#pathfinder story

[ejsuperstar]

fucking.... pathfinder man

first session in ages and im howling iwht laughter and my throat hurts from laughing too much we got a quest from a ghost and its to go tell off his son for being a shit leader to the town, and our plan is to break into his house at the middle of the night and recreate a christmas carol

i was waiting for a chance to bring it up trying not to laugh and when i told the party we just started fucking roaring with laughter and coming up with ideas. we are going to a christmas carol this man next session also had some really sweet character moments between mine and @zemoleinyourtrashcan's character and they are my babies and adorable Also we suspect our new bard to be a vampire (hes not, we just think he is)

[lonestar827]

Cran Cracks the Illusion

A quick writeup based on a recent pathfinder session that ended on a hella cool note. I had to do a quick writeup.

For reference, Cran is my Kobold Desna Cleric, and the party has been trapped on an island that seems to be putting thoughts into their head of decadence.

~~~

"We haven't seen a hide or hair of our boat or crew and we're at a party like nothings happened…"

The party bustled with royalty, everyone dressed as their best talking about local gossip and an upcoming grand announcement. Cran's companions were taking to the party rather quickly, the swashbuckler was getting drunk and performing at the bar, the strangely pale woman dancing along with everyone else, and the newborn dragon was talking the ear off of some poor lady. They were all enjoying themselves, taking their place in the party. Cran, adorned in a flowing, star-like robe with shimmering butterfly wings, saw everything from above. The glitter, the gold, all of the gaudiness of this Grand Event.

And Cran hated all of it.

He hated how every foreign thought came to him naturally, he hated how easy it was to get a dress to his exact needs, and he definitively hated that his room was perfectly suited to his unique needs. He saw what the island was pumping, he saw the underbelly and what it contained, this place had another purpose and he knows it. This place was promising too much for too little, and only a honey trap would taste this sweet. He'd already developed a habit of pinching himself, for all he knew only the pain was real, everything else could just be the sickly sweetness coming from…somewhere.

He started to walk down the stairs towards the main floor to investigate more, his dress flowing behind him. He could hear the praise and wonder coming from who knows where, and that familiar feeling of sickly sweetness coming back to his head. It would be so easy to just bask in it, enjoy the attention that he deserved from looking so great, just let it-

Something flickered at the edge of his vision, and his gaze immediately bolts to the grand floor. Among the dancers and gossipers, Cran spied a hooded, ethereal figure. He wasn't there before, nothing about this figure fit anything he saw over the past day. Every nerve in his body was firing danger, all of the pent up suspicion boiling up his throat, and with eyes boring into the figure watching him, he let out a single Command spell:

Kneel

The command traveled across the floor like cracking glass, the whole room freezing in time except Cran and the hooded figure. The hooded figure crumpled to the floor and Cran clutched his head, his thoughts were finally silent, the sickly sweetness finally gone. His hand reached for his star knife when the figure disappeared, reappaering on a balcony above him, looking down with disappointment.

"So, this is how you repay me." The figure spoke with a deep voice "You help me with something, and you reject my gifts in return."

Cran's eye twitched before responding. "I didn't ask for any of this! This was shoved onto me, all of it!"

The figure's face looked up as it began to speak again. "It cannot be helped, then. Perhaps my gifts were too…subtle. Nonetheless, I shall still give you a stage, perhaps the upcoming performance will be more…suited to your taste."

He quietly disappeared as Cran quickly looked around for any approaching danger…and to try to get his companions back in action.

[babybluesquid]

Vestige's Backstory

Vestige was an older model of warforged, created promptly as part of an experimental set following Aaren d'Cannith's discovery. Their creator, a young artificer named Andrea d'Cannith, sought to keep them afterward and succeeded, since they were never intended for sale. Vestige became his bodyguard. Together, they served House Cannith throughout the war, at the creation forges, the training facilities, and the front lines. This life was confusing, to serve someone who was simultaneously so callous and so kind to their brethren. They had few opportunities to really connect with fellow warforged, but traveling they were able to meet and speak to many. It was from this unique vantage point that Vestige was able to hear the early whispers of the Lord of Blades near the end of the war. The ideology made sense, it put their life into perspective, from cruel beginning to cruel present. They chose their name in private and bided their time, letting their dissatisfaction fester.

However, they were not the only one to take on a new ideology. Andrea d'Cannith was also growing dissatisfied, with his body, his mortality. He saw the war in a different light, the warforged were not merely weapons or tools, they were a new form of life, a way to escape a cataclysm to come. In secret, he studied the warforged deeper, searching for the answer to the mystery of their sapience. He prayed to the Traveler to guide him to strange revelations. And he found it. He killed Vestige and then transferred his soul into their body. Unexpectedly, though, his old body did not stay dead. It rose again and Andrea soon realized it was his guard, not gone to Dolurrh, but to the empty shell he left behind. Vestige was still alive. However, before he could study this new mystery, mist rolled over the land. In the chaos, Vestige ran.

Horrified, Vestige traveled out from the Mournland. In an unfamiliar body, feeling the tug of Dolurrh on their soul, they sought out brethren who could help them reverse this vile act. After a long time wandering, growing accustomed to the new body and unfamiliar power that came with it, and stealing to survive, they found a group of Inquisitives in Sharn. They refused to tell them their old designation, and the name of Andrea d'Cannith, affirming they were Vestige, and they were among their kin.

[yourdndstories]

Submitted by @2boot

[whereserpentswalk]

You sell items to adventurers for a living. It's relatively easy to get business in a frontier city like the one you live in. You were planning on becoming an adventurer yourself but an injured leg when you were young prevented that. But because you already know how to find items, and how they should be fairly priced, so it's a good living.

Not everyone who thinks of themselves as adventurers actually are adventurers. You sometimes have to sell weapons to naive groups of kids, who have no idea what they're doing. Useally you humor them, they tend to go off into useless places with no gold to be found, an old mineshaft that's been explored a thousand times over has become famous for such things. If they seem like they'll go somewhere way more dangerous than they should, you point them to the mineshaft.

Of course, most of your business is from actual adventurers. They tend to be wanderers, foreigners, a lot of ex merchants or ex millitary, or children of nobility who cant inherent, the type of people who never had the chance to make a safe living. Most of them are nice to you, and if they're not you know how to get them to leave.

You also know how to become a protecter for the adventuring parties who need it. Your shop is basically the center of their community in this part of the city. If a spellcaster is part of an illegal religion, or performing banned practices, you know what symbols to sell them to help them hide themselves. If someone is clearly a runaway slave or serf, or from a race that's considered a monster in this part of the world, you know how the forge the right documents. There was a hobgoblin who frequented your shop for a long time, who you sold weapons to, who you had to testify in front of the city sherif was not a hobgoblin but was infact a member of a rare subrace of elf that you made up to protect him. You may have also recently made an entire fictional category of magic legally real for the sake of protecting some necromancers you know.

There are some people you never sell to. It's not considered good principle to sell to people who would gladly kill your other clients. There was a group of warriors weilding holy magic who talked a lot about punishing sinners, they came back with the heads of goblins and hobgoblins a lot, and vampires, and humans of religions other then theirs. After they started bringing in more of their freinds you cut them off.

There are people who you wished you hadn't sold to for other reasons. There was this human noble girl who you sold a suit of armor to, she had run away from an arranged marriage and joined an adventuring party so she could be as far from her parents as possible. She seemed so excited to be in a big city, to be out in the world, she chatted with you for hours about an epic poem from ages long gone that she liked. When she came back to your shop after her first quest she had turned undead, something happened in her first dungeon that changed her, her skin was pale, and her teeth had turned sharp, you just remember her shivering and trying to cry, and muttering about how cold she was. Her other party members said they were happy she was more durable like this, they didn't seem to care about her outside of that.

And of course, there's the fact that every adventurer you know, useally doesn't come back eventually. When a full party goes you can assume they left town, but when just one or two from a party is missing there tends to be one explanation. Most adventurers don't have long careers, and mortality especially high for rookies. But you don't tend to ask if anyone is dead, it's better to just assume they went home, as implausible as it may be.

[nerd-in-distress]

being fixated on characters from your ttrpg campaign sucks especially if the campaign ended because you wanna read and write about it and see cool art about it and constantly talk to people about it but the fandom is literally only you. and maybe just some guy you see every saturday.

[eliotbaum]

You seem to draw a lot of Curse of Strahd. Loving all of them. I don't play much DnD and prefer other games but Strahd sorta lowkey speaks to my goth soul. Would you recommend it?

HAHA I sure do. ty!!

So, based on my personal experience the answer would be yes and no. It's one of the stronger modules, if not the strongest DnD module out there, but running it just by the adventure book is not something I'd recommend; plot holes, disorganized, women often get the short end of the stick... There is a whole subreddit dedicated to improving it, adding things on top, and other sources and supplements to make it a fleshed out world with depth. It's very much a diamond in the rough LOL Either way earlier editions of DnD Ravenloft and the domains of dread provide more fun gothic horror to play around with so I recommend looking into all of that stuff! It's got all the classic tropes and is truly rather dark for DnD. Low fantasy, high stakes!

Since I haven't finished the game as a player yet and as such don't know the entire original plotline, if anyone feels like adding their thoughts, by all means!

[dujour13]

Siavash the Lark 🦋

Commission by the wonderful @mellifera38. Going with the wildcard for this one was the right choice. Thank you so so much 💕💕💕

[canarydraws]

Putting wips of your characters from different campaigns on the same page is a mistake I was just trying to compare them for height reference and I accidentally created a fairy gf/goth gf dynamic! Now I’m SAD and MAD because these two are my own characters and the only way I’ll ever get to see them together is if I go off the rails and actually draw AU content for them!

…which I might. I have no idea what I’d draw but literally them just standing on the same page is cute and I want to see what my 5’5 space paladin and my 6’3 pf magus would do if they ever existed in the same room

[ejsuperstar]

Just had my second pathfinder session and it was great. V good DM, other players were great too. All around super fun.

The other player's character just got stabbed and knocked down to 1hp, my character, who was very upset. Ran over to try and stab the orc. I rolled to attack and...

I ended up falling over laughing cos I rolled a nat 1. At this point the other character had already healed herself, and then the orc stabbed me, and knocked me down to 1hp.

This was the first fight of the campaign. Worst thing is, this isn't most damage I've taken. The honour of dealing that would go to our 3rd player (who was absent for the latter half of the session) deciding to use his sword to try and free my character's leg from a root/branch it was caught in, and accidentally chopping it off. My character instantly passed out from 14 damage to his level 1 8hp leg, and the other player had to proceed to fly as fast as he could to a temple to try and get someone to fix the leg.

[zazrichor]

I'm currently playing through the Pathfinder series and I have to say, I am obsessed. Aster is my Kingmaker OC, Phesolis is my Kingmaker General/Baroness of Varnhold, and Zinnia is my WotR OC. Zinnia and Aster are chaotic siblings.

[babybluesquid]

Session 19, A Glimpse of Inferno

Our Players this Week:

Hog 112, they/them, Weapon Thaumaturge, skirmisher warforged, the leader of the inquisitives agency and founding member, tends toward practicality and following a command structure.

Vestige, they/them, Bones Oracle, warforged placed into a human body, a healer and the agency’s fleshborn face, remains on the periphery with an individualistic streak.

Strategy, it/its, Empiricist Investigator, officer warforged, an old model who’s seen much action and uses the tactics they learned back during the war now under Sharn.

——————

Feeling the press of time, the sleuths hurry to the lift, various trips taking them up to Eliot’s mansion. The guards there delay the inquisitives only momentarily, as Hog tells them that they’re expected to investigate the scene. In the burned out husk of his workshop, ir’Valgernard paces nervously. Malrut nods appreciatively at the party’s approach.

It’s a wreck. There are two rings of melted stone on the ground, which Strategy inspects. The pattern of soot around them is consistent with the other arsons undertaken by the Karsaal’lyc cult, the same exact obsidian stones the sleuths are far too familiar with. Eliot’s able to confirm that the Watch took the stones away when they did their sweep of the scene. It asks Eliot ir’Valgernard what was stolen. He reveals a magical safe which has been melted open, saying that there were specially carved psicrystals within it. As Strategy continues its search of the room, nothing else seems notable.

“It seems we’re wasting our time here,” Vestige comments, looking around the desolate workshop. “I wanted to be thorough,” Strategy sighs, “but yes. Finding the machine is more urgent. We should head over to Smoky Towers.” “Let’s be on our way then.” Malrut tags alongside the sleuths as they head down to the middle district.

There, Strategy pulls out the crystal lens from ir’Valgernard and places it in front of its good eye. Immediately, it’s overwhelmed by the sheer volume of magical connections that it’s sudden aware of. The air of Sharn is thick with them, holding up every tower, illuminating every everbright lantern, connecting the sending stones. Strategy focuses, looking for something out of place, and finds it. One emanation is weighty, but disconnected from other things. It focuses in on the steady signal, noting how it seems to be growing stronger and quicker. As Strategy stares, it feels warmth, then heat on its metal. A whisper of nonsensical and incomprehensible words is audible at the back of its mind.

As Strategy removes the lens, it looks in the direction of the magical emanation, sure of its origin. “I believe I’ve found it,” it announces, handing the lens to Vestige to take a look. As Vestige follows Strategy’s direction, it finds the same odd magical signature, and when the heat touches their flesh and whispers creep toward their mind they pull their gaze away. Nodding in affirmation, Vestige says: “let’s go.”

As the party heads down though, Malrut whispers to Hog. Something’s following them. Hog hands their mirror over so the man can check. It’s the creature, the one that he’d chased from ir’Valgernard’s workshop. Suspecting it’s here to prevent the sleuths from reaching Jack-in-Irons, Hog nods and produces their whistle, “attack on my signal.” They then break off from the others and duck behind a house precipitously perched on the parapet, hoping the thing will get itself surrounded.

But it stops, realizing it cannot see Hog anymore, and starts to search for them. Hog curses their luck and blows the whistle. The positioning’s not optimal, but might they catch it by surprise? No such luck - the thing scurries to the edge of the bridge and drops off! Hog doubly curses and hurriedly prepares their grappling hook. Strategy, meanwhile, uses the lens to find the thing crawling on the bridge’s underside, and the inquisitives give chase. Too quickly, the spindly thing reaches the end of the bridge and starts to crawl down a tower at breakneck pace.

Hog leaps after it! Their feather fall token activates as they take a shot and fire, pinning it to the wall with a crossbow bolt. Vestige extends the pull of Dolurrh to the thing, but it’s not enough to tear away its soul. Strategy jumps as well and tries to line up a shot, but the creature frees itself and scuttles down the wall with inhuman speed! Unable to pin it down, Strategy watches helplessly as its enemy scurries from sight. It and Hog land on the lower bridge, utterly defeated. No doubt, the thing will inform its master of their approach.

——————

Notables:

Malrut, he/him, Eliot ir’Valgernard’s trusted guard. Compared to the Demon Wastes, Sharn’s a cakewalk.

[yourdndstories]

HE'S DOING HIS BEST. Based on a submission from @flamboyantcuttlevawn.

[mr-kench]

Dragons Dogma 2 Spoilers

If you saw my previous post talking about the brilliance in Villainy that is Grigori then you know what the deal with Dragons are in this universe. But the TLDR is Dragons are Fallen Arisen made subject to the Will of their Universe. In the original game this was a benevolent role as Dragons found those of great Will to take the place of the previous Guardian of the Universe, The Seneschal.

However this is slightly different in DD2 The Dragons are still Arisen but their master isn’t the Seneschal nor does the Seneschal exist as Guardian. Instead the Dragons and the Universe are ruled by a Tyrant called The Pathfinder. Unlike the Seneschal Pathfinder doesn’t value Free Will and if anything it’s an enemy to its plans for the Universe.

The World exists in Perfect Order and the Cycle of Arisen and Dragon keep that Order by their conflict instilling Fear and Awe. Rather than fight for themselves or the world they place their lives solely in the Arisen and wait like Sheep for the clash to happen time and time again. Looking for a new hero to command them. Pathfinder finds this favorable because everyone in their story has a part to play in how the world functions and those without purpose are removed.

It isn’t until you disrupt this tyrannical Order as Arisen, Slay the Dragon and then Slay Pathfinder for defying the Narrative they laid out for you. It is by strength of will you do this and by strength of will that you empower your Pawn and give them Free Will in turn. The final word of Pathfinder is “a new story has begun and I won’t be there to see it” the new story is The First Game. You overthrew the will of this universe with your own you’re the Arisen that defeated a God with the power of your Will. You are the first Seneschal.

Dragons Dogma 2 is a Prequel.

[thedragonagelesbian]

anyway dragon age/bg3 followers. play pathfinder wrath of the righteous. im no longer asking.

[honourablejester]

I’m reading the Pathfinder ‘Lost Omens: The Mwangi Expanse’ setting book (guess whose copy arrived recently!), and I’m on the section on the Mbe’ke dwarves of the Terwa Uplands, and I just. I want to mention the origin story the Mbe’kes tell about themselves:

“This is the story that Mbe’kes tell.

Long ago, dwarves marched upwards on a Quest for the Sky. They saw many wondrous things on that march; temples and treasures, magics and mysteries. One group of dwarves, who would later become Mbe’kes, finally emerged in a sheltered valley.

They looked about the rocky sides of the valley, and they looked at the great blue thing above, and mistook it for just one more cavern, if perhaps larger than most. Sages stroked their beards and engineers hefted their tools, and the dwarves set about breaching the vault of the sky. They climbed the tallest mountain in the land, braced the sky properly, and started digging. Dwarves, of course, can dig through anything, and so quite soon they broke through the sky into the Plane of Air.

The People of the Air were greatly surprised by these strangers. First a great hurricane-spirit tried to chase the dwarves away, but the dwarves had fought worse beneath the earth and were not cowed. Then a great djinni of the west wind offered the dwarves fine treasures to leave, but nothing matched the wonders the dwarves made themselves. Finally, a curious cloud dragon asked what in the seven stars above and the three stars below the dwarves were doing.

Once they understood their mistake, the dwarves descended back to Golarion and looked about the valley from which they’d emerged. They could most certainly make a home there, and did, and ever since Mbe’kes have been good friends with cloud dragons.”

Now. A couple of things. First, the actual historical and archaeological record tells a different story, suggesting that the proto-Mbe’ke initially fought for territory with the cloud dragons in the Terwa Uplands (evidence includes a suspicious number of old Mbe’ke relics made of dragon bone), but eventually the two groups made peace and became the firm allies they are today later down the line. Second, the Mbe’ke have a proud tradition of ‘tangle-tales’, an expression of their humour, which involve telling the most ridiculous, nonsensical, over the top stories possible with the straightest face possible, and responding to them just as seriously to encourage elaboration, until someone finally breaks and laughs. So. Tall tales are a prized tradition for Mbe’ke. And third, there’s this later note:

“If one were to ask a Mbe’ke, they would say that their people are famed for three things: first, they are the most stubborn of all dwarves; second, they are the most argumentative of all dwarves; and third, they have absolutely no sense of humour. This last will be said with a perfectly straight face.”

Their humour and culture is a combination of dwarven stubbornness and pragmatism, and cloud dragon whimsy and curiosity. And in that context …

I just really love that origin story? As a thing they tell about themselves. Because you can see …

The things they pride themselves on are being stubborn, argumentative, and secretly humorous. And it shows. Their origin has them climb out of the earth, look up, fail to realise that the sky is not just another ceiling, and then impossibly dig through that as well anyway. Stubborn, yes. Heh. And then, in the Plane of Air, they cannot be driven away by force, because come and have a go, and they can’t be driven away by bribery, because we’re dwarves, you can’t offer us anything we couldn’t make ourselves, but they can be politely knocked back by someone gently arguing with them until they realise their own idiocy. In this story, the cloud dragons were just ‘lads, what are you at?’, and the Mbe’ke looked around, realised their cosmological error, and just went ‘oops, our bad mate, thanks for the head’s up’, packed up their kit, and went back down a layer.

I love so much that this is a story they tell about themselves. That it shows what their pride is held in. In stubbornness, in doing the impossible, in refusing to be driven back by any insurmountable obstacle or show of force or attempt to undermine their integrity, but also in recognising their own foolishness, in acknowledging their own errors, in having fair dealings with people who deal fairly with them, and in poking some gentle fun at every previous thing on this list. Yes, it’s showing them in their best light, according to their own values, and the reality is often different, but it does illustrate quite well what those values are, and it’s fascinating.

And I also love some of the little details. They climbed the tallest mountain in the land and braced the sky properly. Like, if you’re going to do this ridiculous thing, you’re damn well going to do it right. Is it plausible or even possible? Irrelevant. Do it right regardless. I love that they saw another vast ceiling, another impossible barrier, and the ‘sages stroked their beards, and the engineers hefted their tools, and the dwarves set about breaching the vault of the sky’. Like, right, on we go! Another job, let’s get it done. They’re so … dwarvish. And god I love dwarves. You cannot stop a dwarf from digging. I love them.

Ahem. Anyway. I like the Mbe’ke a lot? Also dwarves. Just. In general. Heh. Carry on!