Don Valence
Virtuous Madman
Adventure Background
The city of Korvosa began 300 years ago, in 4407 AR, when the Empire of Cheliax expanded north into Varisia. Here, the Chelaxians found a large tribe of Shoanti barbarians dwelling around an immense pyramid on the shores of a deep bay---a perfect site for a city. Much bloodshed eventually left the Shoanti defeated, driven back to the harsh Cinderlands, and the city that grew, surviving even the collapse of the Chelish empire, few bothered to ask why the Shoanti had dwelt here. None of Korvosa’s citizens, from beggar to king, realized that the Shoanti were guardians, that deep inside the pyramid destined to become Castle Korvosa hid a great and terrible evil: the Fangs of Kazavon, relics of one of Golarion’s most powerful and deadly dragons. For the past 300 years, Korvosa has grown, unaware that the city’s foundation rests on a history of evil and cruelty.
Today, Korvosa’s reigning King Eodred Arabasti II is feared by all the right people. His rule is steady, even if his insatiable appetites drain the city’s coffers. His ability to navigate the rocks and shoals of Chelish diplomacy earned the city favorable trade agreements with the Old Empire, but rumors persisted of the King’s womanizing habits and spendthrift ways. Despite his fondness for a soft touch, he has to date produced no heir to the throne, the latest in a line of rulers affected by the Curse of the Crimson Throne. Edicts proclaim Eodred II the Saffron King, likening his reign to one of abundance, in which honey and spice flood the markets. The city’s downtrodden have another name for Eodred, though---the Stirge King, a man whose squandering ways are slowly bleeding his city dry.
Whispers of Eodred II’s taste for scandalously young companionship have dogged the king throughout his rule, and thus when he finally wed, it was no surprise that his bride was barely a third of his age. Queen Ileosa was a woman of breathtaking beauty, with red hair like sunset, chaste alabaster skin, and features so fetching many claimed her mother must have been a nymph queen, as surely no mortal woman could give birth to a beauty such as she. Most of Korvosa’s nobles worry of the dangers of placing a trophy wife within hands’ reach of the Crimson Throne, but Ileosa’s interest in the city seemed secondary to the life of luxury---and with the more-than-competent Seneschal Neolandus Kalepopolis guarding Castle Korvosa’s interests, these noble families feel they have little to worry about…they are about to learn how wrong they are.
Ileosa’s Story
The Queen was born Ileosa Arvanxi to one of Cheliax’s most successful noble families. When she came of age, most expected her to marry into a more powerful Chelish line, yet she scandalized her family by abandoning Cheliax and sailing to the city of Korvosa. For Ileosa was nothing if not ambitious---she didn’t see herself as the wife of an important Chelish dignitary or noble, but as a queen.
She knew much of Eodred II’s tastes and desires before she arrived, so that when she presented herself to him, he fell in love immediately. The two were wed after a scandalously short courtship, and, perhaps the most shocking move of all, Eodred turned out his entire harem in favor of his new queen. Barely 17 years old when she took Eodred II’s side in 4704 AR, Queen Ileosa has managed a minor miracle in the past 4 years---she’s single-handedly shifted the dislike and disapproval away from King Eodred to herself with her open distaste for Korvosa (a city she’s been heard to call “a backwater colonial village” more than once).
Ileosa herself bears no true love for Eodred II---he has, to her, always been nothing but an endurance test, a necessary stepping stone on her path to becoming the ruler of Korvosa. While she loathes the city, she does not loathe its riches. Eodred II, in her eyes, was an old man, but it soon became apparent that he was not as old as she anticipated---his health remained good and no sign of the Crimson Throne’s cure seemed evident there. As the months turned into years, Ileosa’s patience wore thin, and her thoughts turned more and more to regicide. Yet the young queen was a coward and unimaginative, a combination that kept these murderous thoughts nothing more than idle fancies…that all changed a few months ago.
On one of her weekly visits to Castle Korvosa’s treasury (visits that required surreptitiously “borrowing” the key from the Castle’s seneschal), the queen discovered a secret door. Believing she’d found a hidden treasury, she investigated the room beyond, only to be disappointed to find it empty save for an old stone coffer on a pedestal. She didn’t recognize the Shoanti warning runes carved throughout the room nor did her vain mind notice the feel of menace and evil in the air. She opened the coffer, and her life was changed forever. For inside that simple stone coffer rested the Fangs of Kazavon, and their evil had been waiting for this day. It was but the smallest fragment of Kazavon’s spirit that burst from his fangs and infused the young queen, but even that small shard of cruelty and blind ambition was enough. Ileosa closed the coffer, resealed the secret door, and returned to her chambers in the castle above, her mind changed for the worse. Gone were any shreds of cowardice, replaced by ambition. Gone too were any fragments of self-doubt, replaced by a cruel imagination capable of envisioning all manner of depravations. Queen Ileosa died that fateful day, only to be reborn as something new---something wholly evil.
While plans for a personal guard of warrior women, the eradication of Korvosa’s undesirable poor and ethnic citizens, dramatic increases to the castle’s wealth, and even a method to preserve her beauty and youth forever formed in her mind, none of them could begin as long as she was not in control. First and foremost, Eodred had to go. Ileosa needed him to die swiftly, yet that death needed to come from what appeared to be natural causes, or at least the anarchic cruelty of an outside source. She needed a period of mourning where she could capitalize upon Korvosa’s well-wishes and pity to put her true plans into motion, and charges of regicide would endanger that. To aid in laying her plans, she allied with an order of assassins called the Red Mantis, asking them for aid in setting her plans to motion. Yet their codes against the assassination of monarchs left her in a lurch---if Eodred was to die, it had to be at her own hands.
So she turned to Venster Arabasti, the King’s deformed stepbrother. Unable to gain the throne himself---since his birth to Queen Domina was never on the public records---Venster had long nurtured a deep streak of hidden jealousy for the successes of his younger brother Eodred II. For his past, Eodred II remained gracious, allowing his stepbrother to remain in Castle Korvosa for fear that Venster could not survive on his own. Eodred sees Venster as a submissive idiot, incapable of caring for himself or succeeding at anything in life. Venster, for his part, has rarely displayed any evidence to the contrary, and he rarely leaves his attic suite, spending most of his copious free time in futile hobbies such as playing cards. Now and then, as Eodred is seized with pity or boredom, he visits Venster and plays cards with him, even though the visits generally end in arguments or insults.
In Venster, Ileosa saw her opportunity. She seduced him, played upon his hidden jealousy, and convinced Venster to take part in Eodred’s assassination. To this end, she gave Venster a specialized poison, a venom secured from her Red Mantis contacts (while they do not commit regicide, they have no compunction to supply those who would). The poison closely mimicked the effects of a rapid form of leprosy, yet one that, being poison, resisted attempts to cure it as if it were a disease---one of many ingenious methods of murder developed by the Red Mantis. With Ileosa’s aid, Venster coated the upper half of his playing cards with the poison, so when Eodred (among other things, a compulsive nail-biter) played, he unknowingly coated his fingers and nails in the stuff, ensuring a slow but steady exposure to the poison. It took a little prodding from the young queen to convince Eodred to visit his brother, which exposed the king to her horrid toxin.
His usefulness nearing an end, Ileosa began to refuse Venster’s requests for companionship, and the stepbrother recently tried to force her to comply by threatening to reveal to the seneschal the true nature of the king’s “illness”. Himself relatively feeble, and his presence all but hidden from the public eye, it was an easy matter for Ilesoa to murder him---she walled up his corpse in the castle dungeon, secure in the knowledge that Venster’s only regular visitor lay upon his deathbed. Yet his disappearance was noticed---in this case, by Neolandus Kalepopolis, the castle seneschal. Unknown to Ileosa, Neolandus knew about the theft of the treasury key, and in secret watched the queen. He suspected she was up to something, and when Venster vanished, his suspicions were confirmed. Neolandus’ mistake was in confronting the queen privately, giving her the benefit of the doubt. She responded by sending the Red Mantis after him---his role in the castle not quite protected by the Mantis’s ban on Regicide. Neolandus survived the assassination attempt, but only barely. The seneschal went into hiding among contacts in Old Korvosa, afraid and powerless to move against the queen as long as her Red Mantis allies remain strong in the region. Quietly, he began researching the queen’s sudden change in spirit, yet he remains unable and unwilling to go public with his condemnations.
As this adventure begins, Eodred still lives, but the venom has wreaked havoc on his health. He has spent the last several weeks in seclusion in Castle Korvosa, and despite the work of his staff, rumors of his ill health are spreading. Queen Ileosa has taken advantage of this time to become more of a ruler in public eye, yet recently, flaws in her plans began to manifest.
Queen Ileosa worries about Neolandus. Her Red Mantis allies have promised her that Neolandus will die soon, yet he is not the only fly in her ointment. For her plans to progress, she increased the dosage of Eodred’s death sentence, secretly lacing the tea he drinks with poison. The king is about to die, and Korvosa is about to plunge over the edge into anarchy…
Adventure Summary
The campaign begins as the OCs are drawn together by a common thread---a cruel old criminal named Gaedren Lamm. Given the chance to bring him to justice or avenge themselves against him by a mysterious Varisian woman named Zellara, the OCs gather at her home with the streets of Korvosa after receiving mysterious Harrow cards sent by her, with a special message written on their backs:
“I know what Gaedren has done to you. He has wronged me as well. I know where he dwells, yet cannot strike at him. Come to my home at 3 Lancet Street at sunset. Others like you will be there. Gaedren must face his fate, and justice must be done.”
Each of the OCs have been harmed by Gaedren in some way; whether it was the death of a family member, the ruining of a business, a theft, or even a passing insult that demands retribution…there is some reason why you would desire the criminal lord dead. When they gather at Zellara’s home, they will embark on a journey that will lead them to either save or destroy the city of Korvosa…and beyond.
- Excerpts and Story taken from Pathfinder: Curse of the Crimson Throne, Edge of Anarchy Adventure Path, published by Paizo Publishing, and created by Wizards of the Coast.
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