Pathfinder Party
Yes, I'm going to keep writing about this. Feel free to ignore it if not interested. Also, be warned that it contains some rather gruesome details about the feeding habits of Pathfinder goblins.
Our group started out with three characters:
Kavren Stark, Neutral Good male Chelaxian Evoker. Already described in excruciating detail in this post.
Thoromir, Lawful Good male Chelaxian cleric of Iomedae. Armed with a longsword, shield, and chainmail, he often acts more like a paladin than a typical priest, in keeping with his goddess' martial nature. As the Inheritor is the one god with a strong following in Magnimar whose faith has no shrine in the Sandpoint Cathedral, her high priest in the city dispatched Thoromir to minister to her worshippers and advocate for her creed in Magnimar's northern-most satellite town. He arrived just in time to fight against the goblin incursion, and the immediate popularity that gave him has greatly enhanced the prospects for his original mission.
Kaldak, male Shoanti ranger (I'm not sure of his alignment). Six feet, seven inches tall and powerfully built, Kaldak took a heavy toll on the goblin raiders with his longbow. His rugged good looks attracted the amorous attentions of young Shayliss Vinder, whose overprotective father owns the Sandpoint General Store. Despite Kavren's warning that Shayliss was trouble, Kaldak allowed her to enticed him into the basement of her father's store, allegedly in search of dire rats.
Fortunately, the big Shoanti's keen ears alerted him to Shayliss' father's presence before the elder Vinder started down the stairs, and he gallantly shielded the girl from view as she hastily laced up her bodice, then bluffed his way out of the situation, with the serendipitous help of a rat that scurried across the basement as he was explaining why Shayliss had asked him down there. When his companions asked him later if he'd found any dire rats, he muttered, "No, but there was a dire minx."
Along with Thoromir, Kaldak has taken up residence at the Rusty Dragon, while Kavren has been taking all of his meals there lately, enjoying the company of his new friends, and nursing his growing attraction to his old friend Ameiko Kaijitsu.
Our second session began with Aldern Foxglove, the noble we'd rescued from the goblins during the first inviting us to go boar-hunting with him in the woods outside of town (he provided the horses and boar spears). Eschewing the spear, with which he had no training, Kavren brought down the first boar to make an appearance by stunning it with a well-timed Color Spray spell. The hunt proved rather too exciting for the cowardly Mr. Foxglove when a massive boar with a taint of demonic heritage mistook our party for a light snack. Its disillusionment, by Kavren's Burning Hands spell and Kaldak and Thoromir's boar spears, was swift, painful, and terminal. (Aldern observed the encounter from the safety of a nearby tree branch some ten feet above the ground.) They brought the normal boar back to Ameiko's kitchen, and the head of the fiendish boar to a local taxidermist, to make a trophy for the Rusty Dragon's common room wall.
The hunt was followed by the tragic incident of The Goblin in the Closet: it seems one of the goblins in the raid had fled from the militia into the Barett family's house, pried up some loose floorboards in the back of a closet, and hidden in a small crawlspace underneath. Unfortunately, the Baretts had a dog, which barked and growled at the goblin whenever he tried to emerge and sneak out of the house, scaring him back into his hiding place.
The closet belonged to six-year-old Aeren Barett, who for several nights woke his parents up insisting there was a monster hiding in his closet, but when they looked, they found nothing -- until the night the starving, half-crazed goblin emerged, having turned a fragment of his broken weapon into a crude knife, killed the dog and then attempted to eat Aeren.
Our characters learned of this when they encountered the boy's hysterical mother in the street, carrying his mangled remains and dragging her younger daughter by the hand as she fled the house. She managed to calm down enough to give them the gist of what had happened. Upon entering Aeren's room, they found his father's body on the floor, his head and shoulders pulled into the goblin's hole. Pulling the man out revealed that much of the flesh of his head and shoulders had been chewed off.
The goblin reacted to the loss of its first meal in three days by lighting a torch and tossing it out of the hole (goblins are notorious for their pyromania). Thoromir quickly grabbed the torch and threw it back down the hole, and Kaldak lobbed a flask of lamp oil in after it. Finishing off the flaming goblin after it leapt up out of the hole was a simple matter, and Kavren dowsed the fire with a judicious application of his Ray of Frost spell, but that was little comfort the widowed Mrs. Barett and her one surviving child.
We each gained a level after that session. Kavren multi-classed, taking a bard level for both role-playing reasons (see his profile) and the skill points, bardic knowledge, additional cantrips, and the two most useful low-level spells (Sleep and Charm Person) from one of his prohibited schools.
For the third session, we were joined by two new characters, also second level:
Erek, Neutral male Shoanti fighter. A few inches shorter than Kaldak, but broader in the shoulders, Erek eschews his people's traditional fighting style in favor of the longsword, heavy steel shield, and breastplate, reasoning that the weapons and methods the Chelaxian colonists along Varisia's coast used to push the Shoanti back into the hinterlands might someday serve to reverse that trend. A man of forbidding demeanor and rough manner (in game rule terms, a Charisma score of 7 on the standard 3-18 scale, which his player chose to represent by modeling his personality somewhat on Jayne Cobb from Firefly), Erek came to Sandpoint because he'd heard about the goblin trouble and thought his talent for mayhem might prove useful enough to the locals to earn him some gold.
Unfamiliarity and distrust of townsfolk and their customs nearly got him arrested, after he put too much stock in the rumor that Ilsoari Gandethus was running a "goblin farm" in the Turandarok Academy's basement, and took it upon himself to investigate said basement in the small hours of the morning. Fortuitously, Kavren, who'd already been introduced to Erek at the Rusty Dragon earlier that day, was up late reading in the Academy's library, and managed to defuse the situation before any blows were exchanged, although Erek's aggressive search made a fair-sized mess in the basement kitchen.
Upon being apprehended by Kavren and Ilsoari, Erek said that he'd be delighted to go and talk with Sheriff Hemlock about his reasons for being in the basement. Much hilarity ensued, after which the sheriff decreed that Erek should spend his evenings for the next week washing the Academy's dishes, which would give him plenty of time to confirm that there was not a single goblin in residence. It worked out okay, as the students thought it was the best prank in years and took to their new dish washer immediately, despite his gruff manner. As it turned out, though, the rumor was not so far-fetched as we imagined -- Erek had only picked the wrong basement to investigate. More on that in a future post.
Aeraliss Darvashka, Chaotic Good female Varisian rogue, armed with a Varisian bladed scarf and a masterwork shortbow. I actually created Aeraliss myself, as practice and in the faint hope of recruiting one more player, and lucked out at a gaming Meetup the night before our third session. Her ability scores and primary focus on archery were inspired somewhat by Haley Starshine of The Order of the Stick, but I added the bladed scarf to give her a distinctively Varisian flavor.
Aeraliss came to Sandpoint to visit an old friend: Ameiko Kaijitsu, whom she met during Ameiko's adventuring days. Naturally, Ameiko introduced her to the town's new heroes, by then regular fixtures in the Rusty Dragon of an evening. Although she was rather coy about her origins, Kavren surmised from her equipment and manner that she might have been a member of the Thieves' Guild in Magnimar or Korvosa. Wherever she learned her skills, they would shortly prove invaluable to her new friends when the man behind the goblin raid made his presence known....
Our group started out with three characters:
Kavren Stark, Neutral Good male Chelaxian Evoker. Already described in excruciating detail in this post.
Thoromir, Lawful Good male Chelaxian cleric of Iomedae. Armed with a longsword, shield, and chainmail, he often acts more like a paladin than a typical priest, in keeping with his goddess' martial nature. As the Inheritor is the one god with a strong following in Magnimar whose faith has no shrine in the Sandpoint Cathedral, her high priest in the city dispatched Thoromir to minister to her worshippers and advocate for her creed in Magnimar's northern-most satellite town. He arrived just in time to fight against the goblin incursion, and the immediate popularity that gave him has greatly enhanced the prospects for his original mission.
Kaldak, male Shoanti ranger (I'm not sure of his alignment). Six feet, seven inches tall and powerfully built, Kaldak took a heavy toll on the goblin raiders with his longbow. His rugged good looks attracted the amorous attentions of young Shayliss Vinder, whose overprotective father owns the Sandpoint General Store. Despite Kavren's warning that Shayliss was trouble, Kaldak allowed her to enticed him into the basement of her father's store, allegedly in search of dire rats.
Fortunately, the big Shoanti's keen ears alerted him to Shayliss' father's presence before the elder Vinder started down the stairs, and he gallantly shielded the girl from view as she hastily laced up her bodice, then bluffed his way out of the situation, with the serendipitous help of a rat that scurried across the basement as he was explaining why Shayliss had asked him down there. When his companions asked him later if he'd found any dire rats, he muttered, "No, but there was a dire minx."
Along with Thoromir, Kaldak has taken up residence at the Rusty Dragon, while Kavren has been taking all of his meals there lately, enjoying the company of his new friends, and nursing his growing attraction to his old friend Ameiko Kaijitsu.
Our second session began with Aldern Foxglove, the noble we'd rescued from the goblins during the first inviting us to go boar-hunting with him in the woods outside of town (he provided the horses and boar spears). Eschewing the spear, with which he had no training, Kavren brought down the first boar to make an appearance by stunning it with a well-timed Color Spray spell. The hunt proved rather too exciting for the cowardly Mr. Foxglove when a massive boar with a taint of demonic heritage mistook our party for a light snack. Its disillusionment, by Kavren's Burning Hands spell and Kaldak and Thoromir's boar spears, was swift, painful, and terminal. (Aldern observed the encounter from the safety of a nearby tree branch some ten feet above the ground.) They brought the normal boar back to Ameiko's kitchen, and the head of the fiendish boar to a local taxidermist, to make a trophy for the Rusty Dragon's common room wall.
The hunt was followed by the tragic incident of The Goblin in the Closet: it seems one of the goblins in the raid had fled from the militia into the Barett family's house, pried up some loose floorboards in the back of a closet, and hidden in a small crawlspace underneath. Unfortunately, the Baretts had a dog, which barked and growled at the goblin whenever he tried to emerge and sneak out of the house, scaring him back into his hiding place.
The closet belonged to six-year-old Aeren Barett, who for several nights woke his parents up insisting there was a monster hiding in his closet, but when they looked, they found nothing -- until the night the starving, half-crazed goblin emerged, having turned a fragment of his broken weapon into a crude knife, killed the dog and then attempted to eat Aeren.
Our characters learned of this when they encountered the boy's hysterical mother in the street, carrying his mangled remains and dragging her younger daughter by the hand as she fled the house. She managed to calm down enough to give them the gist of what had happened. Upon entering Aeren's room, they found his father's body on the floor, his head and shoulders pulled into the goblin's hole. Pulling the man out revealed that much of the flesh of his head and shoulders had been chewed off.
The goblin reacted to the loss of its first meal in three days by lighting a torch and tossing it out of the hole (goblins are notorious for their pyromania). Thoromir quickly grabbed the torch and threw it back down the hole, and Kaldak lobbed a flask of lamp oil in after it. Finishing off the flaming goblin after it leapt up out of the hole was a simple matter, and Kavren dowsed the fire with a judicious application of his Ray of Frost spell, but that was little comfort the widowed Mrs. Barett and her one surviving child.
We each gained a level after that session. Kavren multi-classed, taking a bard level for both role-playing reasons (see his profile) and the skill points, bardic knowledge, additional cantrips, and the two most useful low-level spells (Sleep and Charm Person) from one of his prohibited schools.
For the third session, we were joined by two new characters, also second level:
Erek, Neutral male Shoanti fighter. A few inches shorter than Kaldak, but broader in the shoulders, Erek eschews his people's traditional fighting style in favor of the longsword, heavy steel shield, and breastplate, reasoning that the weapons and methods the Chelaxian colonists along Varisia's coast used to push the Shoanti back into the hinterlands might someday serve to reverse that trend. A man of forbidding demeanor and rough manner (in game rule terms, a Charisma score of 7 on the standard 3-18 scale, which his player chose to represent by modeling his personality somewhat on Jayne Cobb from Firefly), Erek came to Sandpoint because he'd heard about the goblin trouble and thought his talent for mayhem might prove useful enough to the locals to earn him some gold.
Unfamiliarity and distrust of townsfolk and their customs nearly got him arrested, after he put too much stock in the rumor that Ilsoari Gandethus was running a "goblin farm" in the Turandarok Academy's basement, and took it upon himself to investigate said basement in the small hours of the morning. Fortuitously, Kavren, who'd already been introduced to Erek at the Rusty Dragon earlier that day, was up late reading in the Academy's library, and managed to defuse the situation before any blows were exchanged, although Erek's aggressive search made a fair-sized mess in the basement kitchen.
Upon being apprehended by Kavren and Ilsoari, Erek said that he'd be delighted to go and talk with Sheriff Hemlock about his reasons for being in the basement. Much hilarity ensued, after which the sheriff decreed that Erek should spend his evenings for the next week washing the Academy's dishes, which would give him plenty of time to confirm that there was not a single goblin in residence. It worked out okay, as the students thought it was the best prank in years and took to their new dish washer immediately, despite his gruff manner. As it turned out, though, the rumor was not so far-fetched as we imagined -- Erek had only picked the wrong basement to investigate. More on that in a future post.
Aeraliss Darvashka, Chaotic Good female Varisian rogue, armed with a Varisian bladed scarf and a masterwork shortbow. I actually created Aeraliss myself, as practice and in the faint hope of recruiting one more player, and lucked out at a gaming Meetup the night before our third session. Her ability scores and primary focus on archery were inspired somewhat by Haley Starshine of The Order of the Stick, but I added the bladed scarf to give her a distinctively Varisian flavor.
Aeraliss came to Sandpoint to visit an old friend: Ameiko Kaijitsu, whom she met during Ameiko's adventuring days. Naturally, Ameiko introduced her to the town's new heroes, by then regular fixtures in the Rusty Dragon of an evening. Although she was rather coy about her origins, Kavren surmised from her equipment and manner that she might have been a member of the Thieves' Guild in Magnimar or Korvosa. Wherever she learned her skills, they would shortly prove invaluable to her new friends when the man behind the goblin raid made his presence known....