Pathfinder 1E How a gnome became king (Kingmaker Campaign Stories)

[Drake Cross]

Having gotten into my first full year of D&D and Pathfinder, I have quickly noticed that very few friends (And people I know in general), don't think gnomes are very could player characters. However, I have always had a fun little story about a gnome bard called Jack Guildweave, a childish yet talented bard. Set in the Pathfinder world, Jack's family is part of the Orlovsky family in Brevoy, who long ago was accepted into the larger noble house when they were just a smaller merchant family. Following his father's foot steps in becoming a bard like most of the family, he had his sights on having the Guildweave name becoming independent once more and also wishing to leave the comfort life he had to experience the world.

That being his general background, I'm certain there is tons of flaws in it over how he is part of the Orlovsky noble family and so on...but I just picked it to give him a noble background really.

However the real story is about how I first started him in the recent Kingmaker Module my friends started, since is quite an open world set up with plenty of interesting situations along the way. For all who don't know the set up for this module, it involves a group of adventurers tasked from Brevoy to explore and annexing the region called The Stolen Lands, a large region of wildlands full of criminals, monsters, fey, and barbarians. The goal is as it sounds, clear out parts of the land, use your connection and resources to build cities and form your own government. It sounds simple...but it sure is not. XD

My character's goal in this whole campaign is to take the place of leadership for this new kingdom and once having it powerful enough, have his family split from the Orlovsky. Along with this is also a country open for gnomes to settle in, form a talented theater of bards and profit! Anyway this is sort of the basic rundown on the character's back story, but I'll so post the first story soon along with his attribute stats for people to see.

Feel free to comment and share any interesting stories here as well!

 

[Drake Cross]

The short guy of the group

Anyway as said before here are his stats when I started.

Str: 11
Dex: 14
Con: 14
Int: 14
Wis: 10
Cha: 18
Alignment: Chaotic Good

As you can see, high charisma like all bards should and fairly balanced stats by going with the stat purchase system on Epic Fantasy and being Chaotic Good is just a favorite of mine.

Anyway my friends play their own unique characters. First is a human claric of Cayden Cailean who is part of a brewmaser clan that has been separated across the land and his goal is to unite them and do what they do best...making great liquor. Second is our human ranger who is not really that special at least to me, being very broody and silent, but good for the wildland setting. Third is our rouge (later on fighter), who is sort of a rebel without a cause that is quite random and most of the time drunk. And last is our half-elf witch who is quite friendly but has some secret planning in mind. Overall, they all look down on my character...literary. XD

Anyway, things start off smooth with us getting to The Stolen Lands and to the one safe haven in the area called Oleg's Outpost which is at the northern border. Things are normal with me trying to make deals with Oleg in being a business partner for the kingdom building and getting our mission to stop the bandits by killing the feared bandit leader called the Stag Lord. Simple sounding, find his hideout and kill him. However, once we move out into the wild's everyone continues to pick on my gnome for his size and being a 'cityslicker' as the cleric calls me.

That changes when we have our first encounter though with bandits, were I get a successful stealth check, get a surprise round were I cast sleep on them and knock out all but one out of the five. After that everyone started to appreciate me more. XD After that, our witch and me proceed to interrogate the bandits with good cop/bad cop method. In the end she asked to drag all the bandits back to Oleg's by the horses we got from them... Hoary for heroic brutality!

After getting rewarded and following info from the bandits, we find one of their camps but go with a more peace path...which involved me getting caught trying to scout ahead and having the cleric bail me out by saying I was his 'kid'. He seems to forget I'm three times in his age in the game. XD In the end we get into bandit camp and work out a deal were he makes liquor for them to earn money, trust from them and a way to their base, although he does most of the dealing to keep with the 'father and son' act just to annoy my character.

In the end we get the bandit's old camp, which we fortify and from there we use as a temporary base to brew the liquor. (Cleric has moonshine gear and a wagon since it is part of his trade and religion.) After a few days exploring the nearby areas and hiding at night from the shambling mounds, (which I'll get to in an other story.) we soon find an area with these special radishes along with some kobolds.

As everyone knows, kobolds and gnomes are far from friends, so what I did was sneak on ahead and then proceed to kill half of them with my crossbow until the rest kills the others but captures one. Again we get to the interrogation like before...but I get more aggressive and even a bit crazy. XD In the end we make a deal with the kobold to kill some Fey called Mites (Aka evil deformed smirfs) to end the war between the two groups. However, after letting him go half the party begins to pick on how I had threatened the poor kobold and kill his buddies without reason, since they were just eating radishes and not attacking us. Despite my whole excuse of gnomeish instincts and how they were just kobolds, they still claim me to be a cold-blooded killer...

Just what a great start for earning trust to gain kingship! However, this is just the start of more craziness as we soon set our sights on going on mass Mite genocide...in the next story.

Reply back or share your own stories! More tales to come!

 

[Drake Cross]

Mite Genocide!

Onto story two, were we go on a five man war on an entire tribe of evil smirfs!

Ok not smirfs, but Mites which on the monster scale are considered lower then kobolds and goblins even. (Although they have a DR 2...which makes them annoying) Anyway we find out their lair is an underground tunnel system under a large tree out in the hills. Once finding it we try to consider a plan of action, that is until our rouge decides to chuck a flare (can't remember real name of item) under the tree and set it on fire in hopes of smoking the Mites out.

What this does is bring every Mite patrol in the region to us, leading to a small army of at least 14 Mites. Over the fallowing combat it leads it a chaotic battle of me knocking out whole groups of Mites with sleep, our cleric summoning a horde of cats to fight and our rouge just going on a backstabbing spree. In the end we wiped them out without getting hurt...However one did run off for the woods and I chased it up a tree, which I then processed to shot 20 crossbow bolts into to try and kill him. XD

Once that was done, we rested up and leveling up, we headed into the tree to kill the Mite leader and the last of the creatures. However it turned out the leader was riding a huge tick, although we get by beating him in the end. The real problem is when the huge whiptail centipede showed up and had us run off in panic. XD However, I came up with a plan of having our rouge use some alchemists fire to rig some Mite corpses and give them to the centipede to hurt it from the inside, since it had not seen us or could follow us because it was so big.

In the end it ran off to its lair on the other side, which we chased after since the last thing we wanted was it somehow escaping and terrorizing the land. On the way we find the kobold we have released before (named Mepmep) who I then scare the hell out of by trying to be friendly to make up for being threatened before. After learning he was here to get a statue for his tribe which we had found, we hand it over to him and he runs off for home while we then finished off the centipede by having our rouge do massive damage with backstabbing and duel-wielding. Again, surprising win!

In the end, whole Mite population was wiped out and everyone was happy...except the Mites of course. More of a simple story only funny for the whole tree burning and the overall massacre.

Again, more stories to come as we soon go on to met the bandits and deal with the Staglord...WITH POLITICS!