Lovely Dark Tales

First post After a while on these Pages! The [TIPS] series will feature quick and useful bits of knowledge to enhance specific parts of a game.  We'll start off with Pathfinder Second Edition's TRAITS! This Is By far the MOST understimated and misunderstood part of the ruleset and I cannot stess It enough: It Is a pillar of the game's mindset and a huge storytelling device, for Any style. It Is the correct example of how mechanics and narration march side by side.  So, here It Is a small rundown.  ✅ Traits are your friend. A Trait Is a descripor like "Fire" or "Cleric" you find below any action/item title. It gives you narrative direction and, sometimes, mechanical concepts as well.  MOST of the time, though, they don't do Much more than they tell. "Fire" means Fire Is someway involved.  But how can we make such a simple Word make the difference? Bear with me. :)  THE PURE MECHANICAL BENEFIT 🔥 You are fighting enemies which might be weak t

Going back to Tradeport on the back of a lovely griffon, the group is followed by the "nameless" cavalier and a couple of possessed wizards riding griffons as well. The adventurer is guided by obscure forces... but yet, some kind of light shines in his eyes. "Go there! He's still there! Go to the orphanage!!!" mourns, as he dies after a spectacular aerial combat.  Traderport is always there, under the rain, cloaked by an invisible and giant shadow.  Diane has been arrested. It doesn't take much for her to confess... But before, the map must be taken from her house and another "owner" must be determined: that's Liam. Back to Liam's cousin, she hates the city. She hates its hipocrisy, the rich dominating the poor. Old story, still powerful in her lonely heart. Garlene, lonely, harsh and master of Tradeport's guards (Elowen's aunt) seems to be interested in pulling the strings and solve the mystery along with the young adven

As you might have read, we went through a long pause... but only because I decided to link this campaign with a Blue Rose campaign  (yeah, two stories, different systems!). I decided that, far beyond the oceans, rose the empire of the Blue Rose, but I won't write down anything on detail here, just telling you that sometimes you might find special sections explaining how the two stories overlap.  Having said that... Wake up... Our heroes wake up from the inner travel caused by the Fateweaver's potions. They saw the desert, the nights before the final battles against Xanne, the travel of a group of spies... And the Sphynx with the Celemor's face.  Lanathiel Greystone, Elowen/Alowar's mother, guildmasters of the Tradeport's Spies Celemor, Lanathiel, Morgane and Silda are right there, waiting for them to wake up. No one seems able to explain what they said, outside a single concept: Celemor's probably a key character in the canvas. They chill ou

I come back after a looong stop, but the story is still alive and we'll go back in Amherth pretty soon! Here you'll find what's new for Sessions IX/X!!! After discovering the "curse" upon the Greystones (lycanhtropy?), they start traveling twards the Academy, as already planned to help out Celemor's and Morgan's research. Along the way, they meet a mysterious guy which is, with no doubt for the old Silda (traveling with them), is a Fateweaver. Fateweavers (homebrewed class/story) are members of an old and secretive order of people with a signle, but unnerving power: see and alter future actions through advice and intervention. They don't have the power to alter time itself, but to "bend" fate, so that some outcomes might be more or less likely, depending on what they feel more appropriate (following their own moral code, which is unknown).  The guy confirms the suspects. He handles them a bag cointaining colored potions,

After the disaster in the previous session, the group tries to get back the ropes of their lives. That's what happened... - the three "hags" (Lanathiel, Celemor and Garlene) reunite at the Greystone Manor. Lanathiel, matron of the family and mother of Alowar and Elowen decides to accuse Elowen and her friends to have hidden the misteryous murder in the city, something that could bring a war. They say that the reason why they hid it was... to avoid a guild war. But Lady Greystone is not happy with this version. Furthermore, accuse Celemor (her sister) and Morgane Harrow (you should know their story at this point...) for the same reason: hiding a secret (the map, and so forth)...  Lanathiel asks Gillian the Witch Hunter to arrest them!  Note that in the house, the Greystones host a mysterious inquisitor coming from the Kingdom of Tyr (you'll know a lot about this side-story very soon in another campaign... ;) ) Right before this meeting, they talke

They finally face Fynch, the "feminine" thief of the Adventurer's Guild. They know he's a member of the secretive assassin's guild and that he knows more than they think. In the last session, Celemor told her nephew Elowen that he noticed him following her and Morgane Harrow during one of their "journeys" to the Magic Academy.  Fynch awaits and doesn't take long before the fellowship pushes on. He confesses: he's an assassin. But not the assassin. He just noticed that another assassin (the actual killer) was moving like a "real" assassin during Summer's End and Fynch got that he was part of the secretive guild himself. But that guild as a golden rule : you don't kill unless a real "murderer order" has been given and no orders had been given. So, the killer was acting on his own. He didn't lie in the end , if you remember the interrogation during the early sessions.  Fynch tried to stop him writing a