Interlude

So ends the first part of the "Rise of the Runelords" adventure path called "Burnt Offerings". At this point, most of the party is 4th or 5th level. Gen Con is coming up and with it comes the final Pathfinder rules. After a two week break, we will resume playing and convert the characters to those rules.

The group found notes and a journal in Nualia's chamber. Here is a rundown of those notes for reference.

Nualia's Notes

The notes outline her plans to send an army of goblins against Sandpoint and to burn the town to the ground, not only to offer it all as a burnt offering to Lamashtu in hopes of being made a half-fiend, but to fuel the runewell in the catacombs below.

The notes go on to detail how to cause sinspawn to manifest from the runewell, and that if one were to overextend the runewell’s stores, it would be deactivated. Nualia wasn’t sure how to reactivate it, and several times stresses that the runewell shouldn’t be used much until after Sandpoint is razed and the deaths of hundreds of angry citizens and goblins have refilled the well.

Nualia's journals and notes were pieced together to find out a little of her story.

A foundling raised by Sandpoint’s religious leader, a man named Ezakien Tobyn, Nualia’s childhood was lonely and sad. Her unearthly beauty made the other children either jealous or shy, and many of them took to playing cruel jokes on her. The adults in town weren’t much better, many of the superstitious Varisians viewed Nualia as blessed by Desna, a sort of “reverse deformity.” Rumors that her touch or proximity could cure warts and rashes, that locks of her hair brewed into tea could increase fertility, and that her voice could drive out evil spirits led to endless awkward and humiliating requests over the years. Nualia felt more like a freak than a young girl by the time she came of age, so when Delek Viskanta began to court her, she practically fell into his arms in gratitdue.

Knowing that her father wouldn’t approve of a relationship with a Varisian because he wanted her to remain pure so that she could join one of the prestigious Windsong Abbey convents, they kept the affair secret. They met many times in hidden places, a favorite being an abandoned smuggler’s tunnel under town that Delek had discovered as a child. Before long, Nualia realized she was pregnant. When she told Delek, he revealed his true colors and, after calling her a slut and a harlot, fled Sandpoint rather than face her father’s wrath. Nualia’s shock quickly turned to rage, yet she had nowhere to vent her anger. She bottled it up, and when her father discovered her delicate condition, his reaction to her indescretions only furthered her shame and anger. He forbade her to leave the church, lectured her nightly, and made her pray to Desna for forigeness. In so doing, he nurtured her growing hate.

One night when she was about seven months pregnant, and she flew into a frenzy. She miscarried her child later that night, a child whose monstrously deformed shape she only glimpsed before the midwives stole it away to burn it in secret. The double shock of losing a child and the realization she had been carrying a fiend in her belly for seven months was too much. Nualia fell into a coma.

As Nualia slept, she dreamed unhealthy dreams. Fueled by wrath and the taint of Lamashtu, Nualia became further obsessed with the cruel demon goddess and the conviction that her wretched life was inflicted on her by those around her. She came to see her angelic heritage as a curse, and the demon-sent dreams showed her how to expunge this taint from her body and soul, replacing it with chaos and cruelty. When she finally woke, Nualia was someone new, someone who didn’t flinch at what Lamashtu asked of her. She jammed her father’s door shut as he slept, lit the church on fire, and fled Sandpoint.

The locals assumed Nualia had burned in the fire, a tragedy made all the worse by the death of Father Tobyn as well. Yet Nualia lived. She fled to Magnimar, where she enlisted the aid of a group of killers known as the Skinsaw Men. Seeing a kindred spirit in the tortured woman, the mysterious leader of the Skinsaw Men gave Nualia a medallion bearing a carving of a seven-pointed star called a “Sihedron medallion.” Nualia learned that she had a larger role to play, and that her dreams were a map to her destiny. Taking the advice to heart, Nualia returned to Sandpoint, and found herself drawn to the brick wall in the smuggler’s tunnels where she and Delek had conceived her deformed child. Nualia bashed down the wall, and in so doing, discovered the Catacombs of Wrath and the quasit Erylium, also a follower of Lamashtu. For many months, Nualia studied under Erylium’s tutelage. During this time, Nualia received another vision from Lamashtu—a vision of a monstrous goblin wolf imprisoned in a tiny room. In Nualia’s dreams, she learned that this creature, a barghest named Malfeshnekor, was also one of Lamashtu’s chosen. If she could find him and free him, he would not only help her achieve her vengeance against the town of Sandpoint, but he would be the key in cleansing her body of what she had come to see as her “celestial taint.” Nualia wanted to be one of Lamashtu’s children now. She wanted to become a monster herself.