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

Over the past week, I’ve broken down each book of the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path, one of the most beloved APs that Paizo has ever created. I won’t restate my caveats for the seventh day but will again emphasize that any changes I made to the AP were to my tastes only, creating the AP that I want to run. Essentially, you’re seeing my initial GM prep in action. My hope is that, at the very least, these articles have inspired you to tackle your own revisions as a GM, whether they be to CotCT or another adventure.

Today, I’m stepping back from the details and examining the story overall. Specifically, my goal today is to assemble the Adventure Path into ten chapters, with milestones at the end of each chapter that might represent a level-up for the PCs. Put another way, these are the ten big story beats of the campaign, with pauses and downtime between them.

But wait, you may be asking with a puzzled expression, doesn’t Pathfinder go to twenty levels, and wasn’t the AP originally designed to take characters from level 1 to level 16? Fair enough, but a) I’ve changed or dropped many parts of the adventure as written (including a whole book!), so it’s worth looking at the relative pacing of each story milestone, and, more importantly, b) as I’ve said repeatedly, I won’t be running Curse of the Crimson Throne in any edition of Pathfinder or Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve GMed long campaigns in these systems and know them well, but I find them too GM prep-heavy for my current TTRPG tastes. I’m on the hunt for a lighter heroic system, and you can follow along on my quest starting here.

Many of the games I’m consideringeither don’t have strict levels (e.g. ICONS) or, more commonly, have ten levels of progression instead of twenty (e.g. Daggerheart, 13^th Age, Vagabond). Indeed, the only system I’m considering with twenty levels is Nimble 2. In any case, a “10 chapter” structure makes a lot more sense for the campaign I’ll be running.

Based on all the subtractions and changes I’ve made to the AP as written, here are the chapters of the campaign as I see them, with downtime between each major story beat:

Chapter 1: A City Gone Mad (Book 1, Ch 1-2)

• The PCs are summoned to the home of a fortune teller, Zellara. She tells them the whereabouts of their shared enemy, Gaedren Lamm, and does a Harrow reading to tell their fortunes.
• The party plans and then infiltrates Lamm’s fishery hideout, killing or capturing him.
• In Lamm’s loot there is an expensive brooch. Unfortunately, there is also Zellara’s head and magical Harrow deck.
• The PCs emerge from the lair to find their city of Korvosa in chaos with riots over the king’s sudden death. The PCs navigate the chaos, encountering various obstacles and hazards.
• A merchant informs the PCs that the brooch is Queen Ileosa’s and she has posted a reward for it. The PCs return the brooch to the castle and have an audience with the queen. She recruits them to join the Korvosan Guard. They begin training. [Level 2]

Chapter 2: The Queen’s Scapegoat (Book 1, Ch 2-4)

• Field Marshall Cressida sends them on various quests as part of the Korvosan Guard. She learns to trust them, and the PCs begin to question the queen’s motivations. During one of these quests, the PCs befriend Vencarlo Orisini, a renowned fencing teacher and confidant of Cressida.
• Cressida sends the PCs to find Trinia, an artist whom the queen has accused of killing the king. They either hand her to authorities or she escapes. If the latter, someone else is accused and sentenced for execution.
• After another quest, the PCs attend the execution. The folk hero Blackjack intervenes and whisks the scapegoat away. The PCs must choose if and how to help.
• Cressida meets with PCs and tells them that they must leave the Guard after the events of the execution. [Level 3]

Chapter 3: Outbreak (Book 2, Ch 1-2)

• Vencarlo invites the PCs to his home, where Trinia (or the scapegoat) is surprisingly there. He asks them to escort her outside the city to a hideaway.
• An NPC seeks out the PCs when they return to Korvosa, asking to help a sick girl. At the girl’s home, they meet a priest of Abadar named Ishani.
• Ishani invites the PCs to his temple, the Grand Vault. On the way they see signs of sickness everywhere, and the temple is overrun by infected wanting help.
• Ishani asks the PCs to introduce him to Cressida. At the Korvosan Guard, they meet agents of the queen sent to deal with the plague outbreak.
• The PCs pursue various rumors to discover the origins of the plague or to combat it. Eventually, they realize they must confront the queen’s agents. [Level 4]

Chapter 4: Hospice of the Blessed Maiden (Book 2, Ch 3-4)

• The PCs enter the agents’ base, the Hospice of the Blessed Maiden. Though at first it seems to be a legitimate hospice, it eventually becomes clear the queen’s agents are perpetuating the sickness.
• The PCs fight the forces in the hospice, including the head Dr. Davaulus.
• The PCs discover a cargo lift to a lower temple beneath the hospice. There they discover and fight agents of Urgathoa. They also discover research notes on the plague’s origin and the way to create a cure.
• Either directly or through friends, the PCs concoct a cure for the plague. The city celebrates the PCs as heroes. [Level 5]

Chapter 5: Emperor of Old Korvosa (Book 3, Ch 1-2)

• The PCs hear about a dramatic and disturbing public appearance of the queen. Cressida asks them to find Vencarlo, who has disappeared.
• Avoiding the queen’s new militia, the Gray Maidens, the PCs enter Old Korvosa and seek out Vencarlo’s home. It’s empty, and they fight Red Mantis assassins there.
• Pilts Swastel has crowned himself the Emperor of Old Korvosa. His mob confronts the PCs and, eventually, they visit his “palace.”
• From Pilts, the PCs learn that Vencarlo was taken by the Arkonas, a noble family. They either defeat him or survive his palace. [Level 6]

Chapter 6: The Arkonas (Book 3, Ch 3-4)

• The PCs plan and enter Arkona Palace, where they meet the Arkonan patriarch Glorio.
• Glorio sets his family to hunt the PCs. The party discovers that the Arkonas are secretly shapeshifting rakshasas and discover a labyrinth beneath the palace where Vencarlo is imprisoned.
• The PCs navigate the labyrinth and fight the last of the Arkonas and a darksphinx guardian.
• The PCs find and liberate Vencarlo, but also discover who he had been protecting the queen’s former seneschal Neolandus. The seneschal has information that can topple the queen politically.
• The party smuggles Vencarlo and Neolandus out of Old Korvosa to the same hideout where they’d kept Trinia. [Level 7]

Chapter 7: The Cinderlands (Book 4, Ch 1-2)

• The PCs recover in the hideout in Harse and have a strategy counsel with Vencarlo, Neolandus, and the hideout’s owner, a Shoanti retired adventurer named Thousand Bones.
• Thousand Bones tells the PCs of the fangs of Kazavon, likely the source of the queen’s power. He says the history of the fangs and ways to defeat them lie to the north in the Shoanti homeland of the Cinderlands.
• The PCs follow Thousand Bones’ instructions to the Cinderlands and meet the Shoanti Skull Clan leader, One-Life.
• One-Life gives the PCs six possible quests to earn the respect of the Sun Shaman, who holds the information they seek. They begin accomplishing the quests. [Level 8]

Chapter 8: Flameforge (Book 4, Ch 2,4)

• After several quests, the PCs speak with the Sun Shaman, who gives them a last arduous trial to perform. The PCs perform the trial, and the Sun Shaman is finally ready to divulge information on the fangs.
• Just then: the Sun Clan’s home is attacked by Red Mantis assassins, who have finally found the PCs. They are aided by a local gargoyle tribe. A large-scale battle ensues.
• After the battle, the Sun Shaman tells the PCs the full history of the fangs of Kazavon. He performs a ritual to imbue the PCs and one weapon each with divine power.
• The PCs make their way back to Korvosa, unsure what awaits them. [Level 9]

Chapter 9: Assault on the Castle (Book 6, Ch 1-2)

• In Korvosa, the PCs find a city under martial law. They meet with their allies and Cressida outlines eight quests that will weaken Queen Ileosa’s hold and allow Neolandus’ story to unseat her.
• The PCs perform the quests, including defeating a false hero, the queen’s dragon ally, the new seneschal wizard, and clearing out Red Mantis assassins, Gray Maiden leaders, and devil allies from Castle Korvosa.
• In the throne room, the PCs confront Queen Ileosa. The battle reveals she is merely a simulacrum, and the real queen is outside the city seeking immortality. [Level 10]

Chapter 10: Queen Ileosa (Book 6, Ch 3-4)

• The PCs travel to the swampy Mushfens and seek out an ancient ruin called the Sunken Queen. There they encounter boggard patrols and their devilfish god as guardians.
• Within the Sunken Queen, the PCs must defeat the queen’s remaining allies. They find her performing a ritual at the Everdawn Pool, a ritual that will make her immortal at the cost of thousands of Korvosan lives.
• As the PCs try and disrupt the ritual, the queen summons blood construct minions and the epic final boss battle commences.
• As Queen Ileosa falls, the Everdawn Pool explodes as the dragon Kazavon’s skeleton emerges and begins reforming. The PCs disrupt the process, sending the Sunken Queen to crumbling and sinking below the swamp.
• The PCs escape and have saved Korvosa! They return heroes.

There’s my edited-and-culled version of the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path, in ten parts. Truth be told, I’m not entirely happy with the relative size and flow of those parts. The only place where I couldn’t find a natural break was in Chapter 7, because accomplishing all of One-Life’s quests makes the chapter too beefy and Chapter 8 too slim, so there will have to be a downtime beat in there for some reason. Chapters 9 and 10 are potential combat marathons, which might get a little repetitive. Also, since I’ve dropped Book 5 from the AP entirely, it’s easy to cut each of the remaining books into two Chapters each. The problem with doing so, though, is a fairly predictable “chapter of events, chapter in one location” pattern starting at Chapter 3. Still, I’ve stared at my Plottr story beats for a long time, and this flow makes the most sense to me.

After all this deconstruction and reconstruction, what do I think of this Adventure Path, so beloved by so many Pathfinder enthusiasts over the past two decades? In a word: it’s great. The party begins with a shared bond and deep ties into the city they’re protecting. Unlike a lot of APs, the Big Bad Evil Guy is telegraphed from the beginning of the campaign, and both she and the party maneuver throughout the AP to gain the upper hand. NPCs feel real and linked throughout the story, with relatively few “Huh? Why are we doing this?” moments that plague a lot of other stories. My only criticism is the lengthy time away from Korvosa represented by Books 4 & 5, with both books offering similar prizes (ways to defeat the queen). As I said, I think the answer is to run one of these books but not both, and for me the Shoanti plotline is more interesting than a haunted megadungeon (though I think it’s just as satisfying story-wise to make the other choice). Other than fully dropping one book, I’m faintly amazed at how few edits I made to the overall structure and characters.

I’m really enjoying reading through my APs and prepping to run them, and I hope it’s been enjoyable to follow along in my process. I started a new job which is slowing down my writing velocity, but rest assured that I’ll keep chugging along each weekend and holiday. Soon, I’ll pluck another Adventure Path off my shelf to deconstruct, so please comment below or email me at jaycms@yahoo.com to ensure the next series is even better.