Posts
-
Let's Read Hell's Rebels: Turn of the Torrent, Part II
Welcome back to Let’s Read Hell’s Rebels! This post will cover Part 2 of the second adventure, Turn of the Torrent. Part 1 had the PCs meet with former Torrent Hellknight Octavio Sabinus, who promised to join the Silver Ravens should the PCs rescue his knights from the Old Kintargo Holding House.
Part 2 covers that rescue mission and several other events that happen in the neighborhood of Old Kintargo. According to the book, its inhabitants are both the most distrustful of outsiders and the most likely to join the rebellion when properly inspired, since they have a long tradition of defying Chelish rule in small ways.
Like in the first adventure, the missions are numbered but can be completed in any order.
But First, Some Setup
In a remarkable display of slavish adherence to its adventure outline template, the book literally ends its Part 1 while the party is mid-conversation with Octavio Sabinus. You then need to go through two pages of background info and optional events in the Part 2 before returning to the details of what Sabinus wants the PCs to do. While the scene on Part 1 does include a page reference to these details, it’s still a bit of an awkward read.
Anyway, Part 2 begins by recommending that the PCs make the Tooth and Nail tavern a temporary staging area, since all its events happen in the same neighborhood. It describes some tavern games that are common there, as well as an NPC they can meet who is actually Part 3’s main villain in disguise.
Then it describes Proclamation the Tenth, where The Barzilai outlaws the works of several poets and writers whose works mock House Thrune. Three of them are long dead, but one is “The Poison Pen of Kintargo”, an NPC who will become relevant in Mission 2. If one of the PCs is also a poet or writer, their name should also be on this list, which is the bit I found really interesting.
Optional Encounter: Being Followed
This optional encounter is where Thrune hires a mercenary detective to follow the PCs around and report on their movements. Tayacet Tiora is the sort who claims to ignore politics in favor of getting the job done, but the book says she will slowly come to realize Barzilai is bad business all around in future adventures. Any encounters the PCs might have with her here are stated to be mere foreshadowing for her appearance in future adventures, and she could be left out entirely.
That’s likely for the best, to be honest. Tiora might look cool, but the PCs won’t take kindly to being followed by an agent of the enemy and will be even more frustrated when she makes her scripted escape.
Mission 1: Rescue at the Holding House
And here we are, picking up on the Octavio conversation as if the intervening pages didn’t exist.
When discussing the details of this mission, Octavio Sabinus will give them his prized mithral short sword, explaining it belonged to his mother. Showing the sword to his knights and repeating that bit of info should serve as proof of the PC’s allegiance, and help secure their cooperation. The sword itself should also be useful against any devils they run into.
The Holding House is not the most secure prison in the city, but it’s still locked down pretty tight. While the adventure describes the place in sufficient detail for the PCs to make a frontal assault or attempt a sneaking mission, Octavio’s suggestion of showing up with forged prisoner transfer documents is the plan with the biggest chance of success here.
The book lists the requirements for forging the papers, and details an NPC forger the group can hire if none of them are very skilled at it. Opposition here consists of a total of eight dottari guards with the same stats as the one encountered in Part 1, plus their slightly weird commander Warden Sabo. More guards will show up at regular intervals if a fight breaks out.
Good forgeries and some fast-talking should get them past all of these people and into the cells, which contain three of the four knights they’re supposed to rescue. The fourth is currently being tortured by the scalpel devil.
Oh, I didn’t mention the scalpel devil? It’s like a chain devil, but covered in scalpels instead and with a host of powers to detect lies. It’s in a soundproof room deep within the prison, and even if the party tricks the guards they will still likely end up fighting it to get the last prisoner out. The guards don’t like this thing a whole lot, and won’t be in a rush to enter the soundproof room or to ask the PCs how they got its latest victim out alive. Therefore, it’s entirely possible a particularly convincing party will talk their way into the devil’s cell, kill it, and talk their way out with all four prisoners in tow.
Getting the knights out without killing a single human guard is worth XP as if the party had defeated the lot in combat.
Mission 2: The Poison Pen of Kintargo
The quest giver here is Cassius Sargaeta, a captain in the Chelish navy. Not being a Kintargo native, he’s confined to his ship by Proclamation 8. Sargaeta hasn’t left town yet because his lover Marquel Aulorian (noble scion and secretly the Poison Pen of Kintargo) is under house arrest and likely being sought by Thrune agents for criticizing the government in his writings. Sargaeta wants the PCs to deliver a letter to Marquel and bring him to the ship.
The PCs learn this on a meeting with the captain, after being invited into the ship by his first mate, a sassy half-elf gunslinger. Now, it’s quite likely the PCs will be slow to trust members of the friggin’ Chelish Navy, so a good amount of this section’s text is dedicated to what happens if they don’t agree to see him.
The Aulorian estate is defended by human guards who are less beefy than the dottari, and by a three-headed hellhound. As usual, discretion is advised unless the PCs want their notoriety increased.
Reuniting the two lovers will net the Silver Ravens a substantial reward: the captain asks one of the PCs to drop a porcelain teacup on the floor, and provides the Ravens with favors equal in number to the resulting shards. That’s a fancy way of saying 1d10, but the book also suggests getting an actual (cheap!) cup and getting a player to drop it for extra effect.
It seems to me the whole deal is meant to come off as dubious until the very end. Sargaeta is described as a “Chelish patriot” who is unhappy with Barzilai specifically but not his government in general. His first mate is cheerfully unpleasant, and he keeps a halfling slave as a maidservant (the adventure doesn’t spell that last bit out, but Lem’s backstory is very clear that the Chelish love enslaving halflings).
Despite all this, getting the Poison Pen to safety is a good thing for the rebellion, and the 1d10 favors gained as a reward are really valuable. Sargaeta will agree to anything short of open treason, which means he will lend his crew for covert actions, provide discreet transport to the Ravens, deliver a lump sum of money, and so on. If using the scene as written, the best thing to do would be to play up the gray morality of the situation. GMs who are uncomfortable with that or who don’t believe their players would take on the mission as written could replace Sargaeta with a more sympathetic foreign captain.
Mission 3: On the Slasher’s Trail
The text of this mission begins with a brief bout of exposition on the Temple Hill Slasher, a serial killer who plagued Kintargo a few decades ago and whose killings are still part of the local folklore. In other words, a fairly obvious Jack the Ripper expy. The main difference here is that the Slasher was eventually caught. Only it seems like the killings have started again, using the exact same MO.
The rumor table at the start of adventure includes some entries dealing with this new Slasher, and they pay off on Mission 3. The PCs are contacted by a tiefling tailor named Hetamon Haace, who reveals he’s the leader of the Rose of Kintargo: a cult of Milani1 worshippers who’s been laying extremely low as of late. As is often the case with these NPCs, he’s fully aware of any Silver Ravens exploits the group hasn’t taken pains to conceal.
Haace feels compelled to ask the Ravens’ help because a member of his own group has been killed by the new Slasher. He wants their help in tracking the murderer down and will offer the services of the Rose in return. This will mostly consist in helping keep the heat off the Ravens’ backs, but they will rise up and help the fight more directly when the time comes. There’s also a pair of free boots of levitation in it for the party.
The procedure for tracking down the murderer is laid down in detail: speak with dead to interrogate the latest victim, and several skill checks to interpret the provided clues. Getting too many of these wrong is a serious concern here, since it will mostly shut down the investigation. The book suggests having the Slasher try to kill a friendly NPC after a few days if this happens, and have the victim escape to provide any missing details to the group. I suggest simply providing those details during the initial investigation to avoid killing the group’s momentum.
From a description of the suspect’s appearance, attire and the smell of a specific kind of grease that hangs about him, the book says it’s possible to deduce he’s a tinkerer who rents a shop at a sort of co-working space for cog-mongers called Vespam Artisans. The place’s owner is fairly sympathetic to the Ravens and will promptly reveal the suspect’s name (Varl Wex) and where he lives.
Wex has a room at a tenement house. Depending on how the PCs handled the investigation up to this point, he will be either away from home when they arrive or waiting in ambush.
The story here is that Wex came across a sentient magic kukri used by the original Slasher, and was brainwashed by the weapon into becoming a serial killer himself. The weapon in question and a whole lot of other incriminating evidence are hidden in a secret room in the apartment. If Wex is out, he will arrive during the investigation and either try to bluff his way to the hidey-hole to retrieve the weapon, or attack at once if the PCs already found it. If he’s lying in ambush, he will strike from the secret room and try to pick off the PCs one at a time until he’s found out. Wex will fight to the death, though he might retreat to set up sneak attacks.
Eliminating Wex is already a service to the city at large and will get the Rose of Kintargo on the PC’s side. They also have several options on how to dispose of the body and evidence! The most interesting one is to turn them over to the authorities, which will immensely bolster the Ravens’ reputation and force Barzilai to publicly thank the PCs for their service to preserve appearances. They can also turn them over to a neutral party who will get the credit for the deed if they don’t want the exposure, but hey, go big or go home!
Similarly, they can hand the evil knife to one of the remaining legal “good” temples in Kintargo and get a reward equal to its monetary value, or turn it over to a sensible neutral party like Tiora and get half that value. Either of these will get the artifact safely destroyed. Any other solutions carry the risk that the weapon will make its way back to the murder cult who originally created it, and cause future trouble for the PCs.
Conversion Notes
Wex is statted up as a level 10 fighter/rogue, built to stack bleed effects on his targets, which benefit from the effects of his evil weapon (see below). A GURPS conversion should probably start from the Assassin or Thief templates, with around 50-75 extra points spent on making him deadly with a kukri: Weapon Master (Knives), higher ST, higher skill, and Targeted Attacks to the neck or femoral arteries if your campaign uses that level of detail.
The evil kukri is named Balgorrah, and contains the soul of a murder cult priest. It causes greater than normal bleeding and gives the wielder temporary HP equal to the amount of bleeding it caused. It also tries to compel the wielder to become a serial killer.
The GURPS version should be Fine, Balanced and Ornate (+1), and enchanted with Weaken Blood and Steal Vitality. It should also have an IQ score and an Energy Reserve which it can use to power its own enchantments.
Analysis and Review
Part 2 ends right after describing the three missions above. The only mission that’s really required for moving the plot forward is Mission 1, but Mission 2 rewards the PCs with such a valuable strategic resource that I would strongly consider replacing Captain Sargaeta with a more obviously sympathetic NPC if your group would be disinclined to trust him as written.
Mission 3 seems to be mostly there as filler to give the PCs enough XP to hit level 6 in time for the adventure’s finale, but it’s interesting enough on its own merits that I would still keep it in my version of the adventure.
Our next article will look at Part 3, which ends this adventure with a big dungeon raid.
-
Golarion’s Chaotic Good goddess of rebellion. ↩
-
-
The Peoples of Tamriel: Adaptation Notes
I’ve recently published a three-post miniseries adapting the humans, elves, and other interesting folks from the Elder Scrolls series of computer games to GURPS. Now I want to talk a bit about how I did it!
These three posts, and the One-Post Skyrim adaptation that preceded them, were the first time in a while where I was able to fully exercise the approach to adapting video games that I outlined as one of the very first articles on this blog. And the mini-series in particular was where I tried some new things, and I feel it’s worth talking about these things.
Researching the Source Material
Everything I said way back when in Adapting Videogames still reflects the way I think about this process. Fiction takes precedence over original mechanics, and I get to pick and choose from both in case they contradict themselves.
For One-Post Skyrim I had just the one game to look at, but for Peoples of Tamriel I needed to cast a wider net. Elder Scrolls is a sprawling, decade-spanning franchise, where these contradictions are bound to come up a lot more often. So how did I deal with it?
My “original sources” here were all the mainline games of the Elder Scrolls franchise, as described by the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages wiki1. That’s still a huge amount of data, and it’s positively filled with all those contradictions I mentioned above.
Most of them are mechanics-based. Basically, each game in the series differs as much from its predecessor as, say, D&D 3.0 is from AD&D, at a minimum. I decided to narrow the field down a little by looking at what changed and what remained constant between games. Things that changed every game were obviously less important to replicating its “feel” than things that stayed the same.
The big invariant here is the core gameplay loop: in every game, you wander and explore the world. You are given quests by NPCs, or discover them through other means. You enter dungeons, fight the enemies inside, and loot their treasure. There is a “main quest”, but you can choose to ignore it in favor of faffing about doing sidequests or simply raiding dungeons as you come across them.
You might remember I wrote pretty much the exact same thing during One-Post Skyrim. That’s because these things remain as true in Skyrim as they were in Arena2. All of it is very “high level” stuff, and does not require any specific tabletop mechanics to replicate, which is awesome for me. But how about the specific mechanical details? When it comes to playable character origins, the list of invariants is surprisingly small: you can choose from several. That’s it! The exact composition of the list and what each origin’s traits are changes significantly from game to game.
Adapting the Peoples of Tamriel
In the end I opted to use the list from Skyrim, which is both the most complete and the most popular of the franchise (it’s also used by Oblivion and Online). And when statting them up, I did two things: I avoided using the word “race” as much as possible, and I didn’t give them any attribute adjustments or mandatory mental disadvantages. This has the benefit of making these templates feel very “Skyrim”-like, since that’s also the way Skyrim does things. But there were other reasons why I chose this approach.
There’s an article out there that says it much better than I can, but unfortunately I’ve lost the link to it. Basically, the way racial attribute adjustment works in systems like D&D reinforces character stereotypes in a way that could be considered racist if it was applied to real-world people. Calling these bits of character creation races doesn’t help either, since that word has a lot of baggage from the real world.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy doesn’t suffer from this to the same extent with attribute adjustments, since the cost of a racial template is small compared to the player’s total point budget. It does however, kinda fall prey to it when it comes to racial advantages and disadvantages. The bigot who says “all cat-folk are lazy spazzes”, or “all dwarves are hard-headed greedy bastards” ends up kinda having a point when those traits are a mandatory part of their templates.
I didn’t really want to play in a setting where bigots have a point, even about entirely fictional populations. I’m pretty satisfied with the final result: all the templates felt flavorful, and their traits didn’t force players to pick a particular profession over another as much. Players who want to hew closer to the cultural stereotypes about a given people could pick from the list of optional “Other Traits”, and could even pick optional traits listed under a different template for extra variety.
This worked out fairly well in my case because all the different people of Tamriel have roughly the same shape and size. GURPS is a system that places a lot of value on realism, so I imagine I would still need to keep some physical attribute adjutments in there if I were to include pixies and half-giants in the lineup. However, in systems or campaigns where that matters less even those wouldn’t need adjustments. I plan on keeping this approach with any other such templates I make.
-
Adaptando Videogames
Esta é a versão em português do post Adapting Videogames. Siga o link para ler a versão em inglês!
Antes de eu começar todo aquele negócio de Dragon’s Dogma, eu gostaria de discutir o próprio processo de adaptar um video game. Vai me ajudar a explicar minhas decisões.
O excelente GURPS Adaptations contém muitas informações valiosas sobre como adaptar ficção tradicional para uma campanha de GURPS. Muitas delas são igualmente aplicáveis à adaptação de um video game, mas eu sinto que há algumas considerações adicionais igualmente importantes. Elas são relacionadas ao gameplay.
“Gameplay” é um termo que engloba tudo o que o jogador faz em um video game, assim como os mecanismos que governam essas ações. Jogos diferentes lhe dão diferentes níveis de acesso a esses mecanismos. Um jogo de plataforma permite que você desenvolva uma intuição sobre a distância máxima dos seus saltos, e um RPG eletrônico te mostra uma quantidade imensa de números.
Ficção não tem “gameplay”. Mesmo o mais longo dos romances de fantasia com a mais detalhada descrição de seu sistema de magia nunca vai fazer com que seus leitores façam mais do que ler o texto para descobrir o que acontece a seguir. Video games são o exato oposto disso. Mesmo o mais imersivo e narrativo dos video games vai sempre exigir que você preste tanta atenção ao gameplay quanto à história e ao cenário.
Se você acha que isso lembra muito o processo de conversão de um sistema de RPG para o outro, está começando a entender!
Essencialmente, o processo de adaptar um video game para uma campanha de RPG de mesa apresenta todas as dificuldades de adaptar a ficção e também todas as dificuldades de converter material entre sistemas diferentes!
Quanto mais transparentes as mecânicas originais do jogo são, paradoxalmente, mais difíceis elas tornam o esforço de adaptação. Ao adaptar mecânicas, quer de um video game quer de outro RPG, é muito fácil cair na armadilha de tentar convertê-las tão detalhadamente quanto possível. Isso pode ser um exercício intelectual interessante, mas raramente gera um resultado simples e prático.
Minha estratégia preferida é confiar nas forças do sistema “de destino” tanto quanto possível, adaptando a ficção e tentando recriar as mesmas sensações passadas pelas mecânicas originais sem travar nos detalhes. Sempre que as mecânicas conflitam, a ficção tem precedência. Com jogos que são parte de uma franquia, eu escolho um subconjunto das informações do cenário e das mecânicas que pintam o retrato mais coerente (ou pelo menos o retrato do qual eu gosto mais).
No final, eu espero ter uma moldura de campanha que é divertida de jogar e que se encaixa no idioma do GURPS. E espero que condordem comigo sobre o resultado :).
-
The Peoples of Tamriel: Everyone Else
This is the third and final post in a mini-series about bringing the peoples of Tamriel to a GURPS fantasy game. This post deals with anyone who’s neither a human nor an elf.
Scholars from the Empire or the Aldmeri dominion tend to call these people “Beast-Folk”, both because many of them bear an obvious resemblance to some sort of animal and because these exalted nations tend to view them as somewhat less than civilized. Like everyone else, though, they have rich cultures and long histories. They are also quite well-adapted to their home environments.
Argonian (20 Points)
Argonians (or Saxhleel, as they call themselves) are a reptilian people native to the swampy region of Black Marsh. They resemble scaly humans with a tail and a lizard head, and sometimes have feathers or horns as well. Their scales come in various shades of dark brown, gray or green, sometimes marked with patterns unique to the individual.
Well-adapted to their native environment, Argonians are amphibious and highly resistant to disease. They’re known as experts in guerilla warfare, having had to defend their homes against foreign invasions many times in Tamriel’s long and convoluted history.
Argonian adventurers thrive in flooded environments. Those native to Black Marsh are commonly Scouts, Barbarians, or Thieves with some supplemental wilderness survival training. An all-Argonian party can go in underwater adventures without any special magic or equipment!
Advantages: Amphibious {10}; Doesn’t Breathe (Gills, -50%) {10}; Resistant to Disease +3 {5}.
Disadvantages: Cold-Blooded {-5}.
Features: Tail; Body and head armor needs to be adapted to accommodate the tail and unusual head shape. This usually doesn’t cost extra, but might restrict their usage of looted armor.
Other Traits: Argonians are the target of prejudice in several provinces of Tamriel, like Morrowind and Skyrim. In games taking place mostly in those provinces, they would have Social Stigma (Minority Group).
Khajit (25 points)
Khajit require surprisingly little explanation for those who are already familiar with Dungeon Fantasy. They’re Catfolk! While an individual Khajit’s appearance is technically influenced by the configuration of Nirn’s two moons when they are born, that’s mostly an attempt by the franchise’s writers to “explain” why the design for playable Khajit characters went from “humans with funny face tattoos” to something that matches the description of DF Catfolk pretty much exactly.
Khajit hail from the tropical region of Elsweyr (pronounced “Elsewhere”). This province is about equally split into an inland expanse of arid badlands, and a lush coastal region criss-crossed by extensive river basins. The former is inhabited by fierce nomadic warriors, the later by sugar cane plantation owners, farm workers, and urban merchants. Those plantations produce Moon Sugar, the region’s chief export. Moon Sugar’s properties vary a lot depending on what source you’re consulting: they seem to range from “it’s just sugar” to “it’s crystallized catnip”. In either case it has many more or less legitimate culinary and alchemical uses. It can also be distilled into Skooma, a drink that’s definitely closer to the “catnip” end of the spectrum and banned in most regions of Tamriel.
Khajit adventurers tend to prefer “skirmisher” professions like Scouts, Swashbucklers and Thieves. Being naturally equipped with claws, they also put greater emphasis in unarmed combat than most, and so also count many Martial Artists among their number.
Advantages: Catfall {10}; Sharp Claws {5}; Sharp Teeth {1}; Fur {1}; Night Vision 8 {8}.
Features: Tail (not prehensile, and easily tucked into armor).
Other Traits: GMs who prefer to use the default Catfolk statistics for Khajit are free to do so, either in place of these or alongside them (as a different variety). Addiction to Skooma is a -15 point disadvantage: it’s incapacitating, highly addictive, and illegal. Addiction to Moon Sugar, if the GM decides it has drug-like properties at all, is worth -5 points in those places where it is illegal, and 0 points otherwise. These can apply to anyone, not just Khajit, no matter what the Altmer try to tell you.
Others
Many allusions are made in Elder Scrolls lore to other “beast-folk” species, though these have never been playable in the games. A lot of them show up as enemies, though.
-
Standard goblins and ogres exist in Tamriel, and are viewed here much as they are in any other setting.
-
Giants have roamed Skyrim since time immemorial, and maintain a wary relationship with its human inhabitants. They have a Paleolithic tribal culture and are known for herding mammoths.
-
The simian Imga share Valenwood with the Bosmer. The Alessian Order that eventually created the First Empire based their religion on the teachings of an Imga prophet.
-
The Hist are sapient trees, said to be the oldest form of sapient life in Tamriel. Most of them are located in Black Marsh, and are at the center of Argonian culture and society.
And so on, and so forth. Throughout various places and times you can also find snake-people (Lamias), slug-people (Sloads), fox-people (Lilmothiit), Minotaurs, and so on. Like elves, feel free to introduce a new variety every time your players think they got it all figured out.
-
-
Let's Read Hell's Rebels: Turn of the Torrent, Part I
It’s been a while since my last post on the Let’s Read Hell’s Rebels series, but the good thing about maintaining my own site is that there are no externally-imposed deadlines and a project is only over when I say it’s over! So let’s keep going!
“Turn of the Torrent” is the second adventure in the path. It expects Pathfinder characters to be 4th level when they start it, and 7th when they finish it. Since I imagine a starting Dungeon Fantasy delver is equal to a 7th level d20 character, the challenges here should still be well within the capabilities of any party that went through Adventure One.
A small recap
As always, check out the project page for links to the previous installments, but let’s summarize what happened so far. It has been 18 months, after all.
The Hell’s Rebels campaign takes place in the city of Kintargo, located in the devil-worshipping fascist nation of Cheliax. The official line is that they’re only “taking inspiration” from the extremely organized nature of the Nine Hells1, but everyone knows the truth. Kintargo in particular has always been particularly ornery about all this, having only been annexed after a long and bitter struggle. Leading that struggle were the Silver Ravens, a group of rebels who have achieved a sort of semi-legendary status in the mind of the citizens of present-day Kintargo.
Our main villain is a man named Barzilai Thrune, a narcissistic sociopath who delights in grandstanding, engendering acts of large-scale performative cruelty against minorities, and surrounding himself with equally despicable lackeys2. He found out Kintargo is an auspicious site for a ritual that could turn him into a minor god, and got himself appointed Lord Mayor of the city. After having anyone who could oppose him killed, he’s been amusing himself by making ever more absurd proclamations and otherwise oppressing his constituency. All of them will die when the ritual is done, so why worry?
The PCs get caught up in all of this and by the end of Adventure One find themselves leading the group that has the best chance of freeing Kintargo from Thrune’s grasp: the reborn Silver Ravens. In fact, they’re now big enough that their current coffee-house-basement hideout is getting a bit cramped.
Proclamation The Ninth
The adventure kicks off with Barzilai’s Ninth proclamation, which targets the Hellknight Order of the Torrent. All their assets are confiscated and their members declared outlaws. Anyone caught harboring one of them will be similarly declared a criminal.
The Hellknight orders are kinda like elite law-enforcement agencies associated with the government of Cheliax. Most Hellknights are as evil as the name implies, but until recently there was one notable exception.
The Order of the Torrent was a search-and-rescue unit based out of Kintargo, and was the only one composed mostly of Lawful Good folks. Predictably, it was also by far the smallest and less politically influent of the orders, with only 23 members total. Barzilai targets them here because he wants to gift their assets to his buddies from the Order of the Rack3. By the time the proclamation is announced his underlings have pretty much finished the Order of the Torrent off.
After this bit of exposition we get a table of rumors that mostly serves to foreshadow missions the PCs will undertake later in the adventure, with a false rumor planted in there that will make them distrust the Order of the Torrent if they believe in it. There’s also a bit about the toll for Kintargo’s main bridge being drastically increased, which is not something that would inconvenience the PCs overmuch but which will cause plenty of unrest among the citizens.
A Cousin’s Plea
Once the party is done with rumors, they’re contacted by a woman named Setrona Sabinus, current proprietor of one of Kintargo’s oldest taverns, the Tooth and Nail. She wants then to find her missing cousin Octavio, who happens to be the leader of the Torrent. He’s gone missing since the proclamation, and she imagines he might be laying low in a remote shrine located to the south of the city.
Optionally, the GM can have Setrona ask them to first look for her cousin in a sanctioned excruciation that will take place that day, since she doesn’t actually know if he’s been captured or not. Unlike the unsanctioned variety the PCs dealt with in the previous adventure, this one is conducted and guarded by actual dottari guards and Rack Hellknights (four of each).
Octavio isn’t here, but a lower-ranking member of the Torrent is. PCs can try to rouse the crowd and browbeat the guards into postponing the proceedings, or they can charge and start a fight.
This section also includes a note on how these frequent excruciations will actually bolster support for the Ravens. At some point Barzilai will realize this and stop them.
Conversion Notes
The four dottari guards wear mail suits and carry halberds and bows. The Rack armigers have plate, large shields and broadswords. Building them with the Squire template plus 25 points or so seems about right: they should be strong and skilled physical combatants.
None of the two groups will fight to the death - in fact, they’re not all that united. The dottari will perform a fighting retreat if one of them drops, and will rout if two of them fall. The knights will retreat as soon as one of them suffers a major wound. Either group will leave the other to its fate when that happens. This means even a Pathfinder party can make it out of this CR 9 encounter alive if they are lucky and focus fire on one opponent at a time. DF delvers should have quite a bit less trouble surviving the encounter, though it’s no longer the cakewalk their last excruciation was.
Shrine of Saint Senex
This is the shrine where Octavio is supposed to be hiding out. Most of it is underground, but there’s a small above-ground area inhabited by two hippie-looking oracles.
The pair is all of remains of the saint’s cult. They know Octavio is hiding underground, but the PCs must first gain their thrust. Bringing Setrona along will make this much easier. Even if the PCs manage to get a friendly reaction out of the oracles, though, they still insist the party go through the “trials” awaiting them underground to prove they are worthy.
There are two rooms in the temple’s underground. The first contains a simple puzzle, with a fight against a rope golem if the party gets it wrong. The second contains Octavio, hiding out in a crypt full of mummified drowned sailors. He’ll mistake the party for Thrune agents unless he recognizes them using the campaign’s notoriety mechanics, or unless Setrona is with them. Yes, this mini-dungeon can be entirely “solved” without a fight if the party brings Setrona along.
Octavio Sabinus is a Lawful Good Hellknight4, and he will be amenable to joining the Ravens as long as the PCs can prove to him that the group is a) capable of opposing Thrune without always resorting to violence and b) making sure his men are safe. To that end he asks the party to rescue those men from the Old Kintargo Holding House, which is detailed later in the book. He will remain hiding in the crypt until that is done, and will join the Ravens as a unique ally when the PCs complete the mission. Completing it in a subtle manner will make him even more loyal to the cause.
Analysis and Review
The paragraph above is exactly where part 1 of the adventure ends. Yes, it’s basically 90% background info and exposition. The playable part consists of an optional combat encounter which the book doesn’t recommend including and what’s essentially a one-room dungeon bookended by two friendly chats assuming the PCs do the smart thing and bring Setrona along. It could take less than half a session, start to finish.
There’s a lot more detail about the rescue mission Octavio wants the PCs to perform, but even that is only presented in part two. The general verbosity and somewhat poor organization I’ve seen in official Pathfinder adventures rears its head again.
The optional brawl against the dottari and armigers is somewhat easier for DF delvers, and would be a good bit of fun if your group is in the mood to kick some fascist ass. If they’re anxious to get on with the main story it’s best to skip the encounter, have Setrona invite herself to go with the party and get to the talk with Octavio as soon as possible.
We’ll read through Part 2 in the next post in this series.
subscribe via RSS