The Major Players of Savage Tide

This post denotes key characters in the Savage Tide campaign. I will update and add details to each character as we go.

The Cast:
Lavinia Vanderboren

Her parents have died in a boating accident leaving her in charge of the family estate. She has hired a new group of adventurers to help her reclaim the family fortune and pay off some debts.

















Jessica of Waldsby 

Leader of the Jade Ravens, the other adventuring group working for Lavinia

















Ruggan the Dwarf

A member of the Jade Ravens


















Ivy

A member of the Jade Ravens













Morgoth the Mighty

Member of the Jade Ravens

















Vanthus Vanderboren

Lavinia's brother. Missing for the last month, it is now believed he has recently stolen some of the Vanderboren family fortune. The PCs current task is to find him.












And the PCs: (I will add more PC pics as they send them to me
Trevain the Arcanist

Trevain Avallorn was born to a small tribe of nomadic desert elves that wandered back and forth across the desolate wastes of Osirion and Thuvia. Originally descended from wild elves of the Mwangi Expanse that migrated north during the time of the great ancient Osirian empire, Trevain’s people retained much of the knowledge of that time, knowledge that had mostly been lost by the human descendants of the ancient Osirians.

Trevain was fascinated by stories of the great Ancient Osirian mages and their Elder Elemental allies. Being a talented practitioner of the magical arts in his own right and desiring to learn more than his fellow nomads could teach him, Trevain journeyed to Sothis, capital city of modern Osirion. Sadly, Trevain was gravely disappointed by what he saw. The human inhabitants knew virtually nothing of their former greatness, having only recently overthrown their Keleshite rulers. They were debased and avaricious. Even the most learned among them seemed only interested in using their intellects for selfish purposes. Still, Trevain remained in Sothis for a decade, learning what he could from the fragmented remains of Osirion’s great libraries.

During his time in Sothis, Trevain learned of a technique by which the Ancient Osirians could fuse elemental and human bloodlines to create the first Ifrits, Undines, Oreads and Sylphs. The Keleshites would later consort with genies, creating weaker, degenerate versions of these original geniekin. Yet, Trevain was fascinated by these original elemental bloodlines. He moved on to Absalom, the scholarly capital of the Inner Sea, in order to continue his studies. There he learned of another ancient civilization, the Shory Empire, which was most known for its great flying cities. The Ruins of Kho, in the northern reaches of the Mwangi Expanse, which Trevain had heard of during his youth, were the crashed remains of one such city. Trevain theorized that the Shory were inheritors of ancient Osirian magic. He decided he had learned all he could in Absalom and booked passage to Sargava, the most southern outpost of the Inner Sea nations in Garund. He would spend several years there learning what he could and eventually becoming entangled with a group of fools called the Golden Retrievers. But that is a story for another time.

Isis

Isis grew up on the island of Aegos in the Land of the Linnorm Kings. His family was all fisherman and by the age of 14 Isis ran away to find something new and exciting. Instead he entered virtual slavery aboard a privateer. By 18 he had moved through the ranks and was looked on as a risk because of his popularity with the rest of the crew. Understanding his predicament, he ran and travelled far to the south to avoid his old crew.

On his way south Isis met with Kaeless a fellow traveller with a strange brother. One of the largest problems Isis has run into is the huge difference in how his crew and culture in general treated women and the ways in more civilized parts. This has led to many miss understandings and a few angry mobs. Isis Cosby has vowed to try and understand theses strange southerners and do better here.

Kaeless

"My brother and I were raised in the northern city of Riddleport.  He was never really accepted in Riddleport, so we had to live in hiding or on the periphery of the city.  Still, the scummy citizens of that diseased port eventually turned on us and drove us out.  We happily left, joining The Run from last season.

"I met Isis on the long voyage.  Of all the creatures on that ship, Isis alone was worth any conversation and camaraderie.  Isis was kind to my brother and I appreciated his rapist wit.  It was on that voyage that we decided to work together at the terminus of our long voyage.

"if the pay is good, and there is a chance to uncover lost knowledge in dark jungles of the south, I will always be interested in working with the Retrievers.  I know you all have good intentions and that I can rely on your powers when the time comes."

Kaeless is a human that speaks very little.  However, when he speaks, it is for a good reason.  He is curt, sometimes abrasive and seems to have little appreciation or patience for social graces.  Still, he is loyal, brave and seems to use his abilities for the benefit of all the Retrievers.  While his blunt tongue seems to chafe with the public, it is clear that he has no ulterior motives and says exactly what is on his mind.

Another curious point about Kaeless regards his brother.  His brother resides in Eleder but not a single retriever has actually interacted with him.  Kaeless seems to spend a large portion of his gold buying supplies for his brother...

And we're back! Savage Tide

Things have gotten a little dusty around the blog as no one has felt like posting much this year. Hopefully that is about to change. We kicked off a new campaign last weekend, an old Paizo Dungeon adventure path - The Savage Tide.

We played the opening session where we finalized the PCs, worked out background details and got the story rolling. I will try to do recaps in the future and as soon as I get the notes from last session finalized I'll post the first recap.

Hell's Vengeance

Things have been busy lately so I haven't been very focused on my RPG hobby. I usually follow PaizoCon closely to get any tidbits or hints of future releases. This year I forgot it was going on and only looked over the Paizo website after the fact.

There were not very many announcements that excited me but one did stand out. Starting in August is the Hell's Rebels adventure path. This was announced last year at GenCon and takes place in Cheliax. I think it is mean to be what people were hoping for from Council of Thieves. I think there is an audience for an urban adventure where the PCs battle the Devil aligned House Thrune. Council of Thieves starts out that way but turns into a big mess.

The follow up AP to Hell's Rebels is an AP titled Hell's Vengeance. Details were a bit scarce but it was made known that this is Paizo's first Evil adventure path. While I don't think they ever said they'd never do an evil AP that was certainly the impression that many people had including me.

I think with the great success of Way of the Wicked (which was a pleasure to run) they realized there was an untapped market for it. I get the impression that in this AP the PCs are agents of House Thrune and either try to rollback the events in Hell's Rebels or strike against their enemies elsewhere. Either way I have to say I'm really looking forward to this one. Assuming my job situation is a little more stable by then I may even resubscribe.

Star Wars and Disney Infinity 3.0

This week we got our first look at Disney Infinity 3.0 and it comes as a surprise to no one that Star Wars features heavily. There will be three Star Wars playsets. The first two have already been announced. Twilight of the Republic, set during the Clone Wars, will feature Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano, Yoda and Darth Maul. The second, Rise Against the Empire, set during the Rebellion Era, will feature Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca and Darth Vader. The third set, based on Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be announced at a later date.

Marvel will also be getting some more representation in DI3. Already announced will be Hulkbuster Iron Man and Ultron, but there will also be an as yet unrevealed playset as well. I am especially curious as to what this one will be as the number of possible choices within the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems limited at this stage. The Avengers, Ultimate Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy have already been done. Big Hero Six is possible, but Hiro Hamata and Baymax have already been released as toybox-only figures in DI2. More likely is that they will go with the X-Men. Disney doesn't have movie rights to the property, but other merchandising options shouldn't be a problem.

Still another playset, based on the upcoming animated feature Inside Out is also revealed, as well as new toybox-only figures for Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Olaf (Frozen), Mulan and Sam Flynn and Quorra (Tron: Legacy).

-Rognar-

Pathfinder Unchained: Review

I've always thought Pathfinder  Unchained sounded like an interesting concept. A bunch of optional rules changes or modifications sometimes adding complexity, sometimes simplicity but often moving further away from the 3.5 system.

The first section deals with alternate version of a few character classes. The barbarian has the Rage feature changed a bit. instead of it changing your characters stats during Rage, you just get a bunch of bonuses. They've also tweaked some rage powers (now unchained!). Overall I don't see a big difference. I still prefer the original but those people bad at math or don't manage their characters on a spreadsheet might like the simpler version. Some of the really bad Rage powers are a little better unchained and some of the really good rage powers are a little worse unchained.

The Monk is quite controversial. They've cleaned up the class a bit so that some of its abilities work better together but over all the new version is probably still worse than the brawler at fighting and lost some of its defensive strength which was the hallmark on the original monk. A minor improvement but overall still not something that interests me.

The Unchained Rogue is definitely improved. Better at skills. Better at fighting. Better overall. Combat-wise they are still tied to the unfortunate sneak attack mechanic but that shouldn't stop hardcore rogue lovers. The first (and only) Unchained Class that I could see myself using.

The Unchained Summoner is grossly misnamed. It should be the Chained Summoner. The poor summoner got nerfed just about every way you can think of. Worse spells, worse Eidolon. About the only advantage here is that DMs that hate the summoner and ban it might allow this defanged and impotent version.

The next section deals with Skills and Options. There are lots of possibilities here but my favorite is  Background skills. There are lots of kills that anyone hardly uses because they have no mechanical benefit and unless you get a ton of skills its hard to bring yourself to take them. With this subsystem everyone gets two background skills per level. This way the noble PCs could take Knowledge Nobility, the ex-farmer takes Profession: Farmer, That sort of thing. It clearly defines which skills count as background and the only one that provides any sort of mechanical benefit is Perform and that only applies to Bards.

Skill unlocks are kinda cool but seem like a lot of extra things to keep track of. They figure into one of the Unchained Rogues new abilities but anyone can use them (although not as well or easily).

The variant multiclassing is rather neat. For the price of your feats at 3, 7, 11, 15 and 19 you get a secondary class that advances at your character level but you only get certain class features. For example if bard was your secondary class you d get Bardic Knowledge at level 3, Bardic performance at level 7 (at -4 level getting Inspire Courage and Inspire Competence), Versatile Performance at level 11 in one perform skill (allows for a free retrain). At level 15 gets Lore Master as a 5th level bard. At level 19 gets Dirge of Doom and Inspire Greatness. Just the Core classes, the Advanced players guide classes and the Magus and Gunslinger are listed as options. No Hybrid classes.

I'll post a second part later.

The Strange, pt.3

Our excursion to Ardeyn went ahead without McNulty and Soderstrom. Rumours around the Estate suggested that McNulty got a sudden assignment somewhere in Siberia and that Soderstrom got a tryout with the Canucks in some NHL-based recursion.

[spoiler warning]

Our first obstacle was the entrance to the Mouth of Swords, a cave opening ringed with dozens of blades. A few nicks and cuts later we were through. Further on, we came to a central chamber with a giant copper brazier and encountered a hooded figure in tattered robes, a wrath lord calling itself the Myth Keeper. We decided to talk to the wrath lord and he offered to keep treasures safe for a fee. We had nothing to give it. We said we were there to claim the dragon eggs. However, we did not have the means to prove ownership and the Myth Keeper told us to leave. Roll for initiative!

The Myth Keeper proved to be less of an adversary than we anticipated. He had a seven-sided ring that controlled the fire in the brazier. There were seven doors around the room, each one inscribed with one of the Incarnations of the Maker; Death, Desire, Lore, Silence, War, Commerce and Law. With the ring, we could direct the fire toward one of the doors, which would then become unlocked. For no particular reason, we selected the Silence door first. It opened to a long stairway circling downward, eventually reaching a chamber with a statue of a unicorn. The statue was made of stone, while the horn was metal. We uncovered a secret door that could be opened by rotating the unicorn's horn to the left. A sign on the wall warned us against entering the Night Vault, lest the umber wolves consume our souls.

With the sound of howling in the distance and no sign of dragon eggs, we decided to try our luck somewhere else. So we chose the Death door. I mean, why not, right? We headed down a corridor, past another unicorn statue (which we chose to bypass) and came upon a chamber with four large sarcophagi and a large, smoking urn. A layer of water covered the ceiling. Not liking the look of this room one bit, we decided to try our luck elsewhere, although we all had a sneaking suspicion we would have to return eventually.

We next tried our luck at the door of Desire. A short passage led to a room with several corpses. We searched the room thoroughly, suspecting a secret door. There was a secret door and we also uncovered a small, hidden cavity in the floor containing a qephelim clay figurine. After some study, we determined it to be a talisman that allows the Myth Keeper to regenerate. Not knowing how long it would take the wrath lord to return, we decided to keep it as leverage in case we couldn't find all the eggs and needed to force the Myth Keeper to reveal them to us. Moving on throughout the secret door, we found a room with three statues. One was a muscular human male throwing a hammer, the second, a graceful qephelim dodging two pendulums and the third, a female human reading a large book. Holbein approached the second statue. It animated and reached out a hand. Upon making contact, Holbein got blasted for some serious Speed damage, but the outstretched hand of the statue held a dragon egg. Wilcox and Buckingham followed suit with the other two statues, each doing a type of damage appropriate to the style of the statue and relinquishing its treasure. However, neither held another egg. Rather, they were a large gem and a book.

Moving on, we found rooms behind the door of Lore to be largely empty, so we continued on to the door of War. By this time, our more martial team members were itching for a fight and that seemed like the best place to find one. Inside, we found a large black-tiled chamber with a large statue of an armoured qephelim and racks of weapons on the walls. An open door led to a large chamber beyond. As we examined the room, Wilcox touched one of the weapons. Suddenly, the open door slammed shut, the statue bellowed "Your challenge is accepted" and Wilcox disappeared. Wilcox found himself in a large chamber with a stone step pyramid occupying most of the available space. He stood at the base of the pyramid with the weapon he had touched in his hands, while two sark stood atop the pyramid raining arrows down toward him. As Wilcox worked his way up the pyramid to close on the sark, Holbein touched a weapon as well. Holbein and two more sark joined the battle. Holbein provided cover fire with his bow as Wilcox dispatched the sark with his sword. As the last sark fell, the previously open door reopened. At the top of the pyramid was a bronze altar with a bronze dial affixed to it. Wilcox turned the dial and the top of the pyramid collapsed. Fortunately he was able to dive to safety. After the trap reset itself, Wilcox tried again, this time turning the dial in the opposite direction. Another door in the room opened revealing another room beyond. Inside was another armoured qephelim statue and several chests. The chests contained some ancient bottles of wine, a few cyphers and another dragon egg. Two down, one to go.

After skipping over the door of Commerce (seemed lame) and spending some fruitless minutes not finding any eggs behind the door of Law, the time had come to return to the door of Death. Back at the room with the sarcophagi and the water on the ceiling, we jammed a large rock into the door to keep it open. Then Buckingham went inside and proceeded to push open the closest sarcophagus. As soon as it budged, the door started closing, crushing the rock as it did so. At the same time, the water on the ceiling started flowing down the walls and pooling on the floor. Buckingham dove throughout the door just as the rock shattered. We waited for roughly an hour and the door opened. The water was once again pooled on the ceiling. Holbein had a cypher that allowed him to breathe under water, so he volunteered to go in and look for the final egg. Sure enough, as he searched each sarcophagus, water continued to fill the room. Holbein was able to open the sarcophagi, retrieving some coins, a valuable amber statue and the third dragon egg. We smashed the Myth Keeper's talisman to ensure he wouldn't return, then fled the Mouth of Swords with a good supply of stolen treasure and the precious dragon eggs.

-Rognar-

The Strange, pt.2

Our second session saw us add a new agent to our team, a slick, smooth-talking bloke named Buckingham. McNulty would be sitting this one out. Presumably, a few of the higher-ups at the Estate wanted more details on the Seattle operation and why some local college kids had hired lawyers and were accusing the local authorities of harassment and police brutality. The rest of us boarded a flight to Denver.

[spoiler warning]

Nederland is a small, hippie town a half-hour west of Boulder. Soderstrom and Sinclair posed as Southern California hipsters looking for business opportunities selling healing crystals and other New Age paraphernalia. Soderstrom is a master of disguise and Sinclair has an MA in philosophy, so it wasn't difficult to be convincing. The rest of the team set up a surveillance cordon so we could keep watch on the Dreaming Crystal.

After checking out some of the local businesses and scoring some legal weed from a nearby head shop, Soderstrom and Sinclair headed over to the Dreaming Crystal. A tattooed young woman was outside smoking a clove cigarette. Her name was Delsey and she was an employee of the store. She didn't have a great deal of useful information to share, other than when to expect her boss, Lydia Nance, to arrive. Later that day, when Nance arrived, Sinclair and Soderstrom returned and proposed a business partnership whereby they would open a store in California. After some friendly banter and a few drinks, Soderstrom furtively brought up Spiral Dust. Although Nance was initially concerned about how we came to know about it, after mentioning Leroy Cain and indicating our interest in selling dust in SoCal, she seemed interested. She invited Sinclair and Soderstrom into the basement of her store where she said her Spiral Dust operation was located. Sinclair, a paradox, initiated a Mind Reading revision, allowing him to determine the combination of the lock on the door to the basement which she hid from view. This also allowed him to recognize that Nance was leading them into an ambush, At the foot of the stairs, clinging to the ceiling were two night spiders, horrific giant arachnids from Ardeyn. Soderstrom opened fire with his 9mm, while Sinclair started launching Exception revisions and signalling to the rest of the team for backup. It was a tough fight, but with help of the rest of the team, the night spiders were killed and Nance was taken into custody. Several dead bodies were discovered, victims Nance had lured down there to feed her pets.

The rest of the basement was explored and a room was discovered with a taped off square in the middle of the floor. Further questioning of Nance revealed that her source of Spiral Dust, a woman by the name of Donna Ilsa, would translate from a recursion called Area 51 into the taped off area, drop off the dust and collect money Nance would leave for her. She didn't have a fixed schedule, although drop-offs were typically every couple of weeks. It was decided to take up residence in the store and wait in the translation room in shifts for Ilsa's next appearance. It turned out Sinclair and Holbein were present a few days later when she arrived.

Subduing Ilsa proved no mean feat. She possessed several cyphers which she used to great effect. The first one was some sort of chemical grenade which she used on Sinclair. It covered him in a greasy, sticky substance which effectively immobilized him. The second created a force wall intended to keep Holbein at bay. However, a spectacularly successful attempt to vault over it allowed him to close with her and engage in a grapple. Holbein was able to subdue her long enough for the rest of the team to arrive. Once captured, we were able to interrogate her with the aid of a Mind Reading revision,

We soon determined that Ilsa was actually a dragon from Ardeyn. A creature she referred to as the Dustman was holding a clutch of her eggs hostage in order to coerce her cooperation. She was running Spiral Dust for him through a recursion called Area 51, a chaotic place in which a human rebel movement was fighting against a classic 50's movie style alien invasion of Earth. She knew roughly where her eggs were being held. but a previous attempt to rescue them had failed. Upon hearing this, we offered to rescue her eggs. We would allow her to continue running dust so as not to arouse suspicion, with an Estate agent waiting here to receive the shipments and dispose of them. Though reluctant, she agreed to give us a few weeks to try our rescue mission. She told us the eggs were kept in a dungeon in Ardeyn called the Mouth of Swords. And so, we're off to a old-fashioned dungeon crawl in Ardeyn.

-Rognar-

Our first campaign in The Strange, pt.1

Posts have been few of late. I'm not sure why. There just hasn't been much to talk about lately. Nonetheless, our gaming group has been busy delving into Monte Cook's new Cypher gaming system. We started with Numenera, but have recently switched to The Strange. For the uninitiated, The Strange is a multi-genre game that harkens back to the classic TORG game of the 90's. The title of the game refers to an ancient technological marvel created by a hyper-advanced alien race from the inconceivably distant past that permeates the universe. Thought to have originally been intended as a means of intergalactic travel, the Strange has decayed into a dark energy network that is capable of giving birth to pocket dimensions called recursions. Typically, these recursions are anchored to an inhabited world and derive their reality from popular fictional or mythological sources.

Our group is currently running through The Dark Spiral [spoiler warning] with some added material from other sources. We started out with five agents; Soderstrom, a mysterious Swede with a troubled past, Wilcox, a gung-ho ex-military NCO and unofficial leader of the team, McNulty, a disgraced ex-cop who's not afraid to bend the rules, Holbein, a former military sniper and all-around glass-half-empty kind of guy and Sinclair, a Canadian writer and philosopher who acts as the voice of reason. We are operatives for the Estate, a secretive private organization that monitors and investigates the Strange to protect the Earth from the many dangers that lie in wait. Our first assignment together involved investigating a drug dealer in Seattle named Leroy Cain who has been selling a mysterious drug called Spiral Dust which seems to have an unearthly origin. Pretty quickly, we were able to determine his home address and decided to stake out the place. We found Cain's car parked out front and someone inside, but despite repeated attempts to gain entry, the occupant could not be coaxed into opening the door. At one point, McNulty and Holbein tricked their way into the apartment next door which was occupied by two college kids playing video games. The young guys were clearly stoners and McNulty suspected they might be customers of Cain's despite their protests to the contrary. They applied a little bad cop/worse cop on the college kids to coerce their cooperation and get them to try and gain access to Cain's residence, to no avail.

Some time later, the sole occupant of Cain's apartment, a woman named Janice Cordell, left and headed toward a nearby car. Sinclair intercepted her and, posing as a police detective, placed her under arrest. Returning to Cain's apartment, we found a picture of the U.S.S. Enterprise from the original Star Trek TV show which we determined to be a focus used to translate to a recursion based on the series. Realizing that Cain had gone there, we followed, taking on classic character types from the show. McNulty became the pilot/navigator, Soderstrom, the science officer, Wilcox manned the weapons console, Sinclair became the engineer and fittingly, Holbein became the redshirt, a character who repeatedly died and was replaced by another. Each of his deaths, however, was beneficial to the rest of the party. We pursued Cain through a Federation ship that was fighting off a boarding attempt by Romulans. After successfully bypassing the automated defensive systems of the ship, we fought a pitched battle against the Romulans who were attempting to seize the engineering section. We were successful in defeating the Romulans and taking Cain back to Earth. He revealed his source of Spiral Dust to be Lydia Nance, owner of a small gift store in Nederland, Colorado called the Dreaming Crystal. We're off to the Centennial State.

-Rognar-

Jupiter Ascending - unfairly maligned

Jupiter Ascending, the new big-budget sci-fi film by the Wachowski siblings, is currently imploding in a theatre near you. The movie stars Mila Kunis as Jupiter Jones, an illegal Russian immigrant working as a maid with her mother and aunt in Chicago when she finds herself the target of an alien hit squad. Coming to her aid is Caine, played by Channing Tatum, a disgraced former soldier who is a hybrid of a human and a wolf-like creature. Jupiter, it turns out, is the genetic reincarnation of the recently-deceased matriarch of a massive interstellar corporation. The discovery of Jupiter's existence threatens to destabilize the delicate balance of power among the children of said matriarch as each seeks to deal with the situation in different ways so as to derive some benefit or simply to eliminate the threat.

The visual effects are dazzling, as befitting the massive budget, and the plot is far better than one usually expects from a popcorn flick. Sadly, some of shock of the big reveal is tempered because of the trailers. One of the scions of Abrasax mentions his intention to "harvest" the earth, betraying some hint of the true evil of this family. Still, when all is revealed, it is pretty chilling.

The acting was a bit uneven. Kunis and Tatum delivered performances worthy of their talents. Eddie Redmayne. who claimed a Best Actor Oscar last night for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, was less inspiring. I don't know whether he was attempting to portray his character, Balem Abrasax, as deranged or merely an evil caricature, but suffice to say, the scenery was thoroughly chewed by the end of the film. Still overall, the film deserves more love than it is getting and seems destined to join John Carter on the junk heap of good sci-fi movies that never found an audience.

-Rognar-