From Sandpoint to Sakakabe: A Jade Regent Campaign: Introduction

Hey, folks!

Months ago, I started running one of Paizo's published Adventure Paths for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. If you don't know, Pathfinder is a highly modified version of the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 ruleset, created kind of like an alternate reality after D&D 4th Edition launched and was terrible. It carries over much of 3.5E's races, classes, skills, and so forth, but over the past ten years, it's grown into a juggernaut of a system that allows players to build almost any character they can imagine, but can be a bit... a bit overwhelming to new players.

My friends are generally pretty experienced with the system. However, in all the years we've been playing, we've never made it past the second book of any published Adventure Path. As we started up our new campaign, Jade Regent, I decided that I was going to tip the scales significantly further than usual in the players' favor, hoping the increased power and flexibility of the Gestalt Character rules would keep them alive and progressing instead of, say, dying aboard a burning ship as it sinks into Korvosa's harbor.

I began posting this series over on the Paizo Campaign Journal Forum, but sadly, they don't let you go back and edit old posts there, and I kind of consistently misspelled two of the players' names. So I'm rewriting it here, in my domain, where I have unlimited power over the words I publish. Behold my unstoppable editing might.

Let me introduce the cast:

ZAPHKAEL, a human(-ish) Forgemaster Cleric/Sorcerer. Created in a lab on the planet Apostae, the gray-skinned and red-eyed Zaphael spent the formative years of his life in a simulation of Golarion in which he was born and raised a dwarf. Through some miracle or random happenstance, he escaped from this simulated reality, stumbled through a mysterious portal, and ended up in the woodlands outside of Sandpoint. He was found and rescued by Koya Mvashti, a local fortune teller and cleric of Desna, who nursed him back to health and helped him learn about the apparently "real" world he now found himself in.

MOLIDO, a half-orc Spirit Slayer/Invulnerable Rager. Found as a youth and raised by the elven ranger Shalelu, Molindo learned the arts of hunting and survival from his adopted mother/big sister. Stoic and not particularly concerned with personal grooming, the hulking half-orc carries an axe nearly as large as he is and dresses in dark clothing that further accentuates his brooding, intimidating demeanor.

LORD BRIXTON VONDRESSLER, an aasimar Paladin/Oracle of Life. Heir to a noble estate in Magnimar, Brixton is tall and strikingly handsome, with (literally) leonine features that are a direct result of his celestial heritage. His family shares an old friendship with the Mvashtis of Sandpoint, stemming from a disastrous hunting accident decades ago. Brixton was asked by letter from Koya to travel to Sandpoint, as the old seeress claims to have been sent a vision from Desna that his presence would be important in events soon to unfold.

HANZO HATTORI, a human Rogue/Ninja. An immigrant from across the sea, Hanzo was trained in stealth and assassination from a young age. He came to Sandpoint only recently, taking up work as a simple farmhand and keeping his distance from others, though he always seemed strangely observant whenever Ameiko Kaijutsu was around.

These are their adventures, as fate brings them together for a simple mission that will eventually lead them to a greater destiny.