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In Castle Scarwall, Anorak awakens to find concerned allies looking over him. He has no recollection of what happened, so The Reckoner fills the dwarf in on his disappearance and subsequent rescue. The Reckoner, Lorien, and Yraelzin agree to wait for the dwarf to consult his spellbook before continuing their exploration of the second level of the foreboding fortress.
With the aid of a recently-found keyring, The Reckoner is able to open a lock that stymied him before, gaining access to the castle’s armory! Unfortunately, the weapons inside have rotted shafts and rusty, pitted blades, testament to just how long Castle Scarwall has been abandoned. Curiously, an iron statue of an imposing man with long stair stands in the corner of the room. The statue looks just like the figure in the paintings the group saw elsewhere in the tower. As Anorak enters the room to search, the statue suddenly animates! Huddled near the doorway, the Harrowed Heroes prepare to meet its charge, though they aren’t expecting it to breathe poisonous fumes! Yraelzin finds himself overwhelmed and begins coughing and choking. Lorien takes a staggering blow to the chin and is lucky to keep his feet (not to mention his head!), but The Reckoner is always prepared, and his adamantine war-maul makes short work of the construct.
Nearby, an investigation of what once must have been a lounge turns up one curious thing: an area where motes of dust seem to be gusting. Suspecting the presence of spirits nearby, the group prepare for another attack—and their expectations are met as four disembodied phantoms with sharp-toothed maws covered by swirling robes soon arrive! Anorak finds himself overcome by a terrible fear and he sprints away, but The Reckoner and Lorien’s enchanted weapons and extensive magical protections again overcome the foes quickly. Yraelzin decides that with such powerful allies, simply staying out of the way might be his biggest contribution!
We gather here today to
decide how to respond to the biggest threat Varisia has seen in living
memory. There have always been giants in
the region’s vast interior wilderness.
Giants tend toward tribal cultures and are territorial, but they have never
been expansionist beyond scattered raids.
But last year it became
apparent the security situation had changed.
The giants were unifying under a single banner, that of a stone giant
named Mokmurian. Many smaller towns and
villages held as outposts by the major city-states came under attack. For
example, ogres and trolls destroyed a dam holding back the Storval Deep, flooding
the entire valley to the south and completely destroying the village of
Turtleback Ferry.
After a heavy raid on
Magnimar’s holding of Sandpoint on the Lost Coast, a band of adventurers
followed the giants back to their fortress in a place called Jorgenfist and
managed to assassinate the giant leader Mokmurian. But what these “Heroes of Sandpoint”
discovered was that Mokmurian was merely a general acting on the behest of an
extraordinarily powerful wizard from millennia past dating to the days of the empire
of ancient Thassilon: a so-called “Runelord” named Karzoug. Although Karzoug had been magically
imprisoned at some point in the past, he was beginning to break free and
influence events in Varisia.
The Heroes of Sandpoint travelled to the site of Karzoug’s imprisonment, the ruins of a Thassilonian city called Xin-Shalast, high in the freezing mountains. There, they slew countless giants and lieutenants of Karzoug and approached the Pinnacle of Avarice, the fortress of Karzoug himself. We know all of this because that is the point one member of the Heroes of Sandpoint lost her courage; this half-orc, “Morgiana”, was found days later by rangers loyal to Ilsurian.
We’ll never know exactly what happened to the other Heroes of Sandpoint, but one thing is perfectly clear: they failed in their quest to defeat the Runelord Karzoug, and now that wizard is free. Although it has taken him months to regain strength, rebuild his army, and acclimate to our time, his dreams of conquering all of Varisia—and perhaps more—haven’t abated.
Many of you will have
heard of the recent military thrust into the Cinderlands, aimed no doubt to
capture Kaer Maga and seize the entire Storval Plateau. Fortunately, and perhaps surprisingly from
our point of view, this attack was broken during a siege of Urglin. However, a disturbing new weapon was
discovered: magical teleportation spikes capable of moving entire units hundreds
of miles in a matter of minutes; word has filtered down that such spikes were
used to launch a surprise attack on the Shoanti camp of Flameford; I believe we
have one survivor of that battle in attendance—Goldcape.
The current situation we
face is thus: our long-range reconnaissance patrols and divination magicks have
detected that the attack on the Cinderlands was only exploratory; the bulk of
Karzoug’s army of northern giants will soon march directly on Magnimar,
splitting Varisia in half and capturing the region’s largest city-state.
I now leave it to you to
determine whether and how we should respond.
The silence following
Sheriff Feldane’s speech is broken by Lord-Mayor Haldmeer Grobaras, elected
ruler of Magnimar—the largest city-state in Varisia and the apparent target of
Karzoug’s next thrust. Grobaras
immediately calls for a full military alliance to repel the assault, but this
meets with immediate opposition from Overlord Gaston Cromarky of Riddleport,
who cites the enormous expense of fielding such a massive force. When Cromarky is reminded that he has little
in the way of ground forces to contribute (his “gendarmes” are little more than
a group of thus and enforcers), he says his ships could play a crucial role in
delivering grain and other supplies to Magnimar for the duration of the war—for
a price! Goldcape, there on behalf of
the rebel factions in Korvosa, promises that the city will lend support once
Queen Ileosa is overthrown. The others
scoff, and it seems the city’s reputation from past interactions have made the
other leaders sceptical a new ruler would make a difference. An elven general by the name of Kaerishiel
Neirenar, representing the elves of the Mierani forests, reluctantly agrees to
lend his people’s support as skirmishers since the giant army will surely savage
the forests to help fuel their war.
The discussion is long
and contentious, and full of personal insults.
The main sticking point seems to be how to fund a joint force and how to
ensure that Korvosa pays its fair share.
Eventually, a breakthrough is reached when Grobaras proposes that if the
city can’t send troops, the rebel leaders will have to commit to repaying the
others’ expenses on a per-soldier basis.
Sheriff Feldane adds that Ilsurian will only lend its support if
Korvosa’s rebels agree to an immediate and permanent non-aggression pact. Goldcape thinks this is manageable, and
agrees to discuss it with the rebel leaders.
She immediately sends a magical silver raven with a message to Glorio
Arkona. The assembled representatives
agree to reconvene in a few days with the hope of finalising the details.
Twin efforts are
simultaneously underway, one in Castle Scarwall and one in Ilsurian, to stop
terrible threats that have emerged in the past year. If either effort fails, thousands of
innocents could pay the price . . .
--------------------------------
GM Commentary
The first part of this session says the PCs tromping through encounters in Scarwall with little difficulty. The Reckoner, at least, was a bit OP (and super-prepared), but that might have been a good thing considering Anorak and Lorien were run by first-time Pathfinder players.
I thought the summit was great and worked out even better than I had planned. Sheriff Feldane's recounting of the events draws directly on what happened in Rise of the Runelords when I ran it before this campaign, even the bit with a PC (and player) dropping out right before the final push! The summit was a great way to get Goldcape (whose player had otherwise transitioned to Assistant GM during this Chapter) some screentime, to show off some major Varisian NPCs (some I had had the opportunity to use in RotRL, such as Grobaras and others I would be previewing a presence in my next AP to run, Second Darkness, like Overlord Cromarky and Kaerishiel). I actually had the other non-Goldcape players at the table run these NPCs, having secretly briefed each one before hand on what their goals and personalities were like. I always say part of the fun of being a GM is not knowing what's going to happen, and that was certainly the case here--I had no idea whether a mutual defense pact would be reached for this major plot-point.
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