Kassi Aziril in Absalom


Agents of Edgewatch


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One of the players in my group requested to use one of the uncommon feats tied to Kassi Aziril from Lost Omens: Legends and I decided to oblige him by turning it into a mini-quest. This can play out right before or during the events of chapter 1 from book 4) but I think it's even better to do it even earlier in the campaign, during book 2 or 3 to foreshadow the Blackfingers Temple and the conference.

Background
Kassi Aziril is a prolific scientific healer, sometimes called "The Mother of Medicine". She is from Rahadoum and absolutely hates religion.

The Blackfingers Temple invites her to give some lectures as part of the Noxious Retort conference (from book 4). In the invitation they do not mention they are a religious institution knowing that she would decline if she knew. The hope of the trickery god's followers is that she arrives in Absalom after an arduous trip and at that point she will feel obliged to give the lectures because she has already committed all this time and effort. Alas the plan does not work out. When Kassi arrives at the Black Mask (where the church had offered to host her in one of the spare rooms on the first floor) she realises the ruse and is furious. She immediately leaves without a word which creates a huge gap in the conference agenda, not to mention the embarassment. Now the temple hopes to track her down and make her reconsider.

How the PCs come in
The PCs might, while travelling through the Ascended Court, come across the sign outside the Blackfingers Temple advertising the conference. "Noxious Retort: grand alchemical conference. Book your place now!" followed by the dates and a list of activities, including Kassi's lectures. They might also be pointed to the conference by any NPC knowledgeable about medicine related events throughout the city.

If the PCs inquire inside the temple, a distraught Kalyn Pounch will explain the situation and try to recruit their help. If the PCs show up looking like guards she will present this as a missing person case and feign worry about what might have happened to her guest lost in the big city. Or she might argue that Kassi is contractually obligated to appear in the conference because she formally accepted the invitation. She will not divulge all the details about how they tried to trick her.

Finding Kassi
To track her down the PCs will have to ask around town with Gather Information or Track or similar. If they think to start at the Black Mask, where she was last seen, they will be told by the shopkeeper Marli she left shortly after she arrived and went north. That should lower the DC. Don't forget to spring any plot hooks you have for the Black Mask at this point. One Gather Information check should be enough to narrow it down to a single district and a second one will give them her precise location. Using Track might be slightly harder since it's busy city cobble streets but it doable since Kassi brought lots of luggage (mostly plants) with her so there might be a very faint trail of leaves, smells and cart tracks.

After leaving the Black Mask, Kassi went to a Wise District inn called the Halcyon Hog (see book 5 for more info). She's staying there, mostly brooding and ruminating about what a waste this trip has been. But also not completely neglecting her research. You can use this opportunity to foreshadow the inn and perhaps even the enigmatic inventor Wakeiwa Atikak who is hiding there.

Talking to Kassi
If the PCs talk to Kassi, she will not miss an opportunity to question them about their philosophies. If anyone is openly religious she will 100% start an argument with them (see her entry in LO:Legends for things she might say). If the PCs try to convince her to actually attend the Noxious Retort conference she will be very angry and rant about how she was tricked. It will be very hard to change her mind. Another possibility -that she hasn't considered herself and the PCs might suggest- is that they organise a smaller alternative conference just for her lectures. In that case, any PC that helps organise it will earn her gratitude, access to her feats and item formulas.

Kassi's conference
It would be a one-day conference, during which Kassi delivers a number of lectures with only short breaks inbetween. If the PCs sufficiently advertise, a lot of high-profile people will show up, including: Asilia of Gyr, Wynsal Starborn, Grospek Lavarsus, Chun Hye-Seung, Simo of Wynsal, Runewulf the Unbeliever, Shristi Melipdra, Gaftrin, Urmas Sirola, Venla Sirola, Flevvid Grummlin, Sindoi of the Thousand Poems.

The agenda might look like this:

9.00 Divine poisons
10.00 break
10.30 Addiction
12.00 lunch
13.00 Battle Medicine
14.00 break
14.30 Vaccines
15.30 break
16.00 Kandlerae

The conference won't be completely uneventful. Left to her own devices, during the lecture about addiction Kassi will go off-script and start ranting about how the gods made mortals susceptible to addiction so they can be easily addicted to religion. If that happens Sindoi will intervene and impress/confuse everyone with a cryptic limerick about how Kassi's contempt for the gods might become ironic if she herself ever became a goddess of medicine.

No one from the Blackfingers Temple shows up because they don't want to draw any attention to themselves right before or after the terrorist attack at the Irorium since that could compromise Jonis Flakfatter, the high priest.

Epilogue
A few days/weeks after the conference, Kassi, ever industrious, will leave Absalom to find adventure and diseases to cure. She will write a letter to the PCs who helped her the most:

Dear [PC NAME],

I'm writing you these lines from the ship's deck at Absalom's lovely harbour. We are soon sailing to Andoran. From there I will go north to the Five Kings Mountains, to Kyonin and finally reach Galt, where I'm informed the public health situation is not good at all.

I am sorry you decided not to come with me after all. Your talents in medicine are wasted in the endless fighting among cultists, meanwhile you could be out there saving lives of the people who matter. I guess things might be different if we met under different circumstances, that whole Noxious Retort business was far from ideal.

Speaking of which, isn't it strange that not one of those norgorberites showed up at the conference we organised? I was afraid they might show up to cause trouble for rejecting them but they didn't even send one measly representative. Strange and definitely not a coincidence!

Anyway, I have to go now, I must give the letter to the messenger boy before the ship sails. Hope our paths cross again.

Yours in truth,
Kassi Aziril


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

If you want a lower-level version of this, here's what I did in book 2 of my campaign:
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4349c&page=3?2-Sixty-Feet-Under#137


Thanks for reminding me of this, I am making a list of all the homebrew additions to AoE and I missed it.

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