goblins are part of to make her look stupid. Someone sabotaged her beloved creation, and she’s going to get to the bottom of it! She’ll show them all!
Paz, unable to stop stammering, much less to get through to her oldest friend, can only nod along.
Over at Risa's, Blue Moon continues to enjoy its potatoes and cider. It’s watching the crowd, but it doesn’t know what it’s looking for. It’s attracted a small crowd of its own, onlookers curious about the bizarre owl-creature. Blue Moon is doing its best not to think about them.
Wormbasil has become the impromptu escort of Neeka the Bard. Neeka seems to have decided he’s her companion for the festival, and she clearly enjoys dragging him from attraction to attraction, her arm firmly locked around his wrist. It should be noted that Basil is shy, meek, and extremely unused to talking to girls. Neeka is confident, inescapable, exceptionally pretty, and basically glued to his arm for the entire afternoon. The poor boy didn’t stand a chance.
GM: “She goes to the Dragonslayer game, and she plays, like, ten games in a row and makes Basil watch until she wins a prize. She’s not very strong.”
Basil’s Player: “Despite seeming rather curt and maybe annoyed by Neeka, he does seem to enjoy the company.”
Olivia, now that the excitement is past, winds up wandering around the festival, admiring attractions and stalls with no particular purpose. As she’s lingering by a tall woodpile assembled for tonight’s bonfire, she notices a familiar face helping to put away the butterfly enclosure: A blonde priestess who almost immediately looks up, notices her, and calls, “Oh! Hey, Olivia! Olivia, it’s been ages!”
This is Sister Celia, one of Isabelle’s old friends. Well, she knew Isabelle, anyways. She knows a lot of people. Celia is an Erastilian priestess, and her way of ‘taking care of her community’ is by being extremely sociable and keeping everyone informed about each other’s dealings. In other words, she’s the worst gossip in town.
“... Sister.” Olivia’s smile is strained. “H-Hi.”
“Hi!~” Sister Celia hurries over, grabs Olivia, and kisses her on both cheeks. “How’s it going!”
“Um, it’s, uh, you know, it’s fi—”
“I haven’t seen you out in a while!” Celia’s head tilts. “Everything going okay?”
Olivia’s tongue clicks. “... yup! Everything is… swell.”
“Yeah, it must’ve been really hard with uh, with, you know.” Sister Celia is barely giving Olivia time to finish her sentences. “You know. Belor bringing that up for no reason. Honestly, that guy is so out of line.”
“Yeah, it must’ve been really hard with uh, with, you know.” Sister Celia is barely giving Olivia time to finish her sentences. “You know. Belor bringing that up for no reason. Honestly, that guy is so out of line.”
“Yeah, it’s really hard to deal with people bringing it up out of nowhere.”
Celia brightens, totally missing the hint. “I saw you hanging out with Ameiko, though, earlier! You two seem to get along really well. You and Ameiko.”
“I mean… she’s pretty nice.”
“Yeah.” Celia’s voice sparkles with undisguised curiosity. There’s a brief pause. Olivia fumbles for the words to take advantage of the shifting subject, but she’s too slow. “I mean, I guess, like, she lost someone in the Late Unpleasantness, too, so it kind of makes sense that you two would be comfortable with each other, right? I mean, personally, I can’t imagine—I didn’t lose anybody close. I was really lucky. I’m sorry if, like… well, Belor bringing it up must have really hurt. And I don’t wanna, like, make things uncomfortable for you.” She coughs. “All I mean is, I’m really glad that you have other people to talk to about that. And it’s really cool that you two are such good friends, and—”
“I think some of the butterflies are getting away from you.”
Celia glances over her shoulder, then does a double-take. “Oh! Well, we already let them out, sweetie!” She giggles. “I appreciate it, though. Thanks for keeping me on my toes, there! You had me looking, but then I remembered—well, anyways! There I go prattling on again.” She leans in. “So, I saw you save that screamy goblin earlier!”
Olivia’s throat tightens. “Um, I…”
“It was really cool!”
“... don’t remember that…”
“Yeah. I mean, I remember! You went so fast, I swear I saw smoke around you.”
“Oh, it’s… it’s nothing, just a…” Olivia squirms.
“Yeah, I get it. Hard to remember. Actually, I was reading recently about this thing called ‘adrenaline’. And when people—I mean, when there’s a really desperate situation—they get a lot of it, and they can get really strong or go really fast.”
“That sounds fake, but okay.”
“No, no, it’s real! I was actually reading about it because I got curious about how, you know, when they were chasing… Chopper…” Sister Celia pauses briefly as Olivia lets out a sigh that is almost a growl, but she apparently decides the best way past her faux pas is to blaze right through it. “... no, it was like, I was wondering how he could have possibly scaled all those stairs when he was so badly injured, and it was probably because he was so out of his mind that he was getting huge adrenaline spikes. Maybe you could ask Ameiko about it, since she’s an adventurer. She’s probably been in life-or-death situations all the time, you know? You’d have to ask her, though; we’re not really that close, funny enough. I think she thinks I’m kind of a busybody? But honestly, I’m not, I just think it’s so important for everyone to be on the same page! Erastil teaches us how important it is for a community to have tight bonds. People shouldn’t keep secrets from each other. Not that I go around exposing other people’s business, but you know, I like to keep everybody ‘on the same page’, that’s all. So many times people get hurt over misunderstandings. You know how that is?"
“I don’t know.” Olivia’s body is tensed. She wants an exit, but there’s no way out that won’t raise more questions. Her heart is racing. She can’t deal with this today, she just wanted to enjoy the festival—
“Oh, yeah, sorry, am I overwhelming you?” Sister Celia blinks. “My pa always said I could out-yak a yeti, whatever that means. You’re just really easy to talk to, though! You’re a really good listener. You know, Isabelle was always saying that about you, that you’re—”
“Can you stop?”
Sister Celia stops.
“Yeah, okay,” she says after a moment. Her voice is suddenly half its normal volume. “Sorry.”
Olivia is mortified by her own outburst. She tries to apologize back, and the two bounce off each other for a few awkward moments. Sister Celia makes a half-hearted comment about how the two should hang out sometime, but the outburst might as well have flipped a magnet between them. They wish each other a good festival, and Olivia makes her escape.
Olivia is left totally out of sorts. Her mind whirls with a mix of shame for blowing up at Celia and painful frustration with the both of them.
We're only connected by virtue of having been friends with the same dead woman. Just... leave me alone.
Goblins cut and goblins fight
Stab the dog and cut the horse,
Goblins eat and take by force!
Goblins race and goblins jump
Goblins slash and goblins bump
Burn the skin and mash the head,
Goblins here and you be dead!
Chase the baby, catch the pup
Bonk the head to shut it up!
Bones be cracked! Flesh be stewed!
We be goblins! You be food!
The unsettlingly catchy melody rings in the festivalgoers’ ears as Sandpoint collapses into chaos.
It started with a deafening thunderclap to announce the start of the consecration ceremony. Some of the goblins, including Neeka and Koruvus, had departed, evidently disinterested in watching some boring ritual. Sheriff Hemlock was off searching for the perpetrators of the runaway cart. Father Zantus had taken the stage, had cleared his throat to speak—
And then everything went wrong.
The Swallowtail Festival is under attack.
A goblin leaps at Olivia, teeth bared, only to be knocked out by a precise punch to the back of the neck. Wormbasil stands over its fallen form, then turns to face the other attackers. Nearby, a rabid raider leaps up onto a nearby barrel for a “strategic advantage”, only to immediately eat dirt as Blue Moon races over and sweeps her legs out from under her with its staff.
Aktri is convinced that she recognizes this song, that these are Seven Tooth lyrics. Giddy with excitement, she clambers aboard Thuz. The mechanical beast roars to life, charges forward at frightening speeds, swerves to one side, and smashes its hooves down on the chest of Blue Moon’s prone opponent. Everyone hears the horrid sound of cracking ribs.
Olivia’s form becomes that of a tall, ghostly woman no one recognizes. As she swings her spectral scimitar in a vicious downward arc, her terrified target frantically ducks right into Wormbasil’s flying fist.
Paz, horrified at the carnage, races over to check on the condition of Thuz’s first target. The goblin raider has several broken bones and bloody wounds, and the goblin warface is interfering with her breathing. Paz is able to soothe the unconscious goblin’s muscles out of the warface, allowing her breathing to stabilize.
Behind her, Thuz charges away and strikes at the fourth and final goblin in the square—a particularly ferocious warrior named Criscrack who’s exchanged his stale loaf of bread for a dogslicer. Thuz knocks it to the ground in time for Aktri’s whip to lash out and strike it right in the temple. The raider falls to the ground, concussed, its dogslicer dripping with Isabelle’s blood. A few stolen swallowtail butterflies slip out of its pouch to circle over its head.
The group takes a moment to catch their breath. All around them is goblin mayhem. A torch-wielding goblin runs along the rooftops only to trip and fall into a rain barrel. A cackling goblin hurls its dogslicer at a woman and her child, only for the dogslicer to ricochet off the jeweler’s sign and rebound, stabbing the thrower in the gut. They can hear the distant sounds of watchmen struggling against the berserk raiders. Arrows and sling bullets fill the skies.
As Isabelle fades back into Olivia and magically heals the shallow cut Criscrack gave her, Paz and Blue Moon spring into action to tie up the four knocked-out goblins. Just as they’re finishing up, Isabelle snaps back into existence and points out a new threat coming from the north.
A new group of goblins has arrived at where the town was keeping the fuel for the bonfire, right next to the haycart from earlier. The haycart stands perilously near the wooden walls of the building next to the new cathedral. One goblin is actually climbing atop the woodpile with a blazing torch, eyes aglow with frenzied glee.
Everyone rushes forward to engage, Wormbasil finally drawing his sword—but in his non-dominant right hand. Only Blue Moon lags behind. The stuffed chickcharney eyes the three rowdy arsonists with deep dread, smelling fire in its future.
As the goblins turn to behold their new foes, one of them raises a hand, roiling with something black and bubbling. Two of these goblins are no mere warriors, but pyromancers. Aktri’s eye twitches as a hurled glob of pitch strikes Thuz—she’s sick of people sabotaging her beautiful creation with flammable treesap.
The battle is short but ugly. A warchanter springs from behind the hay wagon and fills the air with an obnoxiously catchy melody. The two sorcerers swallow their horrible pitch to belch out great gusts of fire upon the enemies caught between them. Thuz and Aktri are badly burnt, Paz is singed, and the hay wagon catches fire.
Then Wormbasil reaches the fray. His rapier catches the warchanter totally off-guard as it pierces the tendons of her right leg, and she collapses, shrieking in pain and clutching her bloody wound. He whirls around and clobbers one of the startled pyromancers over the head with the rapier’s butt, instantly dropping it as well.
As Paz whirls and starts trying to extinguish the fire with her mastery of water magic, Thuz rears up, a burning terror of metal and wheels. Its hooves drive the other pyromancer stumbling back, putting it off-balance just in time for its wingblade to come slicing out and cut deep into the creature’s chest. The goblin goes into shock and collapses.
Angered more by Paz’s efforts than anyone else’s, the last goblin atop the woodpile waves its torch menacingly, ready to set the whole fuel pile ablaze. Then a length of cord comes whirling out of nowhere, weighted on both ends, and catches on the goblin’s narrow throat. The weights smack around to opposite sides, and the goblin chokes, gurgles, and collapses to the ground, its torch landing harmlessly in the dirt. Once sure the fires are safely subdued, Blue Moon trots up to retrieve their bola.
Working in collaboration with Paz’s druidic magic, Isabelle manages to shove the burning wagon away from any buildings. Paz turns to treating the wounds of their enemies, shooting Aktri a disapproving glare. Aktri is too busy repairing Thuz to notice.
Isabelle hastily snaps back out of Olivia as Father Zantus rushes onto the scene, sharing the healing light of the stars with those who are injured. He thanks the group, then rushes off to help others.
A few minutes go by as the five festivalgoers (plus Thuz) recover from the violence. Aktri is single-mindedly on the repairs, but when the party hears a distant scream, followed by frantic barking, she perks up instantly—another chance to show Thuz off in battle! Nobody else shares her enthusiasm, but reluctantly, they run off to the aid of whoever’s in trouble.
Now that the terrifying dog has been vanquished by their fearless leader, the goblins cheer and move in for the cowering noblewoman…
Later: “... you have to know the right way to milk the tofu.”
As mentioned previously, Sister Celia is stolen and slightly repurposed from our 'sister thread'. She wound up a huge motormouth, and not especially softspoken at all, but that's mostly just a concession to my improv style. I had to edit her dialogue down a lot to get rid of a lot of insipid babble. Aktri's player asked me, "How did you do that?" when the scene was over. The answer is, it's just how I am when I'm not checking myself! Sister Celia is me sans filter. I'm glad we had the chance to introduce tensions with Celia now; she'll be an important source of information later, so this should be good for drama.
I made very few changes to the adventure this session, aside from, obviously, an ad-libbed scene with Sister Celia. I made sure to give the goblins some pretty bad tactics for these first two fights--one climbing onto a barrel, another forgetting its dogslicer at the bread stall and attacking with a baguette instead, etc. The Pyros still messed them up pretty bad.
Nobody's really looting anything. For some reason, my players never seem to want to loot the bodies. It's fine. We're using a slightly tweaked ABP house rule, and I can always just have people like Aldrena throw reward money at them.
To Be Continued!
my computer literally broke the next day. fate is testing me.
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Because my computer is still broken, but I don't want to leave everyone in the lurch, here's a list of sort of "teaser summaries" of the last four sessions and interim roleplays.
Session 3: The party kills some goblins and also a weird dog, marking the first deaths in the campaign. The party meets a very friendly Aldrena Foxglove, as well as Garridan Viskelai.
Session 3.5 (interim RP): Aktri gets in a fight with Olivia after Olivia gaslights her about seeing Isabelle. Olivia and Paz have a bonding moment.
Session 4: Everyone's celebrities now, and Basil and Olivia hate it. It's revealed that the Seven Tooth goblins have vanished from Sandpoint overnight. Olivia and Paz chill at the Hagfish. Basil gets a free pastry from Sandpoint Savories. Madame Mvashti goads Aktri, who throws a fit and storms out.
Pazquest, Part 1: A year ago, Paz sets out with a friend-of-a-friend, Shalelu, on a lengthy journey across Avistan. Shalelu has to visit Kyonin for some reason (helping Ameiko look into some leads on Tsuto's location), and she and Paz are both putting off visits to family members living on Hook Mountain. On the first leg of their journey, they run into Bruthazmus, who brutally injures Paz with a silver-fletched arrow before they manage to steal the bugbear's boat.
Session 5: The party convenes at the Rusty Dragon at Aldrena's invitation, chats with Ameiko for a bit, and then goes to meet with the Sheriff and the Mayor at the cathedral. They learn about the graverobbings, and Olivia gets in an intense conversation with Sister Celia where she learns important information about Nualia--such as Wormbasil's connection to her. People keep mentioning Shalelu being missing or unaccounted for. I haven't finished Pazquest yet, so her player is very spooked about what exactly happened. I enjoy keeping her in the dark.
Session 6: Olivia interrogates Wormbasil. Paz finally reunites with Mvashti--Aktri becomes very scarce the second Mvashti is mentioned. Paz and Olivia share a meal with Niska while Blue Moon goes on unrelated escapades. Aktri makes a dangerous friend in local kook Brodert Quink.
Pazquest, Part 2: Paz and Shalelu make it to Lake Encarthan and take a ship bound for Kyonin, but the unexpected presence of undead in waters thought safe leads to them getting abruptly dropped off in Druma.
Session 7: The party gets cute outfits at Rynshinn's, then goes on a boar hunt and takes out a boar and a giant tick. Just as they're enjoying their victory, Paz spots a figure stumbling through the woods towards them, bloody, bruised, and with a silver-fletched arrow in her shoulder. Shalelu meets Paz's eyes, then collapses. (Shalelu split off from Paz when they drew near Sandpoint, claiming a desire to be alone but actually realizing Bruthazmus was following them and wanting Paz to be safe. She had a fifth faceoff with Bruthazmus, and this one, as we'll see, went... badly.)
Anyways, help, I accidentally made Aldrena one of the most well-liked NPCs in the campaign so far. It's going to be devastating when Book 2 hits.
Also, Rynshinn is so, so fun to roleplay. I wound up playing her as very soft-spoken, very assertive, and very comfortable complimenting people. I'm told that Aktri might have a new fixation--she's so unused to being praised over anything, especially her appearance, that it's kind of overwhelming her.
I'm planning on playing Rynshinn as ace, but not necessarily aro--I'm interested in where her dynamic with Aktri could go if her player decides to pursue this. Rynshinn's no stranger to admirers, and she's mostly just too busy with her own problems and trauma to really deal with them (and their normative assumptions), but Aktri is definitely an odd duck.
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It's been a rough few months. Anyways, let's get moving to SESSION TWO.
Aktri of the Seven Tooth (she/her), Goblin Inventor: An insecure, borderline narcissistic tinkerer who will do anything to secure the admiration and attention of others. She's thrilled at the chance to show off Thuz's capabilities in battle.
Wormbasil Deverin (he/him), Human Rogue: The mayor's shy, awkward nephew whose best friend/secret crush, Nualia, died in a fire five years ago. He's reluctant to draw his sword here, even in self-defense, but he can clearly handle himself.
Olivia Milotti (she/her), Human Summoner: A synthesist summoner haunted by the Wrath Phantom of her friend Isabelle Sera, who was one of Chopper's final victims. She's been channeling Isabelle to fight against these goblins, and Isabelle seems considerably less interested in showing mercy.
Blue Moon (they/it), Poppet Investigator: A very curious, very polite, kind of terrifying barn owl-like minor cryptid determined to understand its own origins. Alternates between intently curious and utterly terrified around strangers, but has proven incredibly capable in combat.
Greedle, goblin commando and wielder of the horsechopper named Barber, tosses his long, luxurious hair over his shoulder and sneers down at the slain hunting dog from atop his own mangey mount. Another glorious battle won by Greedle the Great. His whole body is tensed and vibrating with drugged adrenaline, and as he licks the dog’s blood from his horsechopper and lets out a shrill, manic cackle, he turns towards a nearby barrel. He saw that soft-looking noblewoman cowering behind it. As his goblin followers begin to emerge from hiding, he spurs his goblin dog forward…
A gnome races into his field of vision—a gnome with shimmering cyan hair, pale rosy eyes, and hands that spark and pulse with the runes of magic. A mage? No, a water-witch!
Paz, druidess of the Order of Waves, is already channeling a spell. Calling upon the powers of the nearby ocean, she reaches out her spirit to awaken the salt in the air, the clouds in the sky, and the distant, muted songs of deep aquifers. She grips the shape of water and rallies it to her, and from thin air, a tremendous blast of water erupts upward from beneath Greedle and his mount. It’s like a small upside-down rainstorm, all of its precipitation concentrated entirely upon the tiny circle of land that happens to contain an abundance of goblin and goblin dog.
But Greedle is ready. Greedle kicks his mount into action, guiding it to spring up into the air, matching the water’s trajectory. Instead of getting the wind knocked out of them, they are borne a few inches up into the air. Greedle’s hair flows through the raindrops like a river of darkness. It could be a hair care commercial.
They land moments later, totally unaffected. Paz is livid.
As the rest of the party closes in and the other goblin warriors rush forth to meet them, the goblin dog sneezes, snarls, and shakes itself dry. The dander goes everywhere, catching Paz and Basil fully. The dog straightens and bares its teeth to strike at Paz.
Blue Moon springs in from the side, moving at terrifying speed, and bashes the dog upside the head. Its jaw is forced to snap shut. Greedle shouts at it to pull back, but too late to stop a now furiously itching Wormbasil from driving his rapier through the fell beast’s eye socket.
The battlefield devolves into chaos. Thuz is on autopilot, bounding in to stomp on a prone goblin’s ribcage. There is a sickening set of cracks. Olivia and Paz are spattered with oil and blood, and both look nauseated.
Aktri isn’t even paying attention. She had to rush to get here, and she still hasn’t had the chance to repair Thuz properly, and she’s trying to frantically jury-rig a fix, but there’s just so much noise. Aktri’s never been in a battle before. She can’t focus on her task. She keeps making mistakes. Trying to rush the job, she twists the wrong bolt, and Thuz begins to make dangerous sounds. Toxic fluid gushes onto the ground from a damaged pipe. Aktri frantically steers her masterpiece away from the fight so she can keep trying to repair it.
With the metal horse monster out of the way, the goblin commando cackles and sweeps Basil’s legs out from under him. He brings his horsechopper back up to swing down again, but Basil rolls out of the way just in time—the blow would have taken his entire arm at the shoulder. Instead, the worst of the slice is absorbed by his haversack.
Of course, focusing on Wormbasil means that Greedle isn’t watching Blue Moon. Blue Moon races on its long legs at a terrifying speed to leap behind the commando, and as the commando is raising his weapon to strike again, Blue Moon reprimands Greedle with a firm jab to the back of the knee.
Seeing Basil covered in blood, and taking advantage of Blue’s distraction, Paz’s instincts take over. She hasn’t let go of the waves, but now they change focus, transforming into gentle vitality-infused raindrops as they descend back down to earth onto the swordsman. Basil feels much better, although this hasn’t shaken that damn goblin pox.
Unfortunately, Paz’s diverted focus has consequences. Without Thuz at her back, the goblins are no longer afraid to approach her. They race in and flank her, and as she stumbles away from one, the other slashes her across the gut. Paz doubles over in pain.
Aktri isn’t looking at Paz, though. Her vision has settled on a most curious sight. A ghostly shimmer has appeared beside Olivia. A tall, ethereal woman stands there, glowing scimitar clutched in her hand.
Olivia-Isabelle advance on one of the goblins, who recoils in pure terror. Isabelle raises her scimitar, and in one bloody act, the goblin’s head is sent flying from its body.
It takes Olivia a moment to register what Isabelle has done. Her stomach churns as she looks upon the vacant red eyes of the severed head.
Aktri remembers herself and brings Thuz in for one last charge to kick the last of the rank-and-file goblins into a wall. Now it’s only Greedle the Great remaining.
But Thuz just left him an awfully tempting opening.
Having recovered from Blue Moon’s strike, the commando swings his horsechopper in a brutal arc down on Thuz’s main axle. The sounds of tearing metal, and the stench of gushing smog, fill the battlefield. One of the fallen goblins is crushed beneath Thuz as it collapses in a wreck.
Aktri lands facefirst against the pavement. She spits out bits of moss and dirt, but as she’s about to get back to her feet and rush to Thuz’s side, her ear twitches.
Aktri rolls out of the way just in time as the horsechopper comes down on where her head just was. CLANG. It strikes the pavement, sending up shards of rock. He raises it again, cackling, and brings it down towards her neck. She twists and writhes frantically, pure instinct taking over, more ferret than goblin. CLANG. Sparks shoot off into the darkness.
Desperate to drive the commando back, Paz manages to muster one last call upon the waves. Again, a brutal geyser erupts at the commando’s feet. But Greedle is Thistletop, born and bred, and he knows the water almost as well as she does. He twists out of the way. All the spell captures is his hair, long and shimmering in the dusky light. Blue Moon has been intently studying the commando’s movements, but there aren’t any openings in all the chaos. It decides to take a risk and swings at Greedle’s legs, but the commando is too quick for it and ripostes, forcing the poppet back with a sibilant shriek.
Greedle sneers, bringing back his horsechopper for another swing.
And then his face goes blank as the flat of a long spectral blade collides with the back of his head.
He sways briefly, his beautiful hair still dripping water-wet, then collapses.
The ethereal Isabelle stands above his fallen form, her ghostly form barely visible in the fading light. The fight is over.
Then Aktri hears a small explosion from Thuz’s wreck, and with a cry of alarm, she rushes to her creation’s rescue. “NO! NO NO NO NO!”
She doesn’t even notice Paz, who has gone very still.
Paz knows she’s supposed to be doing something. She knows she needs to move. Knows there are things to do. She just can’t seem to lift her feet. Her eyes remain fixed on the scene. There are two corpses on either side of her, dead, mangled animals. There’s a head. A stump. The pulped mess of a goblin beneath Thuz, totally ignored by Aktri as she focuses on repairing her murderous creation. Her left hand is covered in blood, pressed hard against the bloody, shallow slice a goblin’s jagged blade drew across her stomach seconds ago.
In the face of Paz’s inaction, it apparently falls to Blue Moon to tend to the fallen.
“Oh my gosh,” Olivia whispers, backing away from the bodies, “I’m sorry, I… wait.” Her attention snaps to Paz. “You’re a healer, aren’t you? Can’t you do something?”
Paz gives a start, as if just waking up from a dream. “S-Sorry,” she manages, “I—I can try!”
She rushes over to help Blue Moon, quickly taking the lead in first aid. Blue Moon is happy to let her. “What the hell is all this stuff?” the poppet is whimpering, knee-deep in blood and viscera.
“Here—Here, let me help,” Paz says quickly, stepping in and hurrying to undo the damage Blue Moon inadvertently did trying to ‘re-stuff’ the goblin. She manages to staunch the bleeding and remove the feathers.
As Basil rises to his feet, mostly recovered from the goblin pox, the noblewoman finally pokes her head out from behind the barrel. “Is it—is it safe? Is Poppers alright?”
She bounces back surprisingly quickly, though, rushing over to Basil and seizing his hand for a vigorous handshake. “That was... incredible. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t happened by! All of you!”
“Um—um—I’m glad you’re alright, ma’am.” Wormbasil can’t quite meet her gaze, nor bring his voice above a whisper.
“Oh, your face! That horrible hound of his!” The noblewoman rummages in her bag and procures a tin, shoving it into Basil’s hands. “Here, I have some—this should help with the itching! I use it for dryness, but I imagine you need it much more than I do right now.”
“Th-Thanks.”
The noblewoman turns to beam at Olivia, her eyes sparkling. “And your work... fantastical.” She steps over to admire Isabelle, tilting her head to examine the ghost’s features. Isabelle might as well be a summoned mannequin as far as she seems aware. “How did you do this? This was your magic, yes?”
Olivia’s mouth is dry. “I…”
Aktri, mostly finished repairing Thuz, proudly clambers out from under the machine to the ‘rescue’. “Oh, this? This was done due to the handiwork of the great Ravilaktriuntzandi, of the Seven Tooth Tribe!” She gives Thuz a hearty pat on the back. Flame and smoke erupts from a couple of the roughly-patched breaches, causing her to jolt back a little bit.
The noblewoman looks the great construct up and down. “Impressive!” she breathes, although her eyes remain mostly fixed on the pretty ghost lady behind it. After a pause, she glances towards Olivia. “How—is—did you create her?”
Olivia tugs on the strand and internally whispers, returntomeRETURNTOMERETURNTOME
Isabelle turns and smiles to the lady, then vanishes.
Olivia coughs. “Um, uh, yes, well, it was a, um, i-it took a long time to figure out, how to, um, make such, convincing illusions!” She gives a shrill laugh.
“I’ve never seen an illusion do that!” The noblewoman approaches Olivia, excitement sparkling in her voice. “I’ve heard about—that’s a, um, oh, I read about it once, a shadow conjuration, right?”
“yes”
“An illusion that can act on the world as though it were a real, physical thing! Incredible!” She clasps her hands before her chest. “And, might I had, an especially beautiful illusion, at that. The details… I could tell it truly showed off a deep artistic appreciation of the mortal form.”
“Oh.” Olivia laughs nervously. “Thank you.” Aktri, off to the side, is squinting very intensely at Olivia throughout this. Olivia swallows. “I… wasn’t really ready to… debut that particular spell yet, but…”
“Well, I’m glad you did!” The noblewoman smiles. She is maintaining very intense eye contact. “Very glad. And I appreciate getting to be your first audience. May I ask your…?” She seems to remember herself, and looks around at the rest of her rescuers. “May I ask all of your names, I mean?”
“Paz,” Paz says shortly, still treating one of the fallen and still looking a little shellshocked.
“Olivia,” Olivia squeaks.
“RAVILAKTRIUNTZANDI OF THE SEVEN TOOTH TRIBE!” Aktri declares, beaming at the chance to say it again.
“That’s a very impressive name!”
“Isn’t it? I made it myself! Just like this.” Aktri pats Thuz again.
“I’m Basil,” Basil mumbles, his voice barely rising above the metallic clanking.
“Basil! And, um…” The noblewoman glances down at the fifth member of the party.
“blue moon,” Blue Moon says in a voice like a leaking balloon.
“Blue Moon?” Her head tilts in fascination. “Well, you’re an interesting creature, aren’t you? It’s very nice to meet you, Blue Moon!” She reaches down to shake Blue Moon’s hand. A hand pops out from under the wing to provide a very limp handshake. “That was some quick work with that staff.”
She turns to the others, eyes widening. “Oh, goodness. You all just just saved my life, and here I am, a mannerless oaf, not having even given my own name! Aldrena. Aldrena Foxglove. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Her gaze lingers on Olivia. “All of you.”
“I’m… sorry we couldn’t get here sooner,” Olivia says, “but, um… at least it’s over now.”
“Sorry about your dog, and all,” Basil mumbles.
“He died protecting me.” Aldrena’s lips tighten. “I’m sure it’s what he would have wanted. He was a good hunter, poor thing.”
Paz nods solemnly. For a moment, nobody seems to quite know what to say.
Aldrena’s hands clap together, and her downcast expression lifts. “Well! I am eternally in your—”
There is a crash. The door to the White Deer slams open, and a bloody goblin comes flying out and slams into the dirt, hard enough to push up sod. Out comes Garridan Viskalai, the bearded Shoanti proprietor, scratched up and bruised and brandishing a staff. He glances back inside. “I think that’s the last of them!” He looks back and registers the group. His patchy eyebrows arch. “Well, you look like you’re all in a state. Are you all alright?”
“Um.” Olivia looks over at Basil.
“I think I’m okay,” Basil mumbles. “I’ve had better days.”
Olivia sighs with relief. “I was worried about that.”
“I think, um… Paz’s healing did a good… good for me.” Wormbasil is a very eloquent speaker.
“Okay.”
“YES! Yes, not a scratch on me!” Aktri declares gleefully.
Garridan peers down at her. “You’re a Seven Tooth, right?
“Yes.”
“Alright.”
“What?” Aktri’s head tilts. “Why?”
“Well, I don’t know where these goblins are from, but… just wanted to make sure.” He raises a hand. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but it’s been—”
“Oh, they were also Seven Tooth!”
Everyone freezes. Garridan blinks.
Paz steps in. “I-It’s okay! She’s with me, she—”
“Oh, don’t worry.” Garridan chuckles. “I’m sure if there was a problem, I’d know about it by now, and you would know that we have a problem by now.”
“Yes!” Aktri grins.
“Well, come to think of it…” His brow furrows. “... ah, you’re that goblin who blew up the town square!”
Olivia is aghast. “You what?”
“No, I—I didn’t blow up the town square!” Aktri is indignant. “That is a complete exaggeration!”
Garridan laughs. “Well, it pissed off Belor something fierce, so I guess I can forgive it. But in seriousness, good job, all of you. Looks like we might’ve been in some trouble if you hadn’t come by, with our sheriff who knows where.” His lip curls on the last part.
Still struggling to tend to the fallen, a bloodied Blue Moon weakly pipes up, “Um, do you know where I could find some goblin stuffing?”
Aldrena says her goodbyes, once more profusely thanking her rescuers and inviting them to meet her at the Rusty Dragon sometime for drinks—particularly focusing her attention on Olivia.
Everyone heads inside, and over the next hour or so, everyone tries to decompress. Garridan does his best to reassure the heroes on the goblin deaths, trying to explain that goblin raids are just like this sometimes, but his wife, Tannsy, notes that Sandpoint hasn’t seen a raid in over fifty years. Olivia is perplexed. Aktri eagerly identifies these goblins as members of the Mosswood and especially Thistletop tribes. The Thistletop tribe is infamous in the region as containing some of the meanest, unruliest, and generally most unpleasant bullies in the region, although according to her, they’re usually too busy harassing the other tribes to even get to Sandpoint.
Aktri: "Goblin stuffing? Goblins don’t have stuffing!”
The party is fixed some leftover venison, which was kept out of the festival offerings due to being a little too gristly. Aktri is happy to utterly tear into it, but for some reason or another, Paz doesn’t seem to share her friend’s appetite at the moment. Garridan also asks if the party wants anything to drink, and Blue Moon timidly requests some cider. Garridan, determined to offer his finest hospitality to these brave heroes, heads on a brief trip out to see if he can grab any from Risa’s. Basil and Olivia both wind up fixing their own drinks. It’s been a long day.
The tavern is populated by staff members and townsfolk taking shelter in the aftermath of the raid, and the so-called heroes notice they’re getting quite a bit of attention all of a sudden. Aktri asking Paz about her water magic attracts the interest of a few curious barmaids, who quickly pull Paz’s attention away from Aktri. Blue Moon is beset by children who marvel at its strange appearance, rendering it paralyzed by nervousness until Garridan returns to shoo them away. Blue Moon’s black beady button eyes sparkle in wonder as it notices the big keg of apple cider under Garridan’s arm.
Garridan also takes this opportunity to present Greedle’s glowing horsechopper to the party, and Aktri, identifying it as bearing a minor rune of potency, is quick to claim it. She can tell the rune has a quirk of some kind, but can’t quite put her finger on it yet.
It’s at this moment that there is a knock at the door. Everyone goes still.
A moment later, Sheriff Hemlock probably realizes that he shouldn’t need to knock at the door to a tavern, so he opens the door and comes inside. Garridan is cold towards his brother.
Sheriff Hemlock came to thank the group for their heroics earlier and make sure they were alright, having heard about it all from Father Zantus. Olivia is, if anything, even cooler towards Sheriff Hemlock than Garridan. Aktri eagerly seizes the opportunity to redeem herself from earlier, bragging about her amazing invention and properly introducing herself by name. He gets the pronunciation wrong. Her eye twitches. He points out the fact that Thus is smoking (“yes, that’s what it does!”) and offers to have some of the town’s artisans repair it, but Aktri insists on taking care of it herself.
The sheriff takes his leave. As the night stretches on, the party is left to deal with their various new admirers—many with a little help from fine liquor. Paz manages to shake off some of her previous stress and enjoy the newfound attention, while a thoroughly drunk Basil tries to avoid notice by blending into the background. Blue Moon is unable to shake off their own admiring public. Aktri, of course, is quite boisterous in trying to get as much attention on her and Thuz as possible, and Olivia decides to encourage this as a way of diverting attention away from herself. This leads to a brief moment in which Aktri is asked to sing some goblin songs and completely freezes up—to her embarrassment, she’s a terrible singer. Luckily, Tannsy saves her by suggesting that they take Thuz inside before it rains.
With that, the crowds disperse, the night reaches its conclusion, and the party all retire to warm beds and a good night’s sleep...
And yeah, Aldrena's a girl here! Aside from my above reasons for making so many NPCs into pretty girls, I also felt like "gothic horror fatale" was a better vibe to aim for than "college campus creep" for this group.
I also had Garridan come out in part to set the stage for what's to come--the town being regarded as heroes, Aktri's invention being celebrated instead of mocked, etc. The tavern scene also allowed for a bit of a come-down after the intensity of the raid.
I also made sure to use Garridan to explain a little about how goblin raids worked, and as mentioned above, this raid was remarkable for including goblins from multiple tribes.
We just finished up Session Twelve. I'm a bit behind, but Aktri's player keeps amazing notes. I might adapt those with very little flare for the sake of continuing the storyline.
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Alright, we had fun here. It's time for our first batch of INTERIM ROLEPLAYS.
You can consider this Session 3.5. We opened a Discord channel for text-based roleplay, and a few people had more private scenes they wanted to resolve before the next session.
These are strictly optional reading. Some of my players don't read or participate them, but some like to delve deep into their PCs' relationships between games.
Magic Tricks: Aktri confronts Olivia about the weird ghost lady, and Olivia gaslights her a bunch to no avail--Aktri is like a dog with a bone. When they start yelling at each other, Paz wakes up and defuses the scene. Aktri vents to Paz and then stalks away.
That ghost lady. The one who had the nerve, the gall to lift her into the air like it was nothing and then claim that she saw nothing. Of course she saw something! She saw fire, and strange ghostly eyes!
And so she awoke, and so she made herself exactly decent enough to move out into the hallway and stand directly outside of the door she knew Olivia had been staying in. Then, she waited.
At first, the minutes drag by slowly - there don't seem to be any sounds from the room beyond the door, save for the occasional morning birdsong. But then, after some time, the rustling of sheets and thump of feet on wood announce Olivia's wakefulness. She seems to be trying to stay quiet, taking slow careful steps so as to avoid awakening her roommate. In short order a faint clatter of metal, the brushing of leather on cloth, and dull thumps that grow louder with each step can just barely be heard through the door.
The door which, with a slight creak, swings open as Olivia steps out into the hall with tangled hair and a weary demeanor. She seems distracted, looking down at her satchel while fishing around for something and turning the doorknob to shut it without making much noise. She doesn't even seem to notice her early-morning visitor.
"Hey!"
Aktri has seen fit to fix this, both hands on her hips and her stance a tip-toed lean forward as she leered up towards Olivia.
Olivia jumps and whirls around fast, upending her satchel and losing some of its contents to gravity in the process. Her hand grasps for a dagger at her belt, but as her wild fearful eyes settle on Aktri, she deflates with a sigh, all the tension leaving her.
"Oh. You." Her voice is flat and she doesn't seem annoyed, just tired. She bends down and begins collecting her things - a random assortment of writing materials, candles, and playing cards, at a glance. "You ought to be more careful, going around startling folks after last night. People are on edge."
This just receives a few confused blinks from the goblin. "What? The raid's over! There's nothing to be worried about!" she points out, before shaking her head with a small noise of frustration. "But never mind that! You were doing more of that weird fire stuff last night!"
Olivia stops for a brief moment, then holds a hand to her mouth and stifles a giggle. "Oh, you're still on about that? I suppose it *was* a rather captivating sight... but it was just a spell, nothing more." She finishes stowing her spilled belongings and stands, dusting off her skirt with a few brushes of her hands. "But really, you ought to be more considerate. People were attacked, faced and witnessed *death.* That kind of trauma doesn't go away just because the danger's passed." The fabric of her shirt bunches up as she crosses her arms, one hand on the opposite upper arm in a closed-off stance, and her expression grows bitter. "This town is still stuck on what happened five years ago, people won't be so quick to forget a raid from *last night."*
The admonishment seems to cause Aktri to...malfunction for a brief moment, her face and ears twitching a bit as she stammers and tries to figure out why, exactly, this human is telling her off. "This doesn't even have anything to do with the raid!" she eventually settles on, tail waving in wide arcs behind her. "And that isn't *just* a spell, that same flaming ghost lady showed back up and cut one of the goblins' heads off!"
Olivia's smile falters, then returns in full force. "A ghost? That's quite a story. Honestly, with all the horrors people witnessed last night, I suppose it's not *that* surprising people would imagine phantoms of past tragedies. I can hardly fault you for that." She seems to relax a bit, gesturing at Aktri with a gloved hand. "I mean, you *must* have a very impressive imagination to come up with a contraption as complex as Thuz. How'd you manage such a thing, anyway? Don't tell me you made it all by yourself!"
While Aktri starts sputtering at the suggestion that she imagined something she very definitely saw with her own eyes, the swift shift in topic to the matter of Thuz does at least cause her to brighten a bit. She still has a pout on her face and a standoffish stance, but she goes along with Olivia's redirection regardless. "Of course I did! Thuz is mine, and it can't be mine if I wasn't the only one who made it!"
"Wow. You know what, I think you might just be the smartest person I've ever met." Olivia closes the flap of her satchel, metal clasps clattering against each other before she reaches down to fasten it shut. "Did you manage to repair it, by the by? I'd hate to think of how long it would take to rebuild from scratch."
Again, Olivia's initial response has Aktri squinting with suspicion, but she's given a question to focus on before she can spend too long thinking about it that she sees fit to respond to. "Well, Thuz took me six moons of constant work to make, so assuming I had all of the component parts...maybe half as long? Hm." She puzzles through that math problem for a moment...but then shakes her head again and stomps her foot a bit. "But hey, that doesn't have anything to do with this either! I didn't *imagine* it, puny human, I know what my eyes saw!"
Olivia's fist clenches hard around the strap of her satchel, and she takes a deep breath with closed eyes. Upon exhaling, she opens her eyes and smiles again, but something about it seems almost... threatening, somehow. "What you *think* you saw was the result of adrenaline, or breathing in the fumes of that machine of yours, or some misunderstood spell. *There. Is. No. Ghost."*
Olivia takes a half step forward and leans down, jabbing a finger at the accusatory inventor. "I have worked too damn hard to be forgotten these past few years to be made infamous *again* by some upstart genius who *thinks* she has something to prove. Take your win, bask in their praises, and *leave me **alone!"***
For a moment, Aktri can almost see the lifeless, fiery eyes of that mysterious phantasm in her glare.
Aktri seemed too confused to even stay upset, taking in Olivia's enraged response with a bewildered stare. "...why would you try to be *forgotten* for that many years?" she asked, tilting her head to one side.
"You - you really don't know?" Olivia is momentarily caught off-guard at Aktri's confusion, and her face shifts as her mind pours over her torrid history.
"...good. Actually, great. This is *exactly* what I want." Olivia stands again, straightening herself out with a firm grip on her bag. "This town's been stuck on its ghosts for too long. Terrible as yesterday was, at least *now* they'll have some new tragedy to occupy their attention. The last thing I want is to be a household name *again.* Now, if you'll excuse me." She moves to step around Aktri.
"So you don't want anyone to know about the ghost lady, but you also run in to fight goblins during the raid?" Aktri steps over to match Olivia's movements, with her tail sticking out to halt any other sidesteps.
Olivia stops, almost before Aktri even tries to block her path. "I have priorities. Saving lives happens to rank pretty f%*$ing highly on that list. What were you there for, to show off?" She glares at the goblin and takes a careful step over her tail. "And for the last time, no ghost. Just plain, ordinary magic. Now leave me be, I have more important things to do."
"So first it was a *magic trick*, then it was me *imagining,* then it was me *hallucinating,* and now it's just magic again?! Do you think I'm stupid, huh?!" Unfortunately, Aktri isn't dissuaded, scampering over to get in Olivia's way all over again.
Any semblance of goodwill Olivia had left evaporates. "We may have fought together, but we are *not* friends. I owe you *nothing.* Now move. I'm not asking this time."
But now Aktri seems to have crossed the line from just confused and agitated to properly angry, little hands balling up into fists as she bares her jagged teeth. "I know what I saw! You can't tell me I don't know what I saw!" There's something almost *desperate* in the way she speaks now, breathing going rapid and the corners of her mouth twitching like her own face doesn't know how to work.
Olivia lowers her voice in an attempt to avoid drawing attention, but her tone is cold and an unmistakable quiver underlies her words. "Listen here, you insufferable ass. I did *not* crawl out of bed this early to field an interrogation from some petulant brat. Whine all you like, but I will not be wasting another moment of my time entertaining your ramblings." She releases the strap of her satchel, allowing it to hang limply at her side, and tightens her hand into a fist. "I am *leaving.* If you try to stop me again, you'd best hope Garridan is awake because I will *not* hesitate to deal with you myself until he gets here."
"How? How are you gonna do that without using the same magic you tried to tell me I just *imagined?*" The goblin holds her ground, even lifting herself up onto her toes to gain what precious few inches she could. "Or are you just gonna do it anyways and then keep lying to me like I'm some f%+!ing, some dumb gullible *kid?!*"
"If you're so smart, then how come you can't just take the f&#+ing hint and *leave me alone!?"*
Paz starts awake in the morning to the sound of yelling from the hallway outside her room. *Very* familiar goblin yelling. A small sigh is the first thing to escape her lips, though they can't help but curl into a slight smile. *Oh, goodness, what has she gone and gotten herself into now?* She quickly clambers out of bed and tries to make herself look presentable.
As Paz hears what she assumes is Aktri's shouting getting louder in volume and another less familiar voice rising to meet it in turn, her smile fades and she quickens her pace to the door and steps out into the hallway. She sees Olivia and Aktri staring each other down, both red in the face and visibly livid.
"Hey, what in the *gods' names* is going on out here?" She's careful not to raise her voice too much--she doesn't want into whatever shouting match seems to be occurring--but tries to be loud and forceful enough with her tone to catch the two's attention.
Aktri, who had been about to deliver a rebuttal, whirls around to meet the gnome's gaze. Again, she spends a split second just...*staring* at Paz as though somehow in shock at the sight of her.
Olivia decides to use the momentary distraction to her advantage and slips around Aktri to make her escape. Aktri whirls around and tries to stomp after her, but stops after just a few steps with a severe shudder and a frustrated growling noise.
Paz quickly makes her way over to Aktri. "Hey, are you okay? What was that all about? You're going to wake up the whole inn yelling like that."
Aktri seems to need a moment to compose herself before she can even turn back around to face Paz, her expression twitchy and her words a dysfunctional mumble. "...you saw it too, right? At the raid? The fiery lady?"
"I... Yes, I did. Why?"
Aktri gives a seething sigh of vindication, glancing over towards the stairwell that Olivia had descended. "...she was trying to say it wasn't real. Or that it was ordinary magic. Or that I *hallucinated* it. She said five different things and I bet they were all lies."
"I mean, why *couldn't* it be ordinary magic?" Paz offers, trying to ease the tension. "I've been learning to summon fey, it's not absurd to think that someone could summon... a fiery lady, right?"
"Because *she* was the fiery lady!" Aktri insisted, getting up onto her toes again to briefly stand over Paz before coming back down. "When there was the wagon, she ran in and picked me up, and when I saw her she was the fiery lady, and then she turned back into that other lady! Right in front of me, Paz!"
"...okay, you're right, that does sound a little less like ordinary magic." Paz thinks for a moment, trying to think of a way to defuse the situation, but also realising that she doesn't really know what type of magic that would be either. "So she just... wouldn't tell you what it was?"
"No! And then she tried to talk about how smart she thought I was instead, but *then* she started calling me things like an insufferable ass and a petulant brat and acting like I don't even know what's *real* or not!" Aktri's voice steadily rose as she spoke, grabbing a fistful of her own hair as her gaze briefly lost focus before reaffixing itself on Paz.
"Hey, hey, voice down." Paz reaches for Aktri's hand, but doesn't quite connect. "People are still trying to sleep. Look, I'm sure that whatever this is, she has a good reason for not wanting to talk about it, but hurling insults *is* a bit much. That hardly seems fair of her."
Aktri seems to want to speak up again, to continue voicing the awful indignity she felt, but the only thing she was able to do is tug at her hair before letting out a shaky sigh and allowing her hands to both fall slack at her sides. "...I'm gonna sleep a bit more," she eventually declares, turning around and heading back to her and Paz's room.
Paz nods silently as she watches her friend leave. She just doesn't know what to say.
Burning the Wick: Paz and Olivia go for a walk, and she explains Isabelle's death and why she wants to avoid silly rumors of ghosts. She's tired of being defined in town by her loss five years ago. Paz accompanies Olivia through a ritual Olivia performs regularly for Isabelle involving the burning of plants and dispersal of ashes. Paz apologizes on Aktri's behalf, and Olivia apologizes for letting things get so out of hand.
"Everything alright up there?" Ayita asks, as she brings her cleaver down on a chicken carcass and neatly severs the thigh from the body.
Olivia flinches as the cleaver comes down and stops to compose herself, forcing a smile. "Oh, it's... it's fine, just a misunderstanding. It's all sorted out now. *So* sorry for the commotion so early in the morning." She absentmindedly smoothes out the creases in her shirt and regrips her satchel strap, tugging it slightly to reposition it on her shoulder.
Tannsy smiles, reaching over to flick both of the girls' heads. They give twin starts and get back to work. "Happy to hear it's all settled. Battle can put a strain on any relationship."
Olivia coughs in an attempt to clear her throat. "Right, of course. Last night was stressful for-- well, for everyone, of course." She seems to relax a bit as her smile grows more genuine. "Thank you for your hospitality, by the by. It was a relief to have someplace safe to wind down and rest after all that, er... 'excitement' isn't really the right word, is it."
Meanwhile, up above, Paz heads the opposite direction from Aktri, towards the stairs to see if she can pursue the woman Aktri was arguing with.
Olivia, hearing the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, decides to wrap things up quick. "Well, as much as I'd love to stick around and chat a bit longer, I have somewhere I have to be and I certainly can't afford to be late. If you'll excuse me..." As she's about to leave she turns to catch a glimpse of her pursuer, finding a familiar gnome instead of the goblin she'd been dreading. "Oh, good morning! Paz, right? I'll have to be off, but I'd love to catch up. If you'd be willing to join me as I walk, perhaps...?" She trails off towards the end inquisitively.
"O-Oh!" Paz stammers slightly, caught off guard. This wasn't at all the sort of demeanor she expected from somebody who had just argued with, yelled at, and insulted her friend. It felt much softer. She decides against immediately confronting her. "Um, yes! That sounds nice. I could use a bit of fresh air."
Olivia smiles. "Wonderful. Mrs. Viskalai, I'll be back in a little while. Thank you again!" She waves and, boots squeaking as she turns on a dime, starts quickly making her way to the door, holding it open while she waits for Paz to catch up.
Paz quickly follows after her, not wanting to keep her waiting. "And you're... Olivia, aren't you?"
Olivia's smile becomes strained. She shuts the door behind Paz before starting to walk again at a brisk pace - though not so brisk that Paz can't keep up, if she tries. "Sure as sunshine. Tell me, Paz, are you from town? I don't think we've met before yesterday, but, well, I'm not exactly a social butterfly."
"I am! Been here for a few years, now. I actually live with Madame Mvashti. Although I only just got back from a very long trip away in time for the festival."
"A few years now? Hm." Olivia nods, though her pleasant mood seems to have dimmed a bit. "Not to stir up old haunts, but would that have been before all the death and murder and fire, or after?"
"Before." Paz winces just slightly at the thought. "It only happened a couple years after I came here."
"Wonderful," Olivia mutters, taking a sharp turn down another street without a word of warning, "that makes this easier. Does the name Isabelle Sera ring any bells for you? You've probably heard it only a thousand times by now."
Paz does her best to keep up, nodding. "Yes... she was one of the victims, wasn't she? I heard it again in the opening remarks yesterday."
"Mmhm. One of the last." Olivia doesn't bother feigning a smile anymore, and her shoulders sag. "There's a marker installed where she was killed, you know. Nothing fancy, just a small plaque a little out of the way. Most of his victims have them, they're just not really tended to very often."
"Mhm." Paz nods solemnly and pauses for a moment, considering whether she should ask the question or not. She tries to do so in a gentle tone. "Did you know her?"
"Hah!" Olivia tilts her head back and laughs once, like it had been welling up inside and just had to be let out. "'Did I know her'. You're not much of a gossip, are you." She turns down another street, kicking a rock down the path even as she slows her pace down a bit. "My parents and hers were practically neighbors. We didn't just know each other, we grew up together. Skipped out on chores to make sand castles on the beach, talked about boys we thought were gross. Tried to keep a diary we'd trade off each day, like letters but less boring - I think we got two months in and decided it was dumb." She sighs. "Wish we'd kept that damn thing, but she chucked it at a seagull that stole one of my sweets some afternoon and it went a bit too far, got swept out by the tide. It is how it is, I guess."
"Ah. I see." Paz awkwardly looks down at her feet a bit. "I'm... I'm sorry. I'm not terribly familiar with the local gossip. I didn't know. Um... is that where you're going? Her marker?"
It's still early in the morning, but Olivia notices that what passersby are out are definitely watching them. She notices two men she doesn't know whispering to each other, one gesturing her way. Olivia looks straight ahead, though she seems to be growing more frustrated by the minute. "Yeah. Just for a minute, though; I have to do something before the streets get even more crowded."
"Mhm." Paz nods, her tone much more hushed as she follows Olivia a little more cautiously. She tries to think of something to spur on the conversation and fill the awkward silence, but all that comes to her mind is what happened with Aktri earlier, and dropping that back into this situation seems like the worst idea possible.
"Not much further now. Hurry up, folks are staring." She turns the next corner and cuts through an alley, stepping a few paces out of sight of the street and kneeling by a patch of ivy, one of many in the overgrown space between buildings. "Here. It's this one." She pats it with one hand, waving for Paz to approach.
"Mm." Paz hurries over and crouches down next to her to examine it. "You weren't kidding when you said out of the way, huh?"
"Hm?" Olivia looks up for a moment, face scrunched up in confusion, before snapping her fingers as realization hits. "Oh, her plaque, you mean? No, that thing's somewhere over there." She waves dismissively in some direction further down the alley, closer to the next street over. "It's in some flowerbed, there's a bush they haven't trimmed in a couple years covering it. *This* is where I found her."
"...ah. Goodness."
From the rooftops overhead, a pair of seagulls let out ear-piercing shrieks as they bicker over access to pecking at the eye sockets of a dead rat.
Olivia opens her bag and retrieves flint, steel, and a small glass vial she pulls the stopper from. "It's important that it comes from the spot where her blood was spilled, see. Her life nourished this soil, which nourished this plant. But it's not *right."* She punctuates this by pulling a pair of leaves from the vine, pushing them into the vial so that the second protrudes a bit. "She wasn't supposed to die here, but that *bastard* took that choice from her! That's why I--" she stops, catching herself before she raises her voice any more. "That's why *we're* here today. To right a wrong."
She looks over at Paz, then picks up the flint and steel in one hand and holds them out to her. "Would you mind giving me a hand? This part's tricky to manage alone, but I haven't really, um... I don't usually bring folks along."
"O-Oh! Of course I can help. Just let me know what I need to do." Paz takes the flint and steel from Olivia, eyeing the vial with curiosity.
Olivia nods. "The leaves have to burn, but I need to keep the ashes in here." She taps the vial with a finger. "They'll be coming with us to the next place, and we'll finish up there."
"Got it. Just hold it steady for me." Paz sets to work striking the steel against the flint near the vial, trying to get a spark to catch the leaves. "Oh, goodness, I can only imagine how much of a pain this bit would be on your own..."
Olivia laughs, and the vial jerks with the motion before she clears her throat and steadies herself again. "Yeah, it can take minutes to get it right. Once some kid saw me and thought I was trying to set the building on fire. Imagine trying to explain *that* to the sheriff." She rolls her eyes and grumbles. "I had to sit through a lecture about how he 'understood I must be hurting', and 'arson isn't a good outlet for my pain'. Ugh."
"Oh, gods, yeah." Paz grimaces, continuing to strike the flint and steel. "That sounds absolutely miserable. Hopefully it'll go a little quicker this way."
Thankfully, with a second pair of hands to hold the vial in place, it doesn't take long to get a spark in the vial. As the leaves start smoldering, Olivia stands and cups a hand around the mouth of the vial to shelter it from any wind. "Alright, now to the beach. We'll have to swing by Water Street to get there, I'm no good at climbing."
Paz hops to her feet. "Yeah, that makes two of us. I'll follow your lead."
Olivia steps back out into the street again, this time heading further down the road. At first she remains silent, content to just lead the way to their next destination. Then, after a minute or two, she starts talking again. "She was supposed to come of age a month later and move up into that damn cathedral to finish her training properly. She was going to become a knight and *everyone* knew it, so her murder really hit folks hard. Word spread quick that I'd been the one to find her, and folks got to talking about it and how *tragic* it all was, and-- and even now, they all look at me like--!" At this point she decides to pull her hood up and walk more briskly, keeping her head down far enough that she can only see a short distance ahead. Her shoulders slump a bit, almost hunched over. "People will look *straight at me* and I just know they're thinking of her. They treat me like I'm fragile, like I'm going to break at any second, and I'm sick and tired of it. I don't want her death to be my legacy, I just want to be normal again."
"I'm sorry." Paz quickens her pace to keep up with Olivia. She tries to consider her next words carefully so as to not contribute to the feeling that Olivia seems to be talking about. "That sounds like a lot of weight to have thrust onto you. It isn't fair."
*"Don't* start with that sh--" Olivia snaps, then immediately cuts herself off. "...I'm sorry, you didn't do anything wrong. I know you mean well, I just hate that word. I guess I'm still a bit on edge after yesterday."
Paz is startled by the sudden outburst, putting just a little more distance between herself and Olivia as they walk, but trying to remain amenable to conversation. "...it's okay, that's understandable. Yesterday was a lot for... well, for everyone, I imagine."
Paz fidgets with the hem of her cloak, trying to think of some way to approach this subject. "It was, wasn't it. Um... speaking of yesterday, about last night...?"
"Mhm? What about it, exactly?" Paz looks over and up at Olivia, trying to read her expression.
Olivia looks away for a moment, and when she turns back around she seems calm again. At ease, or at least more comfortable than she was. "I just... last night was a mess. I really don't want any recognition for what I did, you know? As far as I'm concerned, I just did what she would've done - save as many people as possible, and don't make a big deal out of it. I'll accept whatever thanks people decide to give me, but..." She trails off awkwardly, then starts again with a slightly different approach.
"If people start seeing me as like, a town hero or something, maybe that'll be good for me in the long run, right? I can, um, I can spin that. Maybe people will look at me and think of the people I saved instead of the one I lost. But... I mean, a ghost?" She laughs weakly and shudders, folding her arms across her chest. "Things might be difficult, now, but it's still better than those first couple years. But if people start telling stories of me controlling some--" She waves a hand dismissively by her head, as though the thought was simply ridiculous. "--some phantom or whatever? That'll be the end of it. Do you understand?" Olivia stops to turn and face Paz fully. "I will lose all the progress I've made, and I will never be able to shake off those rumors. I'll be 'that girl whose friend's murder made her go so crazy she started dealing with spirits' until the day I die."
"So, um... they need to know that it was just a spell. Okay? It was a spell, nothing more." Everything - her eyes, her posture, the desperation in her voice - makes it seem less like a statement of fact and more like a plea.
Paz is quiet for a moment, just staring at her wide-eyed, trying to process all of what the woman has just told her. After a considerable silence though, she seems to understand well enough, and speaks. "Yes. Of course. That's all anyone who asks will hear from me."
Olivia breathes a sigh of relief.
Olivia nods apologetically. "I'd figured as much. I really am sorry about the, um... the rudeness, this morning. I just, um-- Aktri, right? She wouldn't let me leave, and this errand, it's time-sensitive. I just got a little... frustrated."
"Thank you for the apology. I don't tend to like people hurling insults at my friend, if you can believe it." Paz sighs. "I... I understand, though. Aktri is... she's very... *persistent*, especially when she knows somebody is keeping a secret. It can be... a lot. I'll try to quell her questions the best I can."
"I could have been kinder." Olivia grimaces. "I'll... well, I'll *try* to apologize, but I don't know how to handle her, truthfully. She seems very, um." She struggles to find the right word, eventually settling on something. "Passionate?"
"Yes! That's a good word for it." Paz chuckles. "It certainly wouldn't hurt to try and apologize, and I'll do what I can to smooth things over between you two. I'm used to helping her with that sort of thing." She pauses a moment, her voice going softer. "...truth be told, though, I... I don't really know how well I can handle her right now, either."
"Is it about the machine?" Olivia asks, turning off the street to a side road leading down to the beach. "Not to disparage her skills, that thing is a marvel of engineering. But you saw what it can do firsthand, right? We both did."
"Yeah. The machine is... certainly a part of it." Paz sighs. "I don't even know how to *begin* to approach that with her. But also, just... it's been nearly a year since I've seen her because of the excursion I went on, and she's just... different. She's changed while I was away."
Olivia seems conflicted, but glances down at the vial in her hand and sighs. "Well, what changed? A lot can happen in a year."
"She's just... she's more frantic. Her temper is shorter. And I don't even know what happened because I've tried to talk to her about it and she just won't tell me anything and she doesn't even seem to understand why I'm worrying, it just goes in one ear and out the other-" Paz's voice gets faster and more frantic herself as she talks, then abruptly cuts herself off and remains quiet for a long moment. "I... I'm sorry. We're practically strangers still, I shouldn't just be rambling like this. I'm just... confused. Frustrated. Other feelings."
"Oh, no need to apologize, really. I'd rather talk about someone else for a change anyway." Olivia steps off the road where the hill starts sloping down into sand, holding an arm out for balance in case she starts sliding. "But then again I'm just setting the record straight before you inevitably hear about it from someone else. I guess it's different for you."
"Yeah..." Paz nods, continuing to follow the woman down. "It's just... I don't know. It's complicated, and I'm worried about her. She's made so many amazing things before, but never anything this... violent. And she doesn't even seem to see why that might be an issue. I... I feel a little better knowing I'm not the only one who sees it."
"Not that hard to pick up on, is it? It caved in someone's chest. That's, uh, pretty eye-catching." Small pebbles tumble down the slope with each step, a brisk morning wind blowing bits of sand along the ground.
"Yeah, I suppose that's true." Paz kicks a small rock to the side. "Just... ugh." She hangs her head down. Her voice drops to a hush. "That thing horrifies me. My best friend made it, she seems so proud of it, it's all she wants to talk about, and it f@+%ing *horrifies* me."
"You should tell her." Olivia slips a bit, flailing an arm out to the side to catch her balance before taking a few more cautious steps to reach the beach proper. "You *are* going to tell her, right?"
"I..." Paz pauses for a moment too long, treading carefully as the slope turns to sand. "...I don't know. I don't know if she'd even really... hear me if I *did* finally manage to get a word in edgewise somehow."
The young woman's gaze falls on Paz for a moment that seems to stretch endlessly, then turns away and heads for the water. Rolling waves fill the silence as she lifts the glass vial to inspect the leaves, now largely burned to cinders and ash. She tilts the vial and dumps the contents into the palm of her hand as she speaks, brow furrowed with concentration.
"Maybe. But if she's you're friend, you should still *try.* And you should do it soon, if you want to change her course. You don't have forever."
Olivia scatters the ashes in the breeze, carrying them out over The Lost Coast.
Paz nods a bit. "...I will try. I'll do my best." She watches as Olivia scatters the ashes from the vial, tilting her head curiously.
Olivia starts corking the bottle again and puts it back in her bag, staring out over the water. "It's, um, from my grandmother's side of the family--" she begins, then hesitates, "--or, at least, that's how she told it. Everyone has their preferred burial rites, but sometimes they can't be followed - maybe there's no body, or whatever's left is in too poor a condition. In *this* case," she remarks, sour and sharp, "her parents and fellow members of the clergy wanted her body interred up at the Boneyard, but she wanted to be cremated and scattered to the winds across the bay." She exhales, collecting herself. "I gave up on getting them to see reason a while ago, but her lifeblood was spilled on that soil back in town, so... I can do this much, at least. Give her spirit some kind of peace, I suppose."
"Yeah, people can be a bit... stubborn sometimes. Good on you for trying to do what she would've wanted, especially to take the care to do it every year." Paz smiles softly. "I hope it does bring her spirit peace, as much as it can. I'm glad to have helped."
Olivia seems confused at first, then coughs, stepping back from the shore a bit and giving a polite nod. "Right. Um, thanks, by the by. I'm sure this wasn't what you'd, had in mind, or, uh. Yeah." She fidgets with her sleeve nervously. "I hope you manage to work things out with Aktri. I-- The machine thing," she blurts out, "not the, uh-- right. That."
"Yeah, I... I hope we manage to work things out too." Paz sounds very unsure of herself. She looks up at Olivia, scratching at the back of her neck a little bit. "Sorry if I, uh... made things awkward at all. It's been nice walking with you. Especially after last night."
"Oh! No, no, you were fine." Olivia looks up towards the town, eyes scanning the street. "I know we didn't meet in the most *auspicious* circumstances, but I'm glad we did. This was... nice."
"Yeah, it... it was." Paz smiles a little and nods politely, then looks down towards her feet nervously. "Should we, um... be heading back now, you think?"
"Yes!" Olivia responds immediately, relieved, as if she'd been chomping at the bit to suggest it herself. Perhaps realizing how it had sounded, she quickly backtracks. "I-I mean, not that I'm in a rush to-- ugh. Just, um..." She deflates, her earlier confidence leaving, and she pulls her cloak closed around her. "I got here much later than I'd like, people were staring earlier. Whispering. Can we just hurry back?"
It's been a rough few months. Anyways, let's get moving to SESSION TWO.
** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **...
*session three I'm tired
Oh, a major few changes I'm making to the Scarnettis:
Actually, that's not quite true. Delek Scarnetti is dead. Nobody knows about that yet, though.
It was Delek Scarnetti who was sleeping with Nualia, and Delek who, spoiled by the privilege of being a rich man's firstborn son, left her to rot rather than deal with the consequences of his actions. It was Delek who Nualia murdered a little over a year ago with the help of the Skinsaw Men. His death has only just been discovered--his body had been hidden in the walls of his own home--but the letter revealing this will only arrive in late Rova, likely after the events of Burnt Offerings have concluded.
I'm officially throwing in the towel on the prose-izations, I think, at least for now. I got too much on my plate as it is. XD
More importantly, it's been getting in the way of actually prepping the game and posting my changes here! I'll try to spin the focus back in that direction. I can always return to the fancy writeups later, since we have a dutiful notetaker and almost everything gets voice recorded.
So far, the group has largely focused on the mystery angles and various character dramas. Paz has a bond with Shalelu, for example, so the reunion during "News from Mosswood" was significantly spiced up. I also added Neeka and Koruvus into that scene, both to ensure the Seven Tooths were being represented and to mess with Aktri. After interrogating Gorvi and Father Zantus in some very intense scenes, the group finally knows the full truth--more or less--about what happened. They still suspect that Nualia was murdered, though (except one player who knows spoilers). Hee hee hee.
Interestingly, Rynshinn, Gorvi and Sister Celia have become much more prominent NPCs than I'd expected--the former two in what may develop into a very unusual love triangle with Aktri, the latter in a very funny will-they-won't-they with Olivia, since I'm playing Sister Celia as being either straight or very unaware that she's not straight. Hannah Velerin has become a kind of sinister figure in the players' eyes after a scene where she came across as very pushy towards Paz. It's not what I intended, but that suspicion may come in handy next book. Olivia hates Hemlock for backstory reasons (he stopped her from going after Chopper), and there's going to be a reckoning for it. Everybody is crushing on Neeka, who is very. She's a bard. Aktri has also found out about Shalelu's Situation with Bruthazmus, which has helped temper her jealous resentment. Or maybe it's just centered it right on Olivia. Aktri does not like how much time Paz has been spending with Olivia.
We've finally, after thirteen sessions, reached The Missing Bartender. It's been six days, but it's been a busy six days. I'm very excited to slip into some more combat.
I might share my playlist in time. It's gotten pretty refined. I've been using a lot of electroswing, particularly Jazz and Masks, for major goblin NPCs to reflect their style of mayhem, and a song from "The Fall of the House of Usher" as the motif for the Tobyn/Nualia mystery.
EDIT: Oh, most importantly, I got Wormbasil in a dress. He broke into Scarnetti Manor to find clues (goblins had indicated their help came from a member of one of the founding families, so of course everyone suspected the Scarnettis), and I gave him a very good excuse to disguise himself as a maidservant. I recently recommended the Soulforged archetype to the player. She's very excited for second level.