RIVERS RUN RED
The Stolen Lands are not a stagnant place. Even as the PCs
gain their first footholds in the unsettled region known
as the Greenbelt, plans beyond their borders and outside
their knowledge have already been set into motion. The
dangerous mad nymph-queen Nyrissa already considers
the Stolen Lands her own, and her response to the sudden
invasion of these lands ranges from subtle to blatant.
Fortunately for the PCs, her current interests lie closer to
home. The aid she grants to the bandit kingdom of Pitax in
destroying and subverting the adventurers and colonists
Restov sends into the southwest is swift and decisive. Yet
she does not ignore the insults that lie to the east, and as
the PCs push farther into the Greenbelt and establish a
fledgling kingdom of their own, they are destined to clash
with two groups sent by the nymph to keep the Greenbelt
free from meddling heroes.
The first group is a violent band of trolls led by a fearsome
troll named Hargulka. Even before Brevoy took an official
interest in the lands to the south, lone hunters, trappers, and
loggers made their presence felt in the forests of the Stolen
Lands. Worse, the land’s indigenous residents, including
kobolds, lizardfolk, and a handful of good-aligned (and thus
untrustworthy) fey were far too independent for Nyrissa’s
liking. She visited Hargulka in a dream, planting in his
mind ideas of territorial expansion and aggression and
tricking him into thinking he wanted to claim more power.
Hargulka and his crew have abandoned their original
single-cave den and moved into an abandoned dwarven
guard post in the southern Stolen Lands, using it as a base
to stage raids against the intelligent denizens of the area.
As this adventure progresses, Hargulka’s trolls and other
denizens of the southern Greenbelt grow increasingly
violent, attacking travelers and settlers and terrorizing
locals. By manipulating the trolls into destabilizing the
region, Nyrissa hopes to make the lands easier to claim
when the time comes.
Nyrissa’s second group was a large group of bandits who
had spent many months in the swamplands of Hooktongue
Slough, focusing their mayhem on a group of more civilized
bandits (allies of Pitax who rule a fortified domain called
Fort Drelev; see Pathfinder Adventure Path volume #34 for
details). These bandits, led by a ruthless ranger namedEirikk, made
extensive use of trained and not-so-trained
(but mostly loyal) wild animals and monsters in their
frequent attacks on Fort Drelev’s holdings, a tactic made
possible in most part due to a gift Nyrissa gave Eirikk—a
ring of bestial friendship made from a lock of her hair (a
ring that, unknown to Eirikk, bore an unfortunate curse).
Like the Stag Lord before him, Eirikk considered Nyrissa
a “secret benefactor” and hoped someday to upgrade her
to “secret lover.” When she told him about a particularly
violent mated pair of gigantic owlbears dwelling in the
southern Narlmarches and about the up-and-coming new
nation of merchants to prey on that was expanding quickly
in the Greenbelt, Eirikk saw this as an excellent chance to
impress the nymph. If he could gain the allegiance of these
enormous owlbears and conquer this new kingdom, how
could his secret benefactor resist his charms? Certainly, the
prospect of switching his predation to a nascent kingdom
pleased him, as Fort Drelev’s defenses had grown ever more
skilled at repulsing his men and trained beasts.
And so Eirikk had a suit of barding made, sized for
an enormous owlbear, then led his men west into the
Narlmarches. He found the owlbear den with little
problem and, using the ring of bestial friendship, managed to
calm the beast and outfit it with the barding he’d brought
with him. But the ring was cursed—when the owlbear’s
mate returned, she sensed the enchantment and flew into a
frenzy. Eirikk and his men were forced to kill the owlbear’s
mate, which enabled the massive beast to throw off the
enchantment. In its savage wrath, it killed the bandits to a
man, Eirikk included. Yet while the plan ended poorly for
Eirikk, it had gone exactly as Nyrissa had planned—she
had never valued the bandit’s skills in the first place and
wanted only to incite the massive owlbear into a blood
rage. Furious and maddened at the loss of its mate and
the wounds it suffered, the enormous owlbear has flown
into a rampage, and the PCs’ new kingdom and capital city
lie right in its path. If these forces are not dealt with, the
rivers of the Stolen Lands will run red with the blood of
the latest doomed attempt to civilize them!
Adventure Summary
The PCs receive a shipment of funds, materials, and colonists
from Brevoy and beyond, along with instructions to build
a town and attract more pioneers to their nascent country.Having already
explored the northern reaches of their new
domain, the PCs must now venture into the wilds to bring
the rule of law to the south. Wicked fey inhabiting a ruined
keep, undead haunting an ancient barrow mound, and others
must be defeated to make the region ever more secure. Along
the way, the PCs might also have the opportunity to ally
themselves with some of the region’s local residents, including
the dryad druid Tiressia, her satyr consort Falchos, and a
band of gnome explorers called the Narthropple Expedition.
In addition, the PCs will be called upon to mediate between
two rival factions in the area: a group of independent loggers
and the angry fey sorceress who opposes them. As they
explore, evidence that a group of trolls is stirring up trouble
in the region becomes apparent.
Meanwhile, the PCs must deal with events within their
burgeoning kingdom—a rabble rouser seeks to oust the
PCs from their positions of power, the secretive cult of
the hag goddess Gyronna has infiltrated the town, and a
werewolf is preying on the townsfolk. All of these events
build to the adventure’s twin climaxes: the sudden assault
on their capital city by an owlbear of unprecedented size
and the expansion of Hargulka’s trolls into the north.
Faced with danger on multiple fronts, the PCs must draw
upon all of their resources and bravery to become the
undisputed rulers of the Greenbelt.
Part One: Home Sweet Home
“Rivers Run Red” begins with the PCs receiving a new
charter from the city of Restov. It seems the swordlords are
pleased with the progress the PCs have made exploring the
region of the Stolen Lands known as the Greenbelt and are
even more pleased that they’ve defeated the Stag Lord and,
in so doing, effectively disrupted the organized banditry
operating out of the region. With these accomplishments,
the next step is obvious—colonization.
While the southern portion of the nation of Brevoy,
Rostland, could send its own official agents south to attempt
such colonization, such an act would cause unwanted
repercussions for the delicate political situation in Brevoy.
Rostland wants a safe southern border and an ally it can
count on to back it up if things go badly—but it doesn’t want
to antagonize its northern counterpart Issia by appearing to
make blatant land grabs to expand their power. The backroom
politics occurring in Restov as the swordlords attempt
to covertly increase their own power will continue to be
an element as the Kingmaker Adventure Path progresses.
Rostland will eventually be forced to cut official ties with the
projects it’s starting in the south when Issia begins to react
poorly to what northern Brevoy has begun to interpret as
an act of aggression. All of this increasingly puts the PCs in
charge of their own fates in their newly founded kingdom.For now, Rostland
is supportive of the PCs’ colonization
of the Greenbelt but relatively hands-off. After issuing a
charter to the PCs granting them permission to establish
a colony in the area, as well as a shipment of gold, tools,
craftsmen, laborers, and colonists eager to make a new life
in a new kingdom (this amounts to 50 Build Points with
which the PCs can finance the start of their nation and first
city—see page 54 for rules on how to handle this aspect of the
campaign), Rostland and the swordlords do not have much
influence on the way the PCs develop their lands. And by the
time it becomes clear that Rostland should have maintained
a stronger presence, things will have progressed beyond the
point where it would still be feasible.
The kingdom- and city-building element of this
adventure and the four to follow during the course of the
Kingmaker Adventure Path add a highly unusual element
to the game, both in play and in pacing. As the kingdom
grows, the PCs’ responsibility to it increases. Not only
do they need to worry about gathering gear and strength
for their own adventures, they’ll need to take care of an
entire kingdom’s needs. This style of game play isn’t for
everyone—you know your players better than we do, and if
you’re worried that managing kingdoms and building cities
will bore your players (or worse, that it might just encourage
them to become hateful dictators who see the opportunity
to rule a nation as an opportunity to finance their own greed
and lust for power), consider running Kingmaker as a more
standard campaign. In this case, the evolution of the Stolen
Lands into a kingdom should happen in the background,
with NPCs taking on all of the leadership roles needed to
develop the kingdom. This adventure, and the four to follow,
will have “Kingdom in the Background” sidebars that you
can use to track the size of the growing kingdom and the
resources it provides for the PCs.
THE VARNHOLD VANISHING
In the age before Earthfall, the fortunes of Golarion were
forged by vast empires like Azlant and Thassilon. Yet other
empires existed in these ancient times as well—empires
ruled not by humans but by creatures of legend. The
cyclopes ruled many such empires, notably one in Garund
and another in northwestern Casmaron. Yet as with their
contemporaries, Earthfall brought an end to their rule.
And unlike Azlant or Thassilon, the cyclops empires have
been all but forgotten in the Age of Lost Omens.
Yet while the cyclopes may have been forgotten, they
have not vanished from the face of Golarion altogether.
Pockets of their kind exist today, although they possess but
a shadow of their former glory. Only in remote locations
does evidence of the ancient cyclops empires still exist,entrance to
Vordakai’s tomb. These shamans saw that the
ancient cyclops tyrant did not rest easy in his grave, and
they foresaw a time when his wickedness and the pent-up
evil of the extinct cyclops empire might one day be released
by the unwary to plague the lands again.
Yet more recently, the Nomen Centaurs have faced less
exotic enemies and fears—Taldor’s expansion into the
Stolen Lands led to much warfare between the Nomen
and humanity and helped to maintain the Stolen Lands’
reputation for being inhospitable to civilization. Even as
the domain of Rostland was established, Taldan colonists
ripped through the centaur war herds to the south,
pushing them to the fringes of their former rangelands
and farther and farther from their guardianship and
traditional homeland. With the back of the centaur
resistance broken and driven into the hinterlands of
their new colony, the Taldan forces focused their efforts
elsewhere and the cairn stood once again unguarded and
largely forgotten.
So great were the effects of this war that much of the
tribe’s lore and identity were lost as well. The original
reason for their guardianship was forgotten within a few
generations and transformed into a territorial aggression
that extended around the eastern fringes of the human
lands. When Taldor finally abandoned the Stolen Lands,
the Nomen were hesitant to return to the Dunsward out
of shame and fear. By the time Choral the Conqueror
swept north through what would become the kingdom of
Brevoy in 4499 ar, the Nomen centaurs were marginalized
and largely forgotten, and the region of the cairn was a
remote wilderness area of little to no interest to the new
civilization of the area.
This status quo has remained over the intervening
years—until now, that is. When the swordlords of Restov
sent agents south into the Stolen Lands, a new colony—
Varnhold—was established at the edge of the old centaur
rangelands, and along with these settlers came an
ambitious treasure hunter named Willas Gundarson. Using
Varnhold as a base of operations and following an ancient
map copied from an even more ancient tablet recovered
from deep Casmaron, Willas hoped to find a previously
undiscovered hoard of ancient treasure. Unfortunately for
Willas, he mistranslated the ancient tablet—and what he had assumed was an
indication of vast magical wealth was
actually a warning of vast magical danger.
Armed with his mistranslated lore, Willas ranged far
and wide while Varnhold was being established, operating
under the guise of scouting to determine the lay of the
land and identify any potential threats facing the f ledgling
colony. It was on one of these journeys that he discovered
the site of Vordakai’s Tomb and crossed the deep waters
of the Little Sellen on a folding boat. On the island, he
located wards designed to prevent intrusion and grasped
something of their dire nature. He was about to turn back
when he glimpsed a cache of treasure just a short way down
the corridor leading into the tomb. Greed forced aside
common sense, and he crept inside to investigate—but as
he did, he felt the ancient warding alarms go off. Pausing
only to snatch a single jade bracelet, he f led the tomb and
retreated back across the river.
Though all remained quiet as he watched from the far
shore, he knew he had triggered the guardian wards and
had a bad feeling about what he had done. He hurried
back to Varnhold with the bracelet and adjusted his
tale to say he had found it on the river bank, hoping to
hide his momentary lack of judgment. Unfortunately,
Willas’s fears were well founded, for the triggering
of the wards awoke Vordakai from his age of slumber.
Faced with a new world of wonder, the undead cyclops
began to send his minions (loyal cyclopes who had been
sealed in his crypt and now serve as undead thralls) out
into the world to explore and bring back word of how
the world had changed. Vordakai became particularly
obsessed with the audacious human who had freed
him, and upon noticing the theft of the jade bracelet,
set about tracking the thief back to the settlement of
Varnhold. Unleashing ancient cyclops magic, Vordakai
emptied the settlement of its inhabitants in a single
night of horror. Now, Vordakai studies the lore he has
learned from Varnhold’s vanishing and draws his plans
to establish a new empire. With his kin gone from the
region, the undead cyclops is confident that this time,
his will be a lasting rule.Adventure Summary
The player characters are contacted by an envoy from
Restov and apprised of the loss of contact with the colony
of Varnhold. The swordlords request that the PCs look into
the situation and salvage the colony if possible, believing
political revolutionaries may be involved. Traveling to
Varnhold, the PCs find the settlement empty of settlers
but eerily intact. Other than a few spriggan squatters
and assorted vermin, none of which accounts for the
disappearance of the settlement’s population, there are no
clues as to the fate of the colonists other than a single word
scribbled on a doorjamb—“Nomen.”
A bit of research in the village puts the PCs on the trail
of the Nomen centaur tribe of the eastern hills, probably
believing that the vanishing was the result of a centaur
raid prompted by the theft of a piece of centaur jewelry.
Traveling into Nomen-claimed lands, the PCs discover
many of the fauna—hostile and otherwise—that are
native to the area. During this time, they come under
magical surveillance by the lich Vordakai. They run afoul
of a small centaur war party and are ambushed by a soul
eater, a foul outsider summoned by Vordakai to stop them
from meddling in his affairs. This development suggests
that something other than a centaur raid is behind the
Varnhold vanishing.
Finally, the PCs make peaceful contact with the Nomen
tribe and learn the truth of Varnhold’s fate. Following the
directions given by the centaurs, the PCs find Vordakai’s
Island and must infiltrate past the ancient wards, traps,
and undead guardians in order to rescue the Varnhold
survivors from the clutches of the foul lich.
BLOOD FOR BLOOD
Over 40 years ago, when a cabal of Gyronna cultists known as
the Black Sisters were humiliated and forced to f lee Brevoy
because of its intolerant laws, they foretold the coming of
Armag the Twice-Born. According to their prophecy, the
Twice-Born would be a child formed from the spirit of
the original Armag, a barbarian warlord who terrorized
the northern plains during the Age of Destiny. However,
because prophecy was no longer a trustworthy source of
prognostication after the death of Aroden at the dawn of the
Age of Lost Omens, the foretelling of Armag the Twice-Born
took shape as little more than a wishful curse uttered against
the Black Sisters’ enemies. When no reborn barbarian warlord
rose to give f lesh and fury to their prediction, they did not
remain idle. The Sisters instead vowed to take an active hand
in seeing their prediction come true, and retreated into the
Stolen Lands where they abducted a baby from the Tiger
Lord barbarians. They raised this child in the ways of spite
and rage, and gave him the name Armag.
In this way, the mad Sisters convinced the child that
the spirit of the original Armag lay within him, and that
they would serve as his handmaidens to aid him in setting
his ancestral might free. By advising and strengthening
Armag, they planned to guide him to his rightful place
among the barbarian tribes, uniting them to fulfill their
own prophecy and strike back at Brevoy with an army of
barbarians eager to please their reincarnated warlord of
old. Armag soon embraced these goals as his own, aspiring
to lead the Tiger Lord barbarians. Empowered by the mad
touch of Gyronna’s faithful, he slew a Tiger Lord chieftainwould not be
able to stand in combat. Drelev’s soldiers
proved an able match for Armag’s kin, and after three nights
of battle the Tiger Lords fell back, driven west toward the
bandit hold of Pitax. Not only did Armag see his destiny of
raiding Brevoy endangered, but suddenly he and his people
were on the defensive, losing land to this expansion! But as
he fell back deeper into the hills, he found a new ally from
an unexpected source—the realm of Pitax.
Lord Irovetti, the bandit king of Pitax, had already dealt
with an unwanted intrusion into his territory by the nation
of Brevoy, and when he heard rumors that other Brevic
agents were expanding south into more distant borderlands
and displacing some of the Tiger Lords (a culture Pitax had
often clashed with over borders), his righteous anger saw
opportunity. If his forces and the Tiger Lords could work
together, they could swiftly defeat these Brevic intruders.
And if events could be engineered so that the barbarians
were at the front of the battle, the bulk of the losses would
be from among their troops, further reducing opposition to
Pitax’s northward expansion.
And so Irovetti and his mercenary guards traveled
northeast to contact the Tiger Lords and establish a truce.
Working together, they descended upon Fort Drelev with
a fury and conquered the invaders in a single bloodless
wave—for as Hannis Drelev saw the combined forces of
Armag’s barbarians eager for revenge and Irovetti’s armies
readying their siege engines, he made a choice. Always a
realist, he saw immediate surrender as the only option to
save his life.
The jaded, craven nobleman sent three riders under a
f lag of truce to plead with Armag and Irovetti to spare his
region, proposing instead to ally with the bandits and to
turn control of Fort Drelev to them. His offer to provide
information about the holdings and defenses of his fellow
countrymen intrigued Irovetti but frustrated Armag, who
had hoped for bloodshed and violent revenge. To force
the loyalty—and obeisance—of Drelev’s men, and to help
appease the frustrated barbarians, Irovetti accepted the
surrender but only on the condition that Drelev’s settlers
hand over five of their daughters as hostages until Drelev
himself could prove his loyalty through servitude to Pitax.
Over the objections of his own men, Drelev did as
Irovetti requested, commanding his senior officers to givetheir eldest
daughters to the barbarian warlord. However,
at least one captain—a Lord-Knight named Terrion
Numesti—refused. And despite Armag’s promises that
the girls would eventually be returned unharmed, Drelev
had to make an example of Numesti by throwing him in
jail and handing his daughter over to the barbarians as
well. Drelev justified this action to his people by assuring
everyone it would save their lives.
In truth, Drelev cares little for anyone or anything that
doesn’t advance his personal agenda. Jealous of the success
garnered by the neighboring kingdoms (particularly that
of the PCs), he believes an alliance with the Tiger Lords and
Pitax will finally give him the means to take over the entire
frontier, uniting all the buffer states under his control.
And with such a large nation under his command, he’ll
be able not only to strike back against the Tiger Lords and
Pitax, but perhaps even to expand his control further, back
into Brevoy. In an attempt to sweeten the alliance, Drelev
has returned several of the artifacts and treasures he and
his men looted from Tiger Lord burial tombs, something
that Armag quite appreciated.
When Armag returned to his people with these artifacts,
though, the Black Sisters recognized them as ancient relics
in the style of the barbarians of the original Armag’s time.
Here was the clue they had been seeking. Rightly assuming
the barrow mounds would hold even greater treasures that
could legitimize and spread their champion’s inf luence
over the barbarians, the Black Sisters advised the Twice-
Born chieftain to claim them as his own. For legends also
say a Kellid shaman laid Armag to rest within the same
hills along with his famous sword, Ovinrbaane, a weapon
blessed by Gorum to win any war.
Now, while Armag is distracted with attempts to delve
the tombs of his ancestors and Irovetti has returned to
Pitax to prepare for his next audacity (an attempt to lure the
PCs out of their kingdom so he can attack their homes in
secret—a treachery detailed in full in the next Kingmaker
adventure, “War of the River Kings”), Lord Drelev has
spent much of his time plotting and brooding. He hopes
the barbarian will meet a terrible fate in his people’stombs, but unknown
to Drelev, Armag intends to convince
the barrow mound’s guardian to give him the ancient
weapon Ovinrbaane and Gorum’s blessing to fully raise
an undead army to serve him. If left unchecked, a mighty
champion of war will walk Golarion again, brushing aside
all opposition in the River Kingdoms and beyond.
Adventure Summary
“Blood for Blood” begins with the PCs having returned
home from solving the mystery of the Varnhold Vanishing.
Shortly after their arrival, they learn that new problems
have developed during their absence—there are rumors of
an army marching toward their nation!
The PCs race to the village of Tatzlford, where they help
defend the village from an attack by a small but earnest force
of bandits, barbarians, and several lumbering trolls after
being warned in advance by a troubled woman who has f led
from Fort Drelev to the west. Following the skirmish, she
pleads with the PCs to save her father and sister from peril.
From there, the PCs strike out into the swamplands of
the Slough to the west, exploring new lands and finding
opportunities to make new allies and eliminate long-term
threats to the region. Their initial goal, though, should
be infiltrating Fort Drelev, where they’ll have a chance
to confront the traitor Drelev with his crimes and rescue
the Fort’s beleaguered settlers. During this time, the PCs
learn where Armag’s tribe has been holding the daughters
of Drelev’s senior officers hostage.
Arriving at the ancient site, the PCs attack Armag’s
barbarian encampment and overcome the sinister
powers of the Black Sisters to free the girls. Then,
entering the tomb, they face deadly traps, ancient undead
horrors from a war-torn age, and the trials of the tomb’s
immortal, divine guardian. In the final chamber, the
PCs encounter Armag himself, armed with the ancient
sword of his namesake.
WAR OF THE RIVER KINGS
The River Kingdoms are f luid by nature, mirroring
the f low of the waterways from which their name is
taken. Kings and queens rise and fall like the changing
of seasons in this tumultuous region, but some of the
kingdoms found here have endured and prospered for
generations, cementing their place in the pecking order
of this confederacy of outlaws. Every new upstart dreams
not just of conquest but of legacy, and the wise know full
well that the greatest threat to security and legacy typically
comes not from established kingdoms but from upstarts
fighting for the last seat at the table.
Pitax is a River Kingdom of some pedigree, able to
trace its history back over three centuries. During those
centuries, it has been overrun on more than one occasion,
first by the Steel Phalanx of Numeria, then a generation
later by invaders from Mivon, and it was even split for half a
century by civil war between its leading families. Yet through
this all, Pitax has remained a hub for trade and a haven for
smugglers. But now it faces its most dangerous enemy yet,
an enemy from within—its own leader, Castruccio Irovetti,
who may be able to do through corruption and pride what
3 centuries of war and upheaval could not—who could well
bring Pitax to an end.
The man known today as Castruccio Irovetti was not
born unto that name. The bastard son of a crusading
Taldan knight and a Numerian noblewoman named
Cimany Bellander, Castruccio’s birth name was the even
more f lamboyant Mandalarucio. His father sent regular
deliveries of gold from the field of battle, so he and his
mother never wanted for wealth. Mandalarucio’s mother
doted on him, paying for dance, music, and language
lessons and parading him among the other nobles of
Hajoth Hakados as often as possible. Mother and son knew
little of hardship until the payments from Mandalarucio’s
father (a man he never met) ceased with his death at the
hands of the Worldwound’s demonic host.
His mother did her best to make ends meet, but they had
both grown used to extravagances, and within 2 months their
funds had given out. The cutthroat aristocracy of Hajoth
Hakados swiftly took action to reclaim the family estate,
and just like that the Bellanders were out on the street. After
suffering another 2 months of indignities, Mandalarucio
turned to crime, using magic to gain the confidence of rich
visitors and then robbing them, leaving behind victims tooembarrassed or
shamed at being duped to pursue justice.
Eventually, though, Mandalarucio made a critical error by
attempting to con and rob a visiting member of the Technic
League. When the con went sour and the Technic League
sorcerer lost his hand to Mandalarucio’s blade, the young
man went into hiding to escape punishment. But the
Technic League didn’t need him to repay the blood debt.
Operating under the aegis of the Black Sovereign and the
slanderous whispers of local aristocrats, they quickly found
that the missing Bellander had a mother—they arrested
Cimany, and by the time Irovetti heard of her arrest, she’d
already been executed.
When he learned of this development, Mandalarucio
wasted no time. He stole into the inn the Technic League
agents were staying at and extracted his revenge in a single
night of red ruin. When the sun rose, the five Technic
League agents were dead and the delivery of rare Numerian
artifacts they had been entrusted with delivering to Starfall
had vanished. Hajoth Hakados’s government had its
suspicions, but the case was never solved, for Mandalarucio
had f led Numeria entirely, never to return.
The next 2 years of his life were spent lying low in the
River Kingdoms. He changed his name to Castruccio
Irovetti, combining the first and last names of his mother’s
favorite artists, and periodically sold off some of the
Numerian artifacts he’d stolen for funds, but overall kept a
low profile. It wasn’t until his wanderings took him to Pitax
that his fortunes finally changed. After hearing rumors
of strange treasures hidden in the forest called Thousand
Voices, Irovetti entered the mysterious woodland in search
of riches. It may have been his good looks and strong singing
voice that attracted the attention of the cruel mistress of
Thousand Voices, but more likely it was the intrusive stink
of the technological items he carried that caused the nymph
Nyrissa to take special note of this latest intruder. She sent
several of her minions against Irovetti to test him, but he
defeated them all with a combination of his magic, his wits,
and his Numerian devices.
Intrigued, Nyrissa realized that here was a perfect tool
to use to increase her inf luence over the encroaching tide
of civilization. She appeared before Irovetti, who in the
face of such power had little choice but to fall to his knees
in adoration. Nyrissa took Irovetti away for a month to her
strange and wondrous realm in the First World. There
she showed him great marvels and fearsome sights, and
on the eve she returned him to Pitax, she granted him her
and assumed the mantle of leadership.
But settlers soon arrived from Brevoy, spreading south
into Tiger Lord lands along the East Sellen River—a group
of soldiers and diplomats led by a Brevic nobleman, Baron
Hannis Drelev. These men not only established a fort on
the shore of Lake Hooktongue, but they also sought out
and looted several ancient tombs and burial sites sacred to
the Tiger Lords. The final insult came when Drelev’s men
tried to establish a peaceful alliance with the Tiger Lords.
Armag saw through their trickery and ordered his people to
attack, but he underestimated the enemy—he assumed that
a people who would open with weak attempts at friendshipfavor and became
his muse, giving him a lock of her hair.
In return, she asked only that he perform one favor for
her in the world of mortals—recovering a sword called
Briar, lost long ago somewhere in the region. (For more
information on how Nyrissa lost Briar, what the sword
actually means to her, and why she can’t simply retrieve
it on her own, see “Sound of a Thousand Screams” in
Pathfinder Adventure Path #36.)
With Nyrissa’s favor granting Irovetti even greater skill,
he made his way to the city of Pitax. He reasoned that with a
kingdom at his command, the search for the missing sword
would be a trivial thing. Armed with his two remaining
Numerian artifacts, he had an idea how to become Pitax’s
newest ruler. One of these artifacts is a strange device
called a mindrender baton—a device that functions like a
rod of rulership. Irovetti began building his reputation in
the city by using the mindrender baton to aid in purchasing
several warehouses for scandalously low prices and
securing relationships and deals with several important
merchants and smugglers. Eventually, he invited two of
Pitax’s leaders, the brothers Lothaire and Berengar, to a
card game at one of his warehouses. Through the use of his
mindrender baton and magic (particularly modify memory),
Irovetti swindled the brothers out of their rule—the next
morning, neither had any memories of being duped, but
Irovetti owned a signed document legally handing over all
the possessions of the ruling family to him, including the
crown of Pitax.
At first, Irovetti used many of his new resources as king
of Pitax to search for Briar. But as the years wore on, his
memories of his time with Nyrissa began to pale against
the reality of the decadence and power that ruling a River
Kingdom brought. While her inf luence continued to
subtly inf luence Irovetti’s personality (and is in large part
responsible for his founding of Pitax’s Academy of Grand
Arts), her hold over his heart and lusts faded. So whenseveral of
Irovetti’s agents came to him 6 years later with
the good news that Briar had been found, Irovetti did
something his fey patron could have never foreseen. He
had his agents murdered before they could spread the news,
then hid Briar away in a chamber deep under his palace.
Irovetti feared that upon returning the sword to Nyrissa,
she would cast him aside—he was not yet ready to lose the
power her favor granted him, and reasoned that he could
simply rule Pitax for another decade or so and keep Briar’s
recovery secret. Then, when he grew tired of life as a king,
he could announce to Nyrissa his “recent recovery” of Briar
and enjoy the reward for his service to the fey queen.
Yet Nyrissa has had little time to wonder why it has taken
Irovetti so long to find the sword, for as “War of the River
Kings” begins, the time for her to gather up the Stolen Lands
as a gift for her strange patrons in the First World draws
near. Through her manipulation of Irovetti, she hopes to
spur the headstrong King into attacking the PCs’ kingdom.
If the PCs don’t react in kind, she’s prepared to send one
of her agents to provoke them, but she hopes that Irovetti’s
unprovoked attack does the trick. She then has but to wait
for the human kingdoms that control the lands she wishes
to take to weaken each other—she hopes that after the war is
over, there’ll be little resistance remaining when she begins
her eldritch assault on the land.
Adventure Summary
Eager to appear friendly, King Irovetti invites the PCs
to take part in a grand tournament as a way to make the
first steps toward an alliance. Yet as the PCs enjoy the
tournament, Irovetti sends his troops around to strike
at the PCs’ kingdom from behind. When the treachery
becomes apparent, the PCs must escape back home and
organize their own army. Pitax attacks again and again—
war has come to the Stolen Lands, and the PCs must go on
the offensive if they hope to protect what they’ve built. How
the PCs attempt to win the war is up to them. They can
march their armies directly against Pitax, or they might
attempt to scout out the Glenebon Uplands to try to find
weaknesses they can exploit. In the end, Irovetti retreats
into his palace and the war develops into a siege—one the
PCs need to break by infiltrating the palace and tracking
down the dangerous overlord in his own home.
SOUND OF A 1,000 SCREAMS
The words on the preceding page were first spoken by
Hadkathos Vanshavilae, a priest of Pharasma, in his sermon
to a frightened mass in Ustalav’s city of Caliphas after the
onset of the Age of Lost Omens. Hadkathos taught that only
by leaving the future unforeseen and prophesy unspoken
can mortals truly shape their destinies, for only when the
future is unknown can hope and free will survive. Alas, his
church was not ready for his wisdom, and he was burned at
the stake only 2 weeks later for heresy. Yet his words held
a core of wisdom that the nymph queen Nyrissa could well
have learned from—that to look into the future and to see
one’s fate is a sure way to meet it. Nyrissa has long known
that heroes would come to her home and defeat her with
a sword forged from her own fractured spirit, and though
she has hoped that this vision—this prophecy—was but a
nightmare, it was not until the Age of Lost Omens brought
an end to the tyranny of prophecy that she began to feel
hope that her future was not writ in stone.
Yet she is taking no chances. In order to fully render this
vision of her own death impossible, she hopes to reclaim
the sword Briar, to mend her own shattered mind and
spirit, and to remove from existence the very weapon so
long ago foretold to herald her death. Yet in taking these
steps to destroy Briar, she may have empowered the very
heroes that could be her undoing.
Nyrissa has not always been a power in the First World,
but when she fell in love with one of the realm’s Eldest,
Count Ranalc, she forever changed her place in this reality.
Touched by Count Ranalc, Nyrissa grew in power rapidly,
yet this power also corrupted her, as power is wont to do.
She began to think of herself as the newest of the Eldest,
and worse, proclaimed this power to any who would listen,
beginning to build her own empire in the First World—a
realm she named Thousandbreaths. The other Eldest did
not react well to Nyrissa’s bold claims, and sent one of their
monstrous champions, the Tane known as the Jabberwock,
to slay her. Nyrissa escaped the monster, but in so doing
fell into the clutches of the Eldest. Their judgment was
swift—they tore from her mind and spirit her capacity to
love, coalesced these powerful and deadly emotions into
physical reality in the shape of a magical sword called Briar,
and then cast the sword into the Material Plane where the
nature of reality would hide Briar forever beyond Nyrissa’s
sight. Their punishment extended to their fellow Eldestas well, whom they
suspected had used Nyrissa all along
as an experiment. Count Ranalc was sent into exile in the
Shadow Plane, eventually to meet his own humiliating fate
(see page 67).
The matter settled, the Eldest quickly moved on with
their own inscrutable agendas. Yet while they seemed
to forget about what they’d done to Nyrissa, the nymph
herself did not. As the ages wore on, she grew more and
more obsessed with her loss of love—or perhaps it was
the loss of love that caused her to grow more violent and
obsessed. In her early attempts to discover the location of
Briar, she received the visions and prophecies that would
come to haunt her so—that Briar would be returned to her,
but only as an instrument of her own death, wielded in
the hands of a mortal hero. Regardless, Nyrissa began the
long task of shaping Thousandbreaths and wearing down
the boundaries between it and the Material Plane, so that
someday the boundary between realities would crack and
the region known as the Stolen Lands would bloom with
life as it and Thousandbreaths merged. The War of the
River Kings was but one of the steps toward this goal—by
weakening the kingdoms that occupy the land she wishes
to claim, she weakens the opposition to her goal. Now
that both kingdoms are reeling in the aftermath of their
war, Nyrissa prepares to draw the Stolen Lands into her
realm and bottle it, an act that will leave a wasteland on
the Material Plane and give her the perfect gift or bribe to
repair the damage her reputation suffered with the Eldest.
That her acts will destroy a significant region on Golarion
is irrelevant to the loveless nymph—for in her obsession,
she fails to see that these acts may be the very thing that
drives the enemies from her vision to slay her.
Adventure Synopsis
This adventure begins after the War of the River Kings
has ended—the PCs, be they the war’s victors or losers,
are faced with the task of rebuilding their kingdom or
perhaps helping to rebuild Pitax. Yet soon after the war
is over, a new peril strikes the region as strange monsters
and violent bursts of rapid vegetation growth and bizarre
weather plagues the Stolen Lands. At the same time, the
PCs learn that one of the treasures discovered in Pitax’s
House is a nascent vorpal sword, a weapon of immense
power, and as the strange weather and blooms of life
and monstrous incursions increase, so does this sword’s
intelligence and power.The PCs soon learn that their kingdom faces an
invasion, but this time not from the physical world. Some
fell force from the legendary First World is attempting to
expand into this world, and when the PCs begin to fight
back against these verdant blooms, they discover that
it’s possible to step from this world into the First World
realm of Thousandbreaths. There, the PCs face powerful
new threats unlike anything they’ve seen before, and learn
that the dangers facing their kingdom are even greater
than they feared, for the fey ruler of Thousandbreaths is
about to absorb the Stolen Lands into a bauble for her own
purposes, an act that would scour clean the region and
leave behind nothing but a wasteland.
If the PCs hope to save their new kingdom from this
threat, they must combat the nymph queen Nyrissa both
by stopping the various blooms in their kingdom and
by traveling into Thousandbreaths itself to confront the
dangerously insane nymph.
