Chapter 6 – Crown of Fangs

Full Session Summaries

• Sixteenth Session – Crown of Fangs Part I (12 page .pdf)
• Seventeenth Session – Crown of Fangs Part II (9 page .pdf)
• Eighteenth Session – Crown of Fangs Part III (14 page .pdf)

Commentary

The last chapter of Curse of the Crimson Throne starts out with a bang in Part I.  In Kaer Maga we meet a bard and his Shoanti barbarian girlfriend/henchman who also wants to see the Queen fall in Korvosa.  We sign them up!

Behind the scenes, Patrick (Thorndyke) is in London for a month, so we had to send him ahead of the group to “scout”.  Bruce (Valash) is still stuck in a bizarre  employment purgatory where his ex-employer is keeping him on on a contract basis but he has to fly to frickin’ Minnepolis every week and is unlikely to ever return, really.  This left us with only me (Annata) and Chris (Malcolm) – we are mighty, but 2 PCs is a little light.  Luckily, there was a player who had to drop out of the other Curse of the Crimson Throne session at this point, Ed (Cayden Cailean, a bard).  To get in a better RP experience, rather than run one 8-person game of CoCT, Paul (our GM) kindly split our gaming group and ran 2 4-person games.  So we called up Ed and he’ll be getting to finish out the AP, just with us instead of his original party!  That’s a nice win-win.

After we blow all our money on the best gear the Pathfinder RPG and Magic Item Compendium have to offer, Annata Word of Recalls our group back to Korvosa, into the shrine to Sarenrae at the Temple of Many, where she spent so many years as an initiate.  We’re quickly reunited with the rest of our resistance brethren – Vencarlo, Neolandus the seneschal, Grau the guardsman, and even Field Marshal Cressida Croft has gotten off her ass and decided it’s time to fight the Queen.  They give us a laundry list of targets which we go and prosecute, including a Blackjack impersonator and Sabine herself!  Sabine, for those not following along, was at the heart of a love triangle ending in a duel between Grau and Vencarlo back in the day, and now she’s the Queen’s lesbian lover and goon squad commander.  Except, sadly, they say she’s really honorable at heart and should be turned and brought back alive.  Annata’s a good enough Sarenrae… -ite?  ist?  that she’ll do it, but it doesn’t make some parts of her heart happy.  We brought her back alive; I’m sure she’ll start vamping on Vencarlo again.

Annata is still way in love with Vencarlo and keeps trying to get him to do something about it, but he keeps saying “Yes, well, back to the struggle…”  When she was younger this would have driven her into a fit of insecurity, but she’s pretty confident in herself now and it’s starting to annoy her.  “I’m cute, smart, and can wipe out a small army solo, what’s his problem?!?”

We also go on a special ops mission inside the Queen’s palace.  The bloatmage, her new seneschal, escapes us but we kill a mess of devils and retrieve the body of an Abadarian priest.  Our comrades get things underway, and resistance forces reclaim the streets of Korvosa!

Things are going well.  Annata’s still trying to figure out Cayden’s part in the story.  She is one of those people who sees symbolism in everything, and so far she’s seen huge parallels between Malcolm and Thorndyke and the original founders of Korvosa, Field Marshal Jakthion Korvosa and original Sable Company Marine Waydon Endrin.  She wouldn’t be surprised, when it’s all over, to see them heading up the Korvosan Guard and Sable Company Marines respectively.  She suspects she’s Alika Epakena (St. Alika, who died saving Korvosa from the Great Fire).  She died once already at the hands of a demilich in Scarwall Keep, and though her comrades released her soul and got her a Resurrection, it definitely showed her that there’s ways to die that magic won’t cure, and would be unsurprised to give her life permanently in a final effort to save her beloved Korvosa.   Cayden – she’s not sure.  Maybe he represents Montlion Jeggare, the gentleman explorer who also had a hand in the founding of the city, and became a major merchant house?  The whole thing with House Arkona hasn’t been resolved yet; her deal with the hidden rakshasa Lord Arkona is chafing at her and her inclination to purge all evil from Korvosa is starting to chip away at it, so there may certainly be a power vacuum there too.  She’ll figure it out, she’s sure that destiny’s hand is laid hard upon the group.

In Part II, it gets interesting.  We go back to assault the castle again.  And we get to use a deck of many things!  Old school indeed.  And we mostly survive!  Thorndyke gets to kill a horned devil not once but twice with the magic sword Serith-Tial.  And Malcolm gets a keep and lands; his long held goal of becoming Doctor Doom is near at hand.

Annata has a bit of a bad day – she gets tentacle-raped to death by a worm devil.  Her deck of many things draw is the only thing that saves her!  And she goes from orphan to noble in the bargain.

And our new bard Cayen has a complicated love life.  First, his brother shows up to play his barbarian girlfriend, which is weird out of the gate.  Then, he gets his alignment changed by the deck to Lawful.  And finally, the Red Mantis leader falls in love with him (again, the deck at work).  Hell hath no fury like a high level barbarian woman scorned!

Next session will be the campaign finale.  Will we defeat the Queen?  Will Snu-Snu cleave Cayden in half?  Will Vencarlo finally romance Annata?  Will Thorndyke do justice to the legend of Blackjack?  Will Annata become the next Queen?  What will Malcolm choose to defile with his bodily excretions?  And will Korvosa finally be free?  So many questions – but nothing might and magic can’t answer!

Part III is the campaign finale.  Annata, Malcolm, Thorndyke, and Cayen have to depose the queen and then stop her weird blood ritual from killing everyone in Korvosa.

For nine months (realtime and, approximately, game time) we’ve been working towards this moment.  Over many battles we’ve learned our own powers and how to work together as a team in perfect concert.  And it all pays off.  We storm Castle Korvosa and liberate it, only to discover the real Queen has already left for an ancient Thassilonian site for her blood ritual.  But the hounds of war have been loosed and distance and sorcery do not deter us from the pursuit of justice.

When everything has settled, we get the rarest of rare things – a real storybook ending.  You’ll have to read the summary for the details!

I personally enjoyed this campaign the most of all the ones you see here, and I think the other guys feel the same way.   Using the Pathfinder beta rules, we didn’t have much in the way of rule frustration that mars some of our other games, and the mix of solid roleplaying along with interesting NPCs, sweet locations, and demented foes came out as a totally solid mix.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our tale of the Curse of the Crimson Throne.  Check out our continuing adventures for more fun!

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