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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 6028507" data-attributes="member: 3586">Lee was unable to make our latest Kingmaker session due to his cat falling ill, and Dave turned up an hour late due to him forgetting about daylight saving starting; as Dave has most of the kingdom sheets, this wasn’t so good. Luckily, the group was still exploring the area around Varnhold, and so we weren’t doing any kingdom building to begin with. Once Dave did arrive, we were able to actually do some kingdom work as well.The players and characters for this session:Tim, playing Asmodeus, half-elf Alchemist 6/Master Chymist 2Michael, playing Kiera, human Oracle 8Dave, playing Joe, human Transmuter 8Greg, playing Duke Wyvern, human Paladin 8and his cohort Talia, human Wizard 6The group were currently exploring the mountainous terrain of the Tors of Levenies, looking for the Nomen centaur tribe who they believed to be in the area and likely responsible for the disappearance of the townsfolk of Varnhold. They explored about six hexes this session, with their first encounter being in the Ironstone Gully, where a pair of Stygira, “hag cyclops”, attacked them from caves in the rocks. This proved a most challenging encounter, as the damage reduction of these creatures knocked out the effectiveness of Asmodeus and Wyvern, and Kiera, with her new Holy Smite spell, was having trouble with their Spell Resistance. The group didn’t flee (as they should have), but kept going, and I nudged Greg into using Wyvern’s Smite Evil ability. At that point, the group were able to start winning the combat, and Tim discovered his bombs worked just fine. Mostly, he prefers to use mutagens, but the bombs won this combat.Dave then turned up, and helped them discover a lode of iron ore in the cave the Stygira lived in. It was a nice juxtaposition of a treasure hex plus a random encounter.From there, they headed south-east to Vordakai’s Island, where they were much intrigued by the spire of stone rising from the pool below a waterfall. Making their way down the cliffs, they used their folding boat to travel out to the spire, although an attack by a couple of wyvern delayed their arrival; alas for the wyvern, fireballs, magic missiles, bombs and readied melee attacks were too much for them.[imager]<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=52922&stc=1&d=1349665291" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />I have undead Cyclops minis![/imager]The group found an opening into the spire, which led into a carved passageway. An overturned amphora in the passageway contained a lot of coins from the cyclops empire and a jade bracelet, which they recognised from the scholar’s notes in Varnhold. They took them all, and proceeded onward to a chamber where two Zombie Cyclops attacked. They weren’t too much of a threat, and were dealt with swiftly. Paizo’s editing here leaves a lot to be desired: the statblock is actually given earlier in the book, but the page references are to two sourcebooks! I had to go online to realise that I could find the statblock in a completely different portion of this adventure. Typical incompetent editing from Paizo.The group found the secret door that led onwards, and swiftly dispatched the dinosaur that lived in the pool that they next found. Stairs led underwater to another (dry) chamber, which Joe discovered after using a spell to give himself a swim speed. Greg misunderstood the drowning rules, thinking you could hold your breath for a number of rounds equal to your Con modifier - it’s actually your score, not modifier. Once we cleared him of that misapprehension, the group continued on to the dry chamber, filled with cyclopean pottery. Down another set of stairs led to a room of cyclops statues, and a trap which the group discovered but absolutely failed to disarm, causing the room to swiftly fill with water. However, the group had discovered the trap in good time and triggered it from a safe place where they were able to retreat. As they were lacking good underwater spells, they chose not to continue their exploration, but instead returned outside.That night, Joe was attacked by a Soul Stealer, a creature summoned by a spell-caster to destroy its enemies. The group were able to destroy it, although it damaged Joe’s wisdom severely; Kiera was able to restore Joe’s loss easily enough.The group then returned home, only pausing to fireball some Worgs along the way. At this point, we realised that a nearby tower to their capital still hadn’t been explored, so after dealing with the kingdom business for that month, they went to claim the hex. It proved to be inhabited by will-o-wisps and overgrown with nettles, but thanks to Council of Thieves, the group knew all about will-o-wisps and quickly cast many magic missiles at them, until they died. They then fireballed the rest of the island free of nettles!Joe had to do a couple of months worth of crafting for the group, so we just dealt with a further four months of kingdom building in this session. The group also explored some empty hexes of the first map they hadn’t explored yet, and that was pretty much the session. Two celebrities visited during event phases; the first brought a windfall of 14 build points to the kingdom, the second only four, but that was enough for the group to finally build a Caster’s Tower... and the magic items it crafts are going to make a big difference to the finances of the kingdom.At this stage, the kingdom is 26 hexes big, and has key indicators of Stability 39, Economy 49, Loyalty 38 and 0 Unrest and about 1 Consumption. It’s doing pretty well, although it’s probably smaller than expected for this chapter. That doesn’t matter too much yet - it will be in later adventures we’ll have to make sure it’s big enough, so I expect we’ll end this adventure with a lot of kingdom building!</blockquote>

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