Curse of the Crimson Throne

[mxyzplk]

Part III of Escape from Old Korvosa is a jumbo session. It’s actually the end of Escape from Old Korvosa and the beginning of A History of Ashes. And the hits keep on coming!

First, we find Vencarlo at long last! Once we escape, he passes on the mantle of Blackjack to one of our heroes. But that’s not what Annata wants the most from him… She tries to provoke him into starting up a romance, to little effect. In reality, the DM admitted that he wasn’t comfortable role-playing the romance. Which was a little surprising to me, as our DM is gay. “Between the two of us, you’re the one who’s uncomfortable with this? Damn, I guess I need to be hitting the gym!”

But before we leave the city… Annata feels obliged to speak out! Yes, I actually prepared that whole speech (entire text is included in the session summary). So sue me, I’m a roleplayer. Educated folks and people with enough of the Old Country in their blood may recognize the bit towards the end that I included as an homage to Irish patriot Michael Collins.

Then we move into A History of Ashes. I have to say, we were pretty nonplussed by the Byzantine plot laid out before us. “To find out about the relics in the Queen’s crown, you need Guy#1 to tell you, but to do that you need to perform Heroic Task 1, but to do that you need Guy #2, but to do that you need to perform Heroic Task 2, but for that you need Guy #3, but for that you need to perform Heroic Task 3.” Michael Kortes, we have our eye on you. The action setpieces better be spectacular to make up for this lead-us-by-the-nose plot.

Annata is in a weird place right now. She is starting to see the hand of destiny laid strong upon them. It had already been impressed upon her that the two men she was fighting alongside were a Korvosan Guard and a Sable Company Marine, which is very symbolic of the founding of Korvosa. But now with venturing out among the Shoanti, she is starting to wonder if she’s Saint Alika the Martyr in this tale. As a Korvsan city girl, she has been told since she was young that Shoanti are barbarians, pretty much into arson, rape, and murder in whatever order occurs to them, depending on how much they’re out of their primitive minds on fermented horse urine or whatever. So mentally she’s hovering between “chosen of Sarenrae” and “martyr complex.”

So now we’re in a weird dungeon with two Brotherhood of Bones weirdos. Laori was all right, but Annata’s not sure about these two. They did help kill the latest wave of Red Mantis assassins though. And did the author really think the tentacle beast was going to be a surprise? The second we heard “drop down to dark water” we all said “Yep, it’s Helm’s Deep.”

 

[Quartz]

And did the author really think the tentacle beast was going to be a surprise? The second we heard “drop down to dark water” we all said “Yep, it’s Helm’s Deep.”

Of course, the tentacled beast / kraken was at the entrance to Moria...

 

[mxyzplk]

We continue into the fourth chapter of the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path from Paizo, using the Pathfinder RPG beta rules.

Part I of A History of Ashes is kinda Part II since we got a lot of the initial plot explication out in the previous session. We were really short on players, so Chris’ girlfriend decided to dive in as Amiri the barbarian, and she learned the joy of the UltraHack!

It was a short session, we screwed around a lot beforehand. We went to get devoured by the sandworm, but the noob is the only one who got swallowed! Then we go to perform some barbarian initiation ritual where we have to keep our poles erect for three days straight. Has anyone else noticed that this whole adventure path has been pretty homoerotic? In the art, even in the character descriptions, there’s "a lot for the ladies" in Curse of the Crimson Throne. Good thing I’m playing a female character.

 

[mxyzplk]

We’re moving quickly, and we finish up the fourth chapter of the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path this session.

In Part II of A History of Ashes (10 page .pdf), Annata, Malcolm, and Amiri successfully complete our Shoanti ritual as Thorndyke rejoins us. And then we have to face the biggest Red Mantis hit squad yet. Amiri and Krojin Eats-What-He-Kills benefit greatly from their barbarian unflankability. Sadly Malcolm does not, and the fight turns into a WoW-style format of Annata pouring healing as quickly as she can into Malcolm as he hacks at his opponents. Annata is pretty lucky with striking people blind, her blindness spell succeeds on Cinnabar the Mantis leader. It’s one of Sarenrae’s prime punishments for infidels so her good luck is dramatically perfect.

Annata respects the Shoanti people a lot more now. In the beginning she was fearful (as around Korvosa they’re generally considered to be the murder and rape brute squad) and looked down on their “savage” ways. But living with them, and seeing how they conduct themselves both in battle and in camp, she’s impressed. They’re certainly brave - Krojin didn’t even bother considering the whole “turn them over to the Red Mantis” spiel from Cinnabar - but they are also surprisingly joyful. Annata’s never been a big partyer (being largely confined to a temple for most of her post-street urchin life) and their celebrations, even after being attacked, seem much more honest and unabashed than Korvosan life, which appeals to some of her understanding of Sarenrae’s teaching (their worship of the sun also seems symbolic to her). She gets a bit of a Spring Break experience out of the celebrations and she needed that; being underground resistance in Korvosa had her wound pretty tight. By the time she has to leave, she is proud to be a Sun Clan Shoanti!

Amiri stays with the clan and Annata works to get her hooked up with Krojin. Brandie was just temping as a player, and Amiri’s backplot says she was trying to find acceptance with the barbarians so that wraps up neatly.

At the end of Part II, we actually started The Skeletons of Scarwall and did the initial briefing, Harrow readings, etc. And we get to see Laori again when we go find the Brotherhood of the Bones people! Shadow Count Sial and Asyra are lame, but Annata really likes Laori. Except for the evil-god thing they are two peas in a pod and happily chatter away with each other till Malcolm and Thorndyke are driven to distraction.

 

[mxyzplk]

We head out to haunted Castle Scarwall in Part I of Skeletons of Scarwall (8 page .pdf), the fifth and penultimate chapter of the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path. Fighting undead is where Annata is a Viking, so we’re kicking bony ass and taking ghoulish names. We were tickled to be fighting orcs and skeletons, it’s like we’re first level all over again.

I know it’s hard for a DM to run NPCs in a party, but these three Brotherhood of Bones hangers-on we have are worthless with a capital LESS! Well, except for our favorite, Laori, who is always entertaining. This session, she let Annata know she’d like to sleep with her! I’m writing a separate blog post about how she dealt with that. Will it violate the Paizo fansite license morals clause? Find out, read post once it's done!

At the end, we fought and slew what we think is the “main boss” but it didn’t lift the evil aura around the place; Paul was impressed that I then intuited we’d need to kill all the sub-bosses and then kill the main boss else he’d just respawn. I’ve been playing RPGs and computer games for 25 years, I know how game designers think.

Let me say again for the record how sweet the Channel Energy power is for clerics in Pathfinder. For those not familiar with it, Pathfinder replaced turning undead with “channeling energy.” It heals people in short range and harms AND turns undead. You can augment it with feats as Annata has - her channeling damages (but doesn’t turn) evil outsiders, she can make it heal only her allies (by default it heals everyone in range), and she’s quickened it to a free action with Quicken Turning. It means that:

* If you have a day where you’re not fighting undead, one of your major class powers isn’t worthless.
* You can heal at range rather than always having to incur attacks of opportunity to go heal a comrade.
* You can heal multiple party members at once.
* You have loads of dice of healing that don’t eat up your spell slots. Thus you get to use spells for useful proactive things.
* With the quicken, you aren’t wasting your time every round of combat with only healing.

Face it, as damage dealing has grown, Cure spells have not kept pace. Even low level characters dish out or take like 20 points of damage a round - at our level, 80 points in a round isn’t uncommon and I’ve seen more than 100. The usual 1d, 2d, 3d, 4d Cure spells are pretty much worthless in the face of that; I’d need ten minutes and my entire spell loadout to take care of just a couple rounds of combat. So the channeling steps in to fill the gap and let the cleric do something in a round other than heal. Neat!

 

[mxyzplk]

We continue to clear Castle Scarwall in Part II of Skeletons of Scarwall (8 page .pdf). Two more of the four sub-bosses, a devil bat lady (who really reminds me of an enemy from some video game I can't place) and a shadow dragon, fall to our swords and sorcery, leaving only one sub-boss to go and then the main boss - who we already killed once before, so no worries there. Our party is only three strong, but we are mighty!

The main challenge is keeping enough spells held back to take care of Shadow Count Sial when he finally decides to turn on us. He's acting even twitchier than usual and it's clearly only a matter of time. I hope Laori sides with us and not him when it all goes down. Though Annata's not quite sold on the hot girl-on-girl Laori proposed last session, she's been a good friend so far.

We hit level 13 at the end of the session. For Annata, I'm thinking adding a level of Crusader (a holy martial artist from Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords) to get more combat prowess. She's supposed to be a holy warrior but her damage sucks (1d6+2 whether you need it or not!). She's finally worked through the feat chains to add one of the Pathfinder beta crit feats, which will help... She could make her crits fatigue, stagger, sicken, or bleed an opponent, I'm still deciding which. But with Crusader she'd get all kinds of nice boosts. Paul's letting me swap out Stone Dragon school for Desert Wind school to match Sarenrae's sun focus, though counting the powers as one level higher. I'm thinking Death Mark, Fan the Flames, Flashing Sun, Foehammer, Divine Surge, and Thicket of Blades stance. Although Iron Guard's Glare is also attractive, and if combined with Fire Riposte and Holocaust Cloak, and potentially the various fire shield magics Annata has available to her, could be compelling.

It's a shame to lose a level of spellcasting, but truth be told, seventh level cleric spells suck. First of all, there's not enough of them. And four of those, really the only good ones, are basically the same spell (dictum/holy word/blasphemy/word of chaos). Spells like Holy Word and Disrupting Weapon suck because they specify that they only affect creatures of less than your caster level. So they're no use on big bads, they are only mook-mowers, and we have plenty of other mook-mowing options. The symbol spells which also take up several spots on the spell list suffer from the same issue. She'll miss the level bump to Channel Energy way more.

 

[mxyzplk]

Quite the drama erupts in Part III of The Skeletons of Scarwall, in which our dear priestess Annata gets killed! The last sub-boss in Scarwall got her with a Trap the Soul, and all our anti-undead/necromancy/death magic protections were of no avail because – get this – that’s a conjuration spell. The boys killed the demi-lich and broke the gem, but then had to Shadow Walk back to Kaer Maga to get a Resurrection. On the one hand, dying is scary, on the other hand, she got to see Sarenrae Heaven first hand and meet the Sunlord Thalachos, Sarenrae's herald, so after she recovers from the physical aftereffects she’s mentally and spiritually quite invigorated.

Then the Shadow Count (and pet chain devil) finally turns on us and Laori. We spank him but Laori heads out to Cenobite Heaven to sightsee, so the Boner Squad is no more. And sadly Laori missed her last chance to put the moves on Annata.

And then we finally get the fabled (and holy, intelligent, and badass) blade Serith-Teal! Thondyke is chosen as its wielder; as it’s both intelligent and holy it’ll have no part of Malcolm, and Annata (though to be honest a little jealous) thinks he’ll get a lot more use out of it.

And with that, Castle Scarwall is cleansed! We get a sending from Vencarlo that tells us it’s time to return to Korvosa and whip some bitch-queen ass. About time, we reply. But first, we have $50k a head to gear ourselves out like the 14th level master killers we are! To the magic mall!

Go enjoy the full 10 page .pdf summary of the session (and all the others). Your favorite adventurers will return next session with Crown of Fangs!

 

[mxyzplk]

I missed posting here about Crown of Fangs parts I and II. You can catch up with them on my blog.

Crown of Fangs Part III is the campaign finale for the Curse of the Crimson Throne. Annata, Malcolm, Thorndyke, and Cayen have to depose the evil queen and then stop her weird blood ritual from killing everyone in Korvosa.

For nine months (realtime and, approximately, game time) we've been working towards this moment. Over many battles we've learned our own powers and how to work together as a team in perfect concert. And it all pays off. We storm Castle Korvosa and liberate it, only to discover the real Queen has already left for an ancient Thassilonian site for her blood ritual. But the hounds of war have been loosed and distance and sorcery do not deter us from the pursuit of justice.

When everything has settled, we get the rarest of rare things - a real storybook ending. You'll have to read the full session summary for the details!

I personally enjoyed this campaign the most of all the ones you see here, and I think the other guys feel the same way. Using the Pathfinder beta rules, we didn't have much in the way of rule frustration that mars some of our other games, and the mix of solid roleplaying along with interesting NPCs, sweet locations, and demented foes came out as a totally solid mix.

I hope you've enjoyed our tale of the Curse of the Crimson Throne. Check out our continuing adventures for more fun!

 

[carborundum]

Loved it! Hilarious and exciting in equal measure
Can't wait for the next one. Council of Thieves perhaps?

 

[mxyzplk]

Might be; we have two separate gaming sub-groups right now and we're both vying for the right to run it!