Episode 6

I found out after I ran this game that pathfinder had made a basic mass combat system in the Kingmaker Adventure path.  So I had to make up my own rules.  I used a hex map for the mass combat, mostly because I had already drawn a encounter map on the back side of the map and the hex map was convenient.  I... don't know if getting into the minutiae of that is worthwhile.  So I'll just say I made something up, it worked and if anyone cares I can go into more detail.  That is true for everything I post up here.  I want to hit the high points and move on.  Speaking (or typing) of moving on, why don't I do that and get to episode 6.

Episode 6:

The city is thinly defended so Knight-Captain Jarick offers to pay the players an officers wage per day to help defend the walls.

This was because I, as a GM, knew the players were broke.  I forgot to mention it before but the party spent a good chunk of money to buy Kong a +1 Dwarven Waraxe from a pair of dwarven brothers who are smiths that gave it to them 50% off because those brothers hate the Stoutfellow clan as well.  So I knew the players would get up there.  But if they decided to bail... well that would have been fine but getting out of town would have become the adventure instead.


After several days of fighting the The High Priest of Tyr asks the players to look into some mysterious activities in the temple district, because one of his paladins was found torn completely apart.  They go to investigate and they run into 2 paladins, 2 death cultists, and 7 demons all fighting against one another as 3 separate groups.  A little investigation showed that the demons started popping up the night they went to Athis tomb, which was did not have Athis's body in it.  The demons seem to be focused around the Temple of Nergal- the God of Death, and were Belfast used to work.

Paladins on the left, cultists to the right, party in the middle

The Interesting encounter is the one at the bottom level of the temple.  I lost the map, so I recreated it to show what I put together, its about 90% the same though a little smaller and with less detail.  This was around a CR7 fight.  I put in a Druid, to hit them with shatter, heat metal, warp wood, and then other support.  I put in a cleric to do some buffs, and I had a few fighters to deal the pain, the warriors are not much more than minions to draw the focus from the fighters and to get in the way.  From here the fight gets complicated.

Sorry for the crappy picture, but its better than nothing!

This fight has a lot of moving parts, so I will discuss each in turn.  First the building begins to collapse.  Over the top of Athis corpse, which is resting on the altar, there is a purple glowing ball that is being held back by 3 clerics in the blue circles.  As the purple orb pulses things happen.  1st the bottom left column collapses.  Next a hunk of ceiling falls, then a big and small hunk fall.  These become impassable terrain that provides cover.

At the same time these red circles are starting to show up.  One shows up, then another, then a demon appears in the first one, then the last one shows up and then all the 3 demons are there.

This is just to draw the players attention.  The Death cultists are actually harnessing the power of a dimensional rift to the Abyss to bring Athis back to life...

At the same time there are clerics in the circles at at the back near the altar.  As the rounds went down those clerics began dying.  Once the last cleric died Athis was resurrected from the altar as a Grave Knight, When that happens, the Demons and the red circles vanish and so does the purple orb (the rift).  At this point Jarick the Knight-Captain rolled in to buy the party time so they could get out.

I had 1 of the paladins with the group here for a couple reasons, 1 she had protection from evil so that would help them in the fight, and 2 she was going to be killed by Athis, if I could manage it.  I wanted the players to hear how much damage she took from his full round attack so they would know not to screw with him.  It worked.  He dealt around 96 points of damage and smoked her.


Now that is taken care of but we still have a siege to deal with, oh and turns out that Jarick got dug out of the collapsed temple and he barely made it.  Reports come in that for whatever reason the main leaders of the Red Tusks have left, so the Count of Pastan asks the heroes to go out and kill the leaders that are left to break the siege.  They sneak out through an old smugglers tunnel and take out the bad guys- the only real interesting thing is I dropped Leanna's name here to remind them she got away, and to let them know she was involved.  The party fumed a little at her then blasted this pretty easy CR 5 encounter.

With that the siege was broken, and the Heroes of Doomsward Keep are now also the Heroes of Pastan.  I thought that was a nice place to bring the session to a close.

Until next time!
-Ubercroz