The Kingmaker's Cairn, Session 2

 In which the party...

• Explores the western wing of Lady Jamandi's manor.
• Uses Ethex's bandit puppet as a scout before he chokes on smoke and dies to get a layout of the wing.
• Quickly follows Ethex, who uses his spell Ooze Form to lead them safely through the smoke quickly.
• Discover Tartuccio lying presumably dead, and takes him to a restorative shrine they discover, where he wakes and starts seizing before going unconscious, but alive.
• Leave the gnome to rest as they discover Jaethal tied up and gagged by a contingent of bandits.
• Take out the bandits, including the second in command of the bandits and free Jaethal, who joins the party.
• Discover Lady Jamandi facing up again 2 giants and help her fend off more bandits.
• Face down the bandit leader of the "Black Tears" and her minions in combat.
• Nearly lose Linzi, Ethex, and Jaethal in fierce combat against the Black Tears leader's forces before the leader and her minions are finally slain.
• Heal up with numerous healing potions and aid as they accompany Lady Jamandi out of the wing.
• Receive a charter from Lady Jamandi to explore the Stolen Lands, and told to go meet with one Oleg to deal with his own bandit problem.
• Watch 3 other parties - the Iron Wraiths, arrogant warriors; Baron Hannis Drelev and company, a cruel noble; and one Maegar Varn and company, an optimistic knight receive their own seperate charters to explore.
• Discover Tartuccio alive and with the 2 other hostages left from last night, Harrim the dwarf and Valerie the paladin, taking the charter and breaking off from the party to deal with the Stolen lands' problems on their own.
• Set out from Lady Jamandi's manor into the wilds to explore the Stolen Lands.

Party: Sybil the thief, Yslin the ranger, Cannora the elf, Ethex the magic user, Amiri the barbarian, Linzi the halfling, Jaethal the elf.

The Kingmaker's Cairn, Session 1

 In which the party...

• Is invited to a dinner at the hall of one Lady Jamandi for a quest to colonize the wilds.
• Chat up other guests at the dinner, other hopeful adventurers: 
• Sybil the thief slips the rings and valuables off one sorcerer Tartuccio, who waxes tales of his own heroics oblivious with the thief's flattery.
• Yslin the ranger impresses one barbarian Amiri as they bond over hunting and tales of dangerous travails in the wilds.
• Cannora the elf plays her with against another elf Jaethal, as the iterant gambler tests her wit against Jaethal's as they proceed mock the other guests at the party.
• Ethex the magic user endears himself to one halfling Linzi, who finds an intriguing character for her travelogue as he nerds out over various magic spells and books with her by mistakenly assuming her writing relates to magic.
• Head to rest up for the night only to be awakened by the shout of a guest being cut short.
• Realize that bandits are attacking the tower, and set up traps at the entrance of their room - including a bear trap by Yslin and Caltrops by Sybil. 
• Manage to slay 2 bandits with traps, as Ethex takes control of a third with his Command spell.
• Use the controlled bandit to send other bandits in the wrong direction as they make their way through various rooms. 
• Discover gold, gems, healing potions, and even a tanglefoot bag of tar by looting corpses.
• Save hiding halfling Linzi, who is being attacked by a blinded ogre, by entrapping the ogre with the tanglefoot bag before fleeing.
• Run into one giant Jurginder, who takes a hefty bribe of gold, gems, and healing potions to let them through to the great hall.
• Find 3 tied up guests of the dinner - one of whom is Amiri, who they revive with a healing potion and joins the party, leaving the other 2 for the moment.
• Enter the great hall to discover the captain of the guard holding the fort, while Lady Jamandi has gone to the opposite wing to save other guests while it is on fire.

Party: Sybil the thief, Yslin the ranger, Cannora the elf, Ethex the magic user, Amiri the barbarian, Linzi the halfling 

The Kingmaker's Cairn, Session 0

I've always wanted to try some of the giant adventure paths put out by Pathfinder. But the crunchy system and massive page counts always pushed me away. However, a while back I started playing the Pathfinder Kingmaker video game. A few hours in, and I thought to myself  - hey, I could play this as a solo adventure using a lighter system. So here's my attempt at exactly that: to play through Pathfinder Kingmaker using Cairn.

Nearly 700 pages...here goes nothing

To start out, I will be using Cairn with Hexcrawl in Cairn rules for hexcrawl structure and the Barrow Delver solo rules as an oracle. I'll add on tools as needed, but otherwise will be running Pathfinder Kingmaker as written. I will be using the 2e version of Kingmaker here since it has content based on the video game which I want to include.

My starting party is: Sybil Orthax, a thief; Yslin Breagle, a ranger; Cannora Malksmilk, an elf; and Ethex Burl, a magic user. As the adventure progresses new characters may be added or removed as needed. 

I'll skim through most of the background and in classic fashion, plunge straight into the adventure. Having played the initial parts of the video game will hopefully help jumpstart this, and following that the hexcrawl structure should hopefully help this move smoothly.

Lonesome Wanderings, Session 63

 In which Badger...

• Travels and explores the lands around his keep.
• Discovers an orc contingent and manages to crush them with a rockslide in a quarry.
• Notes some giant sightings around his keep.
• Gets word of the death of elven maiden Rahasia after the bandits of one Rahib invaded her village and slaughtered all present there.
• Flees from a tribe of gnolls gathered in a ring of trees in a clearing.
• Finds a road traveling to one hamlet of Wastow and follows the road.
• Discovers some bandits harassing a merchant caravan and helps the merchants out by helping take out the bandits.
• Gets offered 600 gold for helping escort the caravan to Wastow, which he accepts.
• Travels past an abandoned quarry and makes notes of some ancient runes on a standing stone on the road to Wastow.
• Arrives in Wastow without any other issue and collects his payment, and rests to heals up.
• Celebrates his 31st birthday in the hamlet as he rests.

Current Level: Badger 11

Lonesome Wanderings, Session 62

 In which Badger...

• Portals into a magical university where he's forced to take the disguise of a professor of magic, despite not having any real magic.
• Takes and teaches classes of students in the department of magical items and lore.
• Berates one student Rosie, who begins to cry and making the dean of the college quite irritated.
• Befriends one elephant woman Losheel, a lazy academic who does research on ancient texts from the comfort of the library.
• Saves one Javanesh, an owl student, from rampaging tree mimics and discovers the mimics were doused in strange potions.
• Does research while administering exams throughout the academic semester, and works on studying magic portals so he could return home.
• Is forced to teach remedial courses for struggling students after his research as some slowing down.
• Manages to publish a paper on magic portals, and using his research finds a portal and travels home, with Javanesh, who wished to explore his home realm, in tow after resigning from his post in the college.
• After 9 weeks of research and publishing, finally returns back to Badger Keep.

Current Level: Badger 11 

Lonesome Wanderings, Session 61

 In which Badger...

• Travels to the West Marches and travels from the towns of Blackgate to Eastwatch.
• Runs from bandits, lion and boars, wolves, green dragons, a hydra, and jaguars.
• Kills a couple of giant bees.
• Meets a friendly orc village on his journey and rests with them, hearing of their struggles with dragons picking of their fellows.
• Discovers a cave in the forests and notes it for the future.
• Returns to his keep and learns crime rate has been dropping.
• Heads to the weakened but still surviving Wicked City at the request of Courtesan Jamila, whom he fancied, to retrieve a blue gem for her cloud people who's cloud castle was stolen by Patricia Vezzini, the cunning last scion of her noble lineage, and the ex-minister of civil order, the coarse Gulnora the Radiant.
• Heads to the bazaar and is assaulted by a Murder Harlot.
• Slays the Murder Harlot only to learn he is a shock trooper sent by a contingent working for Patricia, who vanish into the shadows.
• Frees a slave girl and runs through the streets with her, escaping her former captors.
• Learns of the gem's location in the Maze under the city, and heads with his freed slave girl ally into the Maze.
• Avoids another assault by poison darts from a contingent of Murder Harlots.
• Hides from some automatons excavating the Maze, and visits a shrine in the Maze inhabited by a wild hermit who demands the pair undergo tests.
• Loses the slave girl, who dies in the "test" of the mad hermit dancing wilding with a blade in the shrine before he is slain by Badger.
• Heads deeper in and finds the gem - only to be attacked by 4 blind ghosts who age him by nearly two decades as he flees.
• Manages to escape the ghosts even in his weakened, aged body only to be surrounded by cloud folk and Jamila, who beat him and take the jewel for themselves without honoring their agreement.
• Manages to survive and find a cleric who reverts the aging magic for a hefty sum.
• Is met by Patricia and Gulnora, who reveal that Jamila is a snake who works for the real lord of the cloud castle and stole the gem to pay off her debts from its real owner, Patricia Vezzini.
• Learns that Patricia and the Murder Harlots actions have been in self defense and fear, and he agrees to help her regain her heritage.
• Avoids conflict with some Blood Men in the streets of the Wicked City, who egg on passers by for a fight.
• Joins Patricia, Gulnora, and his now allies of the Murder Harlots and uses the Rope of Climb to tie to the bottom of an elevator that takes Jamila and her crew up to the cloud castle.
• Follows Jamila to the throne room of the cloud castle and releases a Bear Jar into the room, and sets off an alarm to attract all the guards.
• Captures one guard and rushes to the cloud castle's control room to bring down the castle, cutting the control battery with Knutsvar, only for the backup generators to kick in.
• Fights off ever increasing guards with Patricia as Gulnora is slain by Jamila.
• Ties a rope and hangs out as live bait in the cloud castle wearing the Spite the Drowning Waters bracers as 2 rocs (and many other sea creatures) arrive near cloud castle  now over the ocean, and manage to destroy the backup power as the castle comes crashing down.
• Manages to, along with Patricia and Jamila, get picked up by a merchant crew to be sailed back to the Wicked City, with the two women making up as well now that the cloud castle has fallen.
• Gets attacked by pirates off the coast of the Wicked City and helps the Merchant crew try to fend them off using the Spite the Drowning Waters bracers to attract killer whales and control one of the whales with the ring of Animal Control.
• Realizes his mistake once the other whales except the one controlled start attacking the merchant ship as well as the pirates.
• Tries to swim to other ship only to get attacked by whales attracted to the Spite the Drowning Waters bracelet.
• Has the merchant ship shoot the bracelet onto the pirate ship and gets a whale ride as the other whales ignore him to the pirate ship, slays a couple of pirates, and activates the bracelet to attract the killer whales.
• Sees the merchant ship - and Jamila and Patricia with it - unfortunately drown as the whales turn their attention to where they felt the bracelet last - the pirate ship - and attack.
• Deactivates the bracelet, and stealthily gets away to the coast on whaleback as the pirates and killer whales fight it out.
• Escapes the Wicked City back to his keep, avoiding the remaining Murder Harlots in the city.
• Returns to his keep to learn the relic found their has lost its holiness, and that a war has broken out between Yoon Suin and Varsia over portals that have started opening up in the Steppe.
• Learns the population in his keep and Kebi continues to grow.

Current Level: Badger 11

Lonesome Wanderings, Session 60

 In which Badger...

• Returns to Sandpoint to investigate some murders for the sheriff.
• Gets assaulted by and knocks out Ven Vinder, the father of Shayliss his ex-lover, when investigating as he finds out she has been missing for 3 years and he thought she was with Badger.
• Visits Dr. Habe's sanitorium and discovers a ghoul threat in a manor to the south - and causes Dr. Habe to panic and to start tracking him down with a necromancer associate.
• Heads south to the farmlands and learns of various ghoul attacks in the area.
• Creates a trap and blows up a bunch of ghouls in a barn, mopping up the others in the farmlands.
• Arrives at the manor, owned by a noble he'd met once Aldern Foxglove, and starts to investigate.
• Gets attacked by one Gorvii, and orc streetsweep who'd previously been humiliated by Badger and was seeking revenge.
• Knocks out Gorvii, but on the way out the orc get burnt by a trap and dies, forcing Badger to dump the body.
• Heads deeper into the manor and comes across 2 other adventurer friends Ameiko and Shalelu, who are also investigating the house, and joins them in looking for a revenant who had wandered beneath the house.
• Investigates and discovers an underground basement tunnel network.
• In the tunnel network is attacked by a masked woman, who is knocked out and revealed to be Shayliss, who has taken the identity of Shroud, a vigilante also investigating the house.
• Depositing Shayliss outside for safety, continues to investigate the house. 
• Gets paralyzed with the other two by a ghoul trap set by Dr. Habe and his associate, who start tying them up.
• The noise attracts a contingent of other ghouls, molds, rats, and ghasts to the area who attack Dr. Habe and his associate.
• As chaos breaks out the party becomes unparalyzed and runs upstairs to hide - but Shalelu is not fast enough and dies, beset upon by ghouls. 
• Badger and Ameiko prepare and throw molotovs and mop up the survivors, essentially clearing the tunnels.
• Continue ahead and find the revenant killing Aldern, who was in fact a ghast himself it is revealed.
• Let the revenant finish the job, and then die herself her purpose fulfilled.
• Loot all the corpses and the rest of the house and take off to deliver Shayliss back to her father and sell their treasure.
• Badger heads back to his keep to learn of a strange "Dark Humor" sickness that came and went when he was gone, but which nonetheless did not hurt his keeps burgeoning population.

Current Level: Level 11