What Came Before
My Kingmaker campaign has been continuing somewhat sporadically, as various illnesses and events have been interfering. We took 4 sessions to play through Rivers Run Red, which saw the characters found their kingdom and bring it up to a 17-hex barony. Most wonderfully, they recruited a giant to be the kingdom’s headsman, and the threat of the giant keeps the loyalty of the kingdom quite high.
Greg’s character, Wyvern, is the ruler of the kingdom, with the other PCs taking on other positions of responsibility. Kingdom-building was the main focus of Rivers Run Red, although there were two main encounters of note: Wyvern recovered a broken feybane sword from a nearby barrow, and Dave’s character, Nowan, a human rogue, was torn apart by a troll. Apparently, rogues with low Constitution shouldn’t engage in melee with advanced trolls!
Dave created a new character – Joe, a human transmuter – and Greg recruited a cohort – Talia, a human Wizard, and our most recent session saw us begin The Varnhold Vanishing, the third part of the Kingmaker adventure path.
The Characters
- Greg – Wyvern, human Paladin 7 – ruler
- his cohort – Talia, human Wizard 5
- Dave – Joe, human Transmuter 7 – spymaster
- Lee – Brandis, half-elf Ranger 7 – marshal
- Tim – Asmodeus, half-elf Alchemist 7 – magister
- Michael – Keira, human Oracle 7 – councillor
The Vanishing
One of the aristocrats of their new kingdom came to Wyvern with a problem; his brother, on a visit to the newly-formed town of Varnhold, which had been formed by another mercenary band at the same time as the PCs’ barony, had not returned. Nor had there been any contact with the barony for at least two weeks!
Baron Wyvern was amenable to finding out was wrong, and set out with his boon companions on horseback to Varnhold. The journey there was interrupted by a fight with five worgs, which, alas, only provided the group with brief entertainment. (Two fireball-casting wizards? Not good for worgs!)
The watchtower in the mountain pass leading to the town was abandoned, and so too proved to be the town. The animals of the town were mostly dead – starvation and thirst being the killers. Or neglect. There were signs of spriggan activity, including a couple of spriggan corpses, but there was no sign of what had happened to the villagers. A feral hog attacked the group, dealing some damage to Wyvern, but it was slain by the group easily enough.
The group soon began to suspect the local centaur tribe, the Nomen, based on the discovery of centaur hides, and a message scrawled on the inn’s door. They also found books and notes from a travelling scholar, who had come to town to investigate the Nomen and other historic parts of the region, which just reinforced their suspicions. There were also pictures and notes about a jade bracelet that had been recovered from a nearby river. Could this have been the trigger that had led the Nomen on their rampage?
Swarms of crows and rats were fireballed away, and the group finally found living, intelligent creatures in the town; a tribe of spriggans, who had been looting the town after relocating there. The spriggans had set up camp in the town’s stockade, and attempted to stop the party from entering. They were unsuccessful, and all seven of them, plus their leader, were slain in the fights, but not before the spriggans set alight the stockade, destroying it and any evidence that might have been there of what had occurred in the village.
The party returned to their home to deal with the business of ruling – their kingdom expanded to 19 hexes, and they built a brewery (having discovered a recipe for stout in Varnhold, it seemed appropriate). Joe crafted some horseshoes of speed for Keira’s horse and his own, and he also started using the Ant Haul spell to increase the carrying capacity of the party’s horses, so they could even carry Wyvern in his plate armour without reducing their speed! The group could now explore even mountainous hexes at the rate of 1/day, rather than one hex per three days as it was before.
Travelling back to Varnhold after this week’s break, they started looking for the centaur tribe, searching the lands around the mountains. One night was broken by a Chimera attack, another by more Worgs, but they were fairly easily dealt with; Asmodeus was wearing a ring of sustenance, and so would always be on watch with one other character, and his bombs were proving quite effective.
The group found the old, petrified bones of a linnorm, at which they found a number of offerings of meat and wine; they were also attacked by a bull mastodon that was roaming the area. Asmodeus and Wyvern took a lot of damage from it before the group were able to slay it. Joe was now casting mass enlarge person at the beginning of combat to aid the group. Keira mainly just channelled to heal the party rather than taking an offensive role.
Further exploration found them taking a quest from a phase spider to clear out the Xills that had invaded her lair; the Xills proved very difficult for the group to slay, with the Xills proving resistant to many of the spells of Joe and Keira, and they did a lot of damage back to Asmodeus and Wyvern; Keira was hard-pressed to keep everyone functioning, but finally the Xills were slain and the group gained a reward from the phase spider which included a spellbook, much to the delight of Talia and Joe.
At that point, we ended the session. The game has been running for about 15 months of game-time so far; I don’t believe this adventure is going to take all that long to complete.
DM’s Notes
This was a very satisfying session. It’s great to see the group working well together, and Dave is really now using his knowledge of the Pathfinder spells to great effect. The group reached 8th level by the end of the session. I’m not really tracking XP any more, and they probably would have been just short otherwise, but giving the characters levels between sessions means the sessions don’t slow down that much.
In contrast to most of our recent sessions, we only had one kingdom-phase this session; the group was very busy exploring Varnhold. I have the map folio for this adventure, and the session was made much easier by having a poster map of the town so that the group could just point to which building they wanted to explore. The mystery of the vanishing is presented really well; I was worried going into the session that it might be a bit boring, but it played well, which is what you really want from an adventure.
I’ve also recently acquired Book of the River Nations: Complete Player’s Reference to Kingdom Building, which Michael spent some time perusing the other day. It expands the options for what they can build in their kingdom and, although we didn’t use it this session, I expect we will in the future. My copies of the first four instalments of Way of the Wicked, an evil-themed Adventure Path from Fire Mountain Games have also arrived, and we’ll likely play that when Kingmaker ends.
The battles in this session were more challenging than most of the last adventure (save the trolls) which was good to see; it’s very common for Pathfinder battles to be very lopsided, especially with them more likely to be one per day in this AP.
We’ve now played eight sessions of the Kingmaker game; I expect this adventure to take a total of three sessions if they continue with it in the manner they have so far. Their kingdom is now 19 hexes; I wonder how big it will be when this adventure ends?