Can someone please tell me the connection between RotR and CotCT?

[CULTxicycalm]

I am running both APs with two teams in the same world and I am trying to figure out what the connection is so as to decide how many months apart to set them. I have read in these forums that the events of Curse are kicked off by something that happens in Rise but no one has elaborated. What is the Rise event and in which book does it happen?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give. It’s daunting to find this info in 1,200 pages and we really need a book or at least fan site that connects all the dots between all Pathfinder products. An informed GM can do a much better job bringing the world to life than an uninformed GM. I have so many questions...

[The Raven Black]

Approximately 10 minutes of searching for RotRL in the CoCT forum gave me this quote from James Jacobs 17 years ago.

James Jacobs wrote:

Yeah, as Mike mentioned, there are a few easter eggs in Curse of the Crimson Throne to those who have played Rise of the Runelords... but we're doing our best to make sure that any Pathfinder Adventure Path exists in a "Time Bubble." You can run these campaigns in any order, in other words. It's also why no adventure in Crimson Throne or Second Darkness will be set in a location featured in another Adventure Path.

EVENTUALLY we'll do "sequel" Adventure Paths that take place after a previous one's events... but you can absolutely run the first three APs in any order.

Also Pathfinderwiki is pretty great at collecting info from many sources IMO.

[Veltharis]

It's admittedly been a while since I went through either in detail, but aside from relative proximity (both being set in different Varisian city-states) the only direct connection that comes to mind is the disease, Vorel's phage, and it's much more contagious variant blood veil.

Obviously, spoilers for The Skinsaw Murders (RotRL Book 2) and Seven Days to the Grave (CotCT Book 2):

Essentially, in the backstory for the second book of RotRL, the wizard Vorel Foxglove was interrupted at a key moment in a ritual to transform himself into a lich by his wife (who knew nothing about her husband's actions), causing the ritual to fail spectacularly and seemingly "killing" him with the backlash. However, instead of truly "dying", Vorel was instead transformed into a kind of vaguely-sentient disease, later named Vorel's phage, which swiftly killed his wife and children and has lingered in the mold and vermin in the depths of Foxglove Manor ever since, never really spreading beyond it's borders but inevitably dooming anyone who attempts to claim the property, particularly his various relatives.

Decades later, the manor's current owner/occupant Aldern Foxglove murders his new wife over an assumed affair with one of the workers helping to renovate the manor and falls under the sway of Magnimar's Skinsaw Cult in his attempts to cover it up. The cult, which has its own ties to the property (and to Vorel himself), was recently taken over by the lamia matriarch Xanesha, one of Karzoug's underlings, who doesn't really care about the cult itself and was merely using it for her own ends but definitely recognizes a business opportunity when she sees one, as the cult was also in contact with Red Mantis assassins who were looking for new and interesting diseases that might be useful in their line of work. So, as part of payment for their "help" in covering up Aldern's crimes, she tasks him with delving into the depths of the manor and returning with a number of disease samples to pass along to the Red Mantis, making a tidy profit for herself and definitely ensuring that Aldern was infected, leading to his gradual transformation into the psychotic ghast he becomes by the time the events of the book start in earnest.

While Aldern Foxglove and the Skinsaw Cult are the primary antagonists for The Skinsaw Murders, that's pretty much as far as the disease subplot goes in RotRL. It picks up again in the second book of CotCT (Seven Days to the Grave), where the newly crowned Queen Ileosa of Korvosa hatches a scheme to purge her city of undesirables, namely Varisians and the poor, and tasks the Red Mantis, whom she was already in contact with due to their aid in her murder of her late husband, with engineering a plague.

With the aid of an amoral Chelaxian doctor and the cult of Urgathoa, they develop their samples of Vorel's phage into a less immediately deadly, but far more contagious variant they name blood veil, which is then unleashed upon the city, forming the backbone of the plot for that book.

[CULTxicycalm]

Wow. Now that’s some storytelling.

[Virellius]

Additional bit of fun lore: Blood Veil is the disease, and Blood Vale is the home of Achaekek. I bet those Mantis fellas did that on purpose.

[Dragonchess Player]

CotCT also has the appearance of the second Vancaskerkin in an AP: Verik Vancaskerkin in Edge of Anarchy. Verik is a brother of Orik Vancaskerkin, who was Nualia's bodyguard in Burnt Offerings.

The Vancaskerkin are a bit of an Easter egg in the APs, sort of like the entwined succubi statuettes that appear every so often.

[zimmerwald1915]

Dragonchess Player wrote:

sort of like the entwined succubi statuettes that appear every so often.

I thought we knew their provenance?

[Lord Fyre]

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

Dragonchess Player wrote:

sort of like the entwined succubi statuettes that appear every so often.

I thought we knew their provenance?

New people are still coming into Pathfinder.

[Jerdane]

Lord Fyre wrote:

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

Dragonchess Player wrote:

sort of like the entwined succubi statuettes that appear every so often.

I thought we knew their provenance?

New people are still coming into Pathfinder.

Also, just because we know where they're coming from doesn't mean they aren't an Easter egg. We know where the Vandercaskins come from, for example.

[Dragonchess Player]

Yes. An Easter egg is not (necessarily) the same thing as a mystery.

Granted, the statuettes were originally a bit of a mystery at first (and possibly foreshadowing for Nocticula's rise from a demon to a redeemed god by the end of PF1).