Summary

A little further exploration of Gaedren's fishery led you to a spider's nest in the bowels of a rotten ship before you returned to Yargin Balko's office.  Unfortunately for Jaysac, you were unable to find any information within his files with more information about your expulsion from the acadamae.

Upon leaving the fishery it is apparent that something has gone very wrong with the city:

     Korvosa is in flames.  Smoke rises on the horizon.  The frantic clang of alarm bells sing out in harmony with a multifarious cacophony of screams, the clash of steel on steel, moans, and even the periodic detonation of arcane power.  A wing of Sable Company griffon riders swoops overhead, angling toward Castle Korvosa at a breakneck pace.  One of the badly wounded mounts rains blood down on the street around you before it succumbs and crashes headlong into a statue, taking its rider and itself to a bone-crunching demise.  The others don't slow or even look back toward their fallen comrade.  
     Amid the chaos the voice of a Korvosan herald cuts through the din:  "The king is dead! Long live the Queen!" only to be shouted down by ragged cries of "Hang the Queen!" and "The usurper whore must die!"  
    You can even see contingents of an outside military force, Hellknights from the Order of the Nail, clad in dark iron armor and horned helms putting down rioters and looters.  
   Every time you venture into the streets you face angry mobs, Imps and Pseudodragons gone wild, mad prophets, and many other dangers.


You return to Zellara's home, where her spectre appears to you and explains that she brought you together to see the city through the coming disaster.


Among the encounters you've had in the streets thus far you encountered Grau Soldado.  At first glance he seemed like nothing but a filthy drunk but under the grime, vomit, and mud you recognize him as a formerly well liked Watch Sergeant.  He manages to slur through an explanation of his problems, and further explain them when you sober him up at the temple.  In short he was involved in a love triangle with two other important figures in the city: Vencarlo Orisini and Sabina Merrin.  Orisini is one of Korvosa's most talented sword-fighters who tutored Grau in his youth.  Grau was not the only exemplary student; Sabina Merrin was a student that Orisini became completely infatuated with.  Unfortunately Grau was also smitten by Sabina.  To complicate matters further, Sabina is far more interested in Women than men.  Eventually this lead to a three way confrontation of frustration and misunderstandings, with Grau successfully engineering a duel between Orisini and Sabina, a duel that resulted in the loss of two of Orisini's fingers and a scar on Sabina's cheek.  Sabina left the school, and when Orisini discovered Grau's hand in the events, expelled him in a rare rage.  


Currently, you are resting at the temple and recuperating from the effects of some nasty poison.

March 6th session summary

I promise I will write it tomorrow.

Fun with Poison

So there's a fair amount of debate on exactly how poisons work in PathFinder, when they take effect, how they stack and when the saves take place.

The official PRD has a section on Afflictions with a subsection specifically about Poison. After combing the message boards, there's a fair amount of debate along with several interpretations/suggestions on how they should work:

• The closest official word is in the Poisons Thread as that's the only one with any comments from Bulmahn (the lead designer). But toward the end he seems to reconsider his stance a bit but never posts back any revisions to his initial view.
  
• FarmerBob has a good post in this thread arguing the point to track the poison on the initiative count where it was contracted as opposed to the player's initiative count. For simplicity the RAW has it tracked at the player's turn and Bulmahn also has a post in the previous thread as to why that's the case.
  
• FarmerBob posts another pretty detailed example of how he runs poisons here, though this interpretation makes them considerably weaker than the word from Bulmahn in the first thread. Basically, his interpretation makes a character fail 2 saves before they end up taking any of the effect of the poison. If we think poison is too powerful, this is one way to weaken it a bit.
  
• Nethys has a post in this thread that also has an interesting variant interpretation compared to the RAW (though her example of the RAW is wrong, from the other threads it's pretty clear the Initial Round of her example should all be DC 14 saves). Her version ends up in a lot fewer rolls and less damage in the first round but the stacking of multiple hits has potentially greater overall effect due to the increased DC.

I mostly just wanted to gather this together in one spot and allow this post to be a place for any discussion we may have on the topic.