Curse of the Crimson Throne series:

• Book 1: Edge of Anarchy
• Book 2: Seven Days to the Grave
• Book 3: Escape From Old Korvosa
• Book 4: A History of Ashes
• Book 5: Skeletons of Scarwall
• Book 6: Crown of Fangs
• Reconstructing Curse of the Crimson Throne

I’m prepping to run the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path and making it my own, and am up to Book 3. You know the preamble, so let’s jump into my evergreen caveats for this series:

First and foremost, these edits are there to make the game that I want to run. What I consider “essential,” you may not, and vice-versa. You would make (or have made) different decisions, which is both natural and part of the fun. Feel free to comment below if you see different opportunities.

Second, I’m going to be making heavy edits. If you’ve run or played in Curse of the Crimson Throne, I’m going to be deleting your favorite side quest, or NPC, or completely rewriting villain’s motivations and backstories. When I’m done, it’s likely not going to resemble the story you know.

Third, there will be rampant spoilers—in fact, once I dive in, these posts are essentially spoilers from start to finish. If you are a player in one of these APs or plan to be, these articles aren’t for you. (If you plan on GMing it or have done so, however… welcome!)

Finally, I don’t yet know what game system I’ll be using to run this Adventure Path, but it likely won’t be Pathfinder. Try not to get caught up in how dramatically I’m reducing the possible XP or treasure, or what I’m doing to CR of encounters. These articles are meant to be system agnostic, focused on story beats rather than mechanics.

Okay, let’s get to the aforementioned Book 3, Escape From Old Korvosa, by Richard Pett!

Curse of the Crimson Throne 3: Escape From Old Korvosa

Our campaign in review: Queen Ileosa is cray-cray, corrupted by an ancient dragon’s fang buried beneath the castle. First, she poisoned her husband the king, sparking riots across the city. Then she allied herself with a powerful assassin’s guild, grotesque cult, and numerous monsters to engineer a plague to cull the city’s populace and weaken Korvosa’s defenses, all while building her own personal military force, the Gray Maidens. What’s next for the mad queen?

The PCs can pursue downtime activities between Books 2 and 3 while the city slowly licks its wounds. However these activities play out, it’s a chance to use details from the module to show three things: a) how utterly devastated Korvosa is after the riots and pandemic, b) how prominent the Gray Maidens’ presence is becoming, and c) the party’s growing renown, especially with the commoners. It’s also a chance to perform a third Harrow reading for the PCs, in whatever way the table has established to do so in the campaign. I’m often fine with years passing in downtime, but less so in this campaign. Either weeks or a handful of months makes sense for PCs to level up, continue personal plotlines, and progress long-term projects.  

Chapter 1: Into the Dying City

Interestingly, what kicks off Book 3 is an event “off camera” that the party hears about secondhand. Queen Ileosa, after most of the campaign so far sheltered in her castle, makes a rushed public appearance with so little fanfare that the PCs aren’t in attendance. Many others are, though, and the crashing wave of news gathers the party together. I can imagine each PC getting bits of the news separately and convening or, more likely, being brought together by Field Marshall Cressida, the cleric Ishani, a tavern full of locals, or some other NPC.

The news items are many:

• The queen appeared with a hideous new crown that looked like enormous fangs.
• Among those at her side was her new seneschal, a bloated and disgusting man named Togomor.
• The Hellknights’ Order of the Nail have withdrawn (the queen described it as “fled”) the city after their failure to protect it.
• Queen Ileosa pronounced that the Korvosan Guard and Sable Company (the griffin riders from Book 1) took heavy losses in the plague and can no longer defend the city. Instead, the Gray Maidens are the official protectors of the city, and Sabina Merrin, the queen’s bodyguard, is their general.
• Indeed, the queen said, Sable Company is too expensive to rebuild so is being decommissioned. At this news, Commander Endrin who leads them… attacked the queen! Reports fly everywhere about the attack, but most say he dealt her a mortal wound that she shook off and then coldly killed Endrin.
• In the ensuing chaos, the queen and Togomor disappeared. Some say literally.

The PCs are either being told the news by Cressida or will likely seek her out. If not, she can ask for an audience. Whenever they meet her, they find Citadel Volshyenek largely empty. She gives them a desperate speech that the queen must be stopped, and that she believes information their mutual friend Vencarlo Orisini possesses may hold the key. The problem: Cressida doesn’t know what the information is and he’s disappeared into Old Korvosa, a neighborhood quarantined and closed off during the plague (the module actually gives a lot more away about Vencarlo’s quest, but I like this hook more). While Cressida tries to salvage what remains of the Korvosan Guard, will they find Vencarlo?

Assuming they agree, the PCs head to Old Korvosa, which is an island connected by bridges north of the city proper, like Alameda is to Oakland (near my home), or like Manhattan is to New Jersey. Unfortunately, those bridges were destroyed by the queen’s orders during the pandemic, cutting Old Korvosa off. The approach, then, is either by swimming or boat, avoiding patrols of Gray Maidens.

Once they’ve arrived, the goal is to portray Old Korvosa as a place where Mad Max-like anarchy reigns. There are loads of suggested random social encounters, from lone “heroes” to insane plague doctors to ranting locals to flocks of children, along with more dangerous encounters with mobs of thugs, dire rats, and the like. It doesn’t take long for the party to meet members of Pilts’ Mob, a group of armed locals loosely organized under the self-styled Emperor of Old Korvosa, Pilts Swastel. The mob will demand the party hands over their weapons to meet the Emperor, which they can do or not do—though if they resist and fight back, they’ll be harried by the mob until they do so. Whenever and however they go talk to Pilts, that’s Chapter 2.

Meanwhile, at some point the party will seek out Vencarlo’s home and sword-fighting academy, which they visited in Book 1. When they do, they’ll find the academy burned to the ground. The house is unlocked and seemingly abandoned. Once they enter and begin investigating, however, Red Mantis assassins attack! They were sent after Vencarlo, but the PCs are known to the assassins guild, so it’s a chance to off an enemy to the queen. The fight will involve the use of alchemist fire, and if the PCs don’t attend to it the house will burn down as well, leading to a fun set piece. If the party defeats the assassins and douses the fire, they have a chance to find Vencarlo’s secret lair and chest, revealing his Blackjack gear and secret identity. If not, they’ll have to wait for it. Either way… fun fun!

As written, the smoke draws one of Vencarlo’s students to the house, who can tell the PCs that Vencarlo was spending a lot of time with an artist named Salvator Scream. The whole Salvator Scream plot is needlessly complex and weird, honestly… he’s the sole remaining person who the Fangs of Kazavon had been slowly corrupting before the queen became their sole focus, and he’s made disturbing violent paintings that have become beloved by the Arkona family. Vencarlo took an interest in him because of “reasons,” and… yeah. I don’t like any of this complicated backstory that involve a lot of GM exposition (if the PCs ever discover it at all) and will happily drop it.

The point of traveling to Scream’s home is to meet an NPC named Laori Vaus, a member of a secret society named the Brotherhood of Bones. Laori has an even more dizzying backstory than Scream involving the worship of a god of darkness and pain who wishes to secure the relics of the dragon Kazavon. Even trying to summarize her goals is exhausting, and essentially what she wants is for the party to go into Pilts’ lair and rescue Scream.

So here we go: In my first major rewrite of the campaign so far (pretty good that it didn’t happen until Book 3!), I’m going to drop the whole Salvator Scream and Brotherhood of Bones figures from the AP. There’s no reason the party needs to know about the dragon fangs yet (beyond the enticing clue of the queen’s new crown), and whether the party travels to Scream’s house or not, they will eventually encounter “Emperor” Pilts Swastel in his “palace.” Everything else is the kind of details in an AP that, in my opinion, confuses players and muddles story beats in a campaign.

Chapter 2: Emperor of Old Korvosa 

Pilts Swastel is an interesting minor villain. He was always eccentric, but ran a playhouse before the riots, plague, and chaos in the city pushed him into violent madness. His charisma and dramatic showmanship have attracted a flock of thugs and people desperate for protection, so Pilts is now the reigning gang leader of Old Korvosa. If the PCs do any research on him before they approach his palace, there’s a table of possible revelations about the man.

The “palace” consists of six warehouse buildings on the docks. The approach is a wasteland of corpses, feral dogs, vandalism, and destruction, all the result of Pilts’ growing mob army. Either the party will be guided through the wreckage by members of the mob or the PCs will find their own way there. Which is to say that meeting the Emperor and navigating the palace could happen in several different ways.

Let’s assume the PCs gain an audience with Pilts before violence breaks out. The throne room is an open-air balcony with a large colored canvas stretched overhead, with stolen artwork and a makeshift highbacked throne across from a tall guillotine, known to the mob as the Tall Knife (often the central instrument in execution spectacles that Pilts puts on for his mob, with his signature dramatic flourish). When holding court, Pilts Swastel is attended by four thugs and a deranged gnome named Jabbyr. The PCs will ask about Vencarlo and whether the Emperor has seen him, and the resulting roleplaying scene can show how deranged, odious, and yet charming Pilts can be. He taunts the party while whipping the gathered crowd into a frenzy, then offers to give them information if they win a game of “blood pig” in his arena. Blood pig is a truly disgusting game of essentially slaughtering piglets, so I’d have to seriously feel out if my table was up for it or whether I (most likely) modify the game.

Anyway, either the PCs win at blood pig and an outraged Emperor tells them that he’s heard the Arkonas have taken him, or Pilts tells them under duress after losing a fight. Regardless, at some point violence breaks out, either because the party gets tired of Pilts’ cruelty and mob rule or because Pilts tries to capture them for a public execution via Tall Knife. The important outcome of however this chapter ends is that the party knows to go looking for Vencarlo at the Arkona Palace (this time an actual palace).

As written, the PCs seek out Pilts because of a tip from Vencarlo’s student to seek out Salvator Scream, and it’s Scream who tells them about the Arkonas. He also tells them about the queen’s former seneschal and many more kernels of the core adventure. Usually, I like this sort of foreshadowing, but it all feels too thinly connected to me. Instead, I’m keeping the players focused on the mission Field Commander Cressida sent them to do: Find Vencarlo. If they follow a mob to meet Pilts right after entering Old Korvosa, it makes sense that they’d ask about Vencarlo, and maybe bypass most of Chapter 1 entirely. If they proceed to Pilts on their own volition after finding his (now destroyed) home, they’re still seeking Vencarlo. All the Salvator Scream stuff is distracting, and there will be time for a grand reveal of the former seneschal inside the Arkona Palace.

Chapter 3: Wrath of the Arkonas

The Arkonas, a noble family in Korvosa who are secretly shapeshifting rakshasas, are keeping Vencarlo and the queen’s former seneschal prisoner. The climax of this book, then, is to somehow enter the Arkona Palace, free Vencarlo, and discover the existence of the seneschal (and his story of the queen’s corruption). Along the way, they’ll topple the corrupted family.

The problem is that I didn’t like any of the foreshadowing that tried to hint at the Arkona’s sinister existence within the city. In Book 1, I thought the convoluted connection to the family through the deserter Verik was too difficult to understand, and likely something the PCs would never discover. The Hospice of the Blessed Maiden, the site for the climax of Book 2, was formerly an Arkonan warehouse, but likely something irrelevant to the party. Finally, I’ve dropped Salvator Scream entirely from this book, who similarly had a tenuous thread to the Arkonas. So, the principal question for the setup of this big showdown is if and how the PCs will understand what they may be walking into when heading to the Arkona Palace.

The most obvious option is that, since the PCs are Korvosan locals, they simply know about the Arkona family. If any PC has a tie to nobility of any kind, this connection is easy to make, but it’s equally easy if a PC is from a mercantile background or somehow tied into organized crime. Such PCs would know that a) the Arkonas are a very old family with several business interests overseas, b) they’re rumored to be heavily tied to the city’s underworld and criminal activities, and c) their palace is indeed within Old Korvosa. That information is likely enough to make the PCs cautious and realize there are political implications to their actions.

The Arkona Palace “is perched at the highest point atop Endrin Isle in Old Korvosa. The palace is home to the Arkona family alone; servants and guards dwell nearby in one of two outbuildings, and play no direct role in this adventure.” Indeed, the palace itself is a beautiful structure of Vudrani (Golarion’s analogue to India) style, and it will be fun to emphasize to the party how discordant the manicured gardens, golden pillars, minarets, and domes with slender spires are compared to the anarchic chaos throughout the rest of Old Korvosa.

As written, the module assumes that the PCs request an audience with one of the Arkonan nobles. If so, they’re intercepted by human guards, escorted to the palace to meet with the Arkona majordomo, then gain an audience with the patriarch Glorio Arkona. A highly political roleplaying scene ensues, with Glorio attempting to gain as much information out of the party as possible while expressing mild rebuke for the queen’s actions without saying anything of substance. He is keenly perturbed by Pilts Swastel, however; if the PCs have already dismantled Pilts and his mob, Glorio will smile broadly and tell them that yes, he has Vencarlo below the palace but no, sadly, releasing him would be too complicated. He’ll offer for the party to go get him, though… an obvious trap. If the PCs haven’t yet dealt with Pilts, Glorio won’t share any information and simply tell them to return if and when they have destroyed this petty “emperor” and opened the docks to trade once again. Of course, it’s possible the PCs attempt to infiltrate the palace in darkness from the very beginning. In that case, I imagine some sort of late-night confrontation with Glorio that proceeds more or less down the same path.

Events within the palace could proceed in several ways. Maybe the PCs fight their way into the palace from the beginning. Maybe they attack Glorio once he refuses to give up Vencarlo. Maybe the party leaves nicey-nicey and breaks into the palace later. Or maybe they simply take the bait, shrug, and follow Glorio’s instructions to enter the labyrinthine dungeons below the palace. For his part, Glorio will attempt to avoid direct confrontation, if possible, as he wants to gauge the PCs’ strength and see if they can be possible pawns in overthrowing the queen. Even if he discovers them invading his home, he’s unlikely to directly attack them, and will instead bargain (attempting to bribe or recruit them) if cornered.

Once the palace is on alert, Glorio sends the human guards and servants away, and sends two pairs of rakshasas to hunt the PCs. They’ll stay in human form until one of them dies, at which point they’ll revert into a humanoid-animal form. Once the ruse is broken, all bets are off and the rakshasas won’t try to hide their true nature, including Glorio. They will also fight to the death to protect their family secret.

I won’t detail the palace here. Suffice it to say, the building is an 18-area, two-story “dungeon” with valuables to steal if the PCs are so inclined. The primary antagonists are the four rakshasas plus Glorio, and they can activate fun palace guardians like an animated marble elephant, a fountain water elemental, and a genie or two, plus a small assortment of traps. Honestly, it sounds like a fun scene for a tense initial setup, where the PCs are searching for the way to the dungeons and the rakshasas are hunting the PCs, and then a great setting for cool battles.

The large garden’s elephant statue is the key to gaining access below the palace, which either Glorio shows the PCs or they discover themselves. There the party finds a vast underground grotto with a hidden pier (smuggler’s sea cave!), a secret Vudran temple completely revealing their rakshasa nature, and, finally, the Vivified Labyrinth, a deadly obstacle course built by the Arkonas to house prisoners. If needed, there is a giant crab and another rakshasa before the dungeons if the party is craving more combat. Most likely I’ll skip these.

There are complex rules around the labyrinth, because it’s essentially five separate maps, four of which periodically rotate. I’m unlikely to be running Curse of the Crimson Throne in a game system that uses tactical, grid-based maps, so these rules are lost on me. The idea is cool, though, and I’ll find a way to describe a dungeon whose sections rotate periodically, making it easy to get lost. Prowling the halls are the Arkonan matriarch rakshasa (who’s entered hunting the PCs), a bound darksphinx, and almost a dozen traps. It feels like… too much, honestly. I’ll have to feel out my table and decide how excited they are for a surprise-laden, confusing deathtrap that feels built by Arcade. I can imagine keeping the spirit of it or hand-waving a lot of the hazards, depending on the table. The showdown with the matriarch, Meliya Arkona, is the required combat, and the idea of her using her knowledge of the labyrinth’s details to her tactical advantage is cool.

Eventually, the party presses on to find Vencarlo Orisini, aka Blackjack, who is being held prisoner deep below the palace by a demonic, torturing fiend. The logic for his (and the queen’s seneschal Neolandus Kalepopolis) insertion deep into this dungeon of horrors is perplexing. According to the previous section with the rakshasa patriarch Glorio, he’s kept Vencarlo and the seneschal to use against the queen, so why hand them over to a sadistic torturer, so deep in a deathtrap labyrinth that he won’t reasonably expect to see them again? It’s a confusing twist, and it makes more sense to me that they’re valuable political prisoners and that the rakshasa is protecting rather than torturing. For me, then, the darksphinx is the vigilant guardian outside the final cells, with no sadistic fiend.

In my version of the story, Vencarlo hasn’t been tortured or meaningfully mistreated. The party finds him weary, somewhat malnourished, humbled, and without any gear. He’ll explain that he’s been protecting a valuable person these past weeks, and the queen and her assassin’s guild have been hunting him (the existence of the guild will be news to the PCs, though they likely will have encountered the Red Mantis assassins at his home). He had sought shelter from the Arkonas, and instead he and his charge were imprisoned, a miscalculation on Vencarlo’s part. Then he’ll reveal the queen’s seneschal, Neolandus. The seneschal is similarly weak but unharmed, and—perhaps with some urging from Vencarlo—can share the full horror of the queen’s corruption, the murder of the queen, and his flight from the castle.

The module reveals how the Labyrinth sections rotate, via undead mastodons, with a minor expectation that the party will fight them. It’s a cool detail, but totally unnecessary. If the party is interested in exploring how the dungeon works, this wrinkle is available. Otherwise, the end of the chapter is completing the quest Field Commander Cressida initiated in Chapter 1 and discovering the seneschal. The Arkonas are assumed to be vanquished, but as with all villains in an AP, if either the patriarch or matriarch of the rakshasas escape, there’s every opportunity for them to be a thorn in the PCs’ sides later.

Chapter 4: Conclusion

Finally, the PCs have a tangible witness to Queen Ileosa’s treachery. Both Neolandus and Vencarlo will want to escape Korvosa, and Vencarlo will suggest they do so via the same tavern in the nearby town of Harse used to house Trinia Sabor that kicked off Book 2. And hey… isn’t there a smuggling pier in the Arkona basement? Assuming the PCs have no other business to conclude within Old Korvosa, they can sneak their way out via one of the Arkona’s ships and make their way to Harse.

There’s not an obvious way I see to get the players all the information about the queen except exposition dump from Neolandus as they journey to safety. When he hears about the queen’s recent public appearance, he can identify her new crown as tying to a legend about Korvosa’s founding, connected to an ancient dragon and somehow tied to the Shoanti. However it’s done, the end of Book 3 is a turning point in the AP—fully exposing Queen Ileosa as the Big Bad Evil Guy in the campaign who must be somehow overthrown.

The conclusion assumes the party leaves the city stealthily and do not return to Korvosa proper. Thus, they don’t know how the queen’s martial rule, newfound powers, or sinister allies are reshaping the city while they’ve been in Old Korvosa or thereafter. That’s a fun backdrop I’ll find a way to emphasize somehow as Book 3 wraps up.

Deconstructed Escape From Old Korvosa

With the seneschal Neolandus delivered to safety, Book 3 is done and the AP is half finished!

With some of the complexity stripped away, Escape From Old Korvosa is straightforward: Cressida asks the PCs to find a missing Vencarlo, which takes them to the Old Korvosa district. Following his trail leads them to clash with a mob leader, Pilts Swastel, and a sinister noble family, the Arkonas. The party defeats both, liberating Old Korvosa from the chaos currently gripping it, and, more importantly, discovering someone who can help them bring Queen Ileosa to justice. What the PCs will do with this discovery is for Book 4!

As always with my articles, please comment below or send me an email at jaycms@yahoo.com. I’m always eager to hear from GMs who have run this AP to know what they think of my edits and different choices they made.