Props to my players, who just had one of the best boss encounters I have ever seen. The PCs snuck into the Stag Lord's bandit camp, the Surtova siblings greeting the bandit on watch with alcohol they had gotten from a previously defeated group of bandits that was meant to be delivered to the Stag Lord. They were let in, and guided to the Stag Lord's room by one of his lieutenants. On the way, they saw that the Stag Lord had a caged Owlbear he was keeping as a pet.
At the same time, Ella was invisible and scouted out the place, noting where every bandit in the fortress was before returning to her companions.
The siblings got the idea to have Ella set the owlbear loose while still invisible, to cause chaos and hopefully kill a few bandits. At the same time, The siblings and Amiri would ambush the Stag Lord in his own room--forcing him to fight in close quarters where he couldn't effectively use his bow, which they'd previously heard he was incredibly adept with.
This plan went I think even better than they expected, as the owlbear tore through almost every bandit grunt, and one of the three lieutenants decided he was better served working with the group than against them, ended up in a duel with one of the other lieutenants, and he and Irena killed him in a single round. The owlbear killed the third lieutenant, and Ozzy got the honor of killing the Stag Lord, after Amiri and Ella softened him up a little.
Then Irena used some meat from the storage room she was already in to calm the owlbear and lure it back into its pen, so that they could keep it for defending the fortress in the future.
I am absolutely blown away by the teamwork and perfect execution. I don't think I've ever seen a D&D/Pathfinder plan not just survive contact with the enemy, but actually succeed better than the players intended.
Last night in Pathfinder we returned to Rise of the Runelords. Well, two of us returned, while we introduced two new players to Pathfinder and our GM played the beginning of the campaign he joined for the first time at the end.
Once upon a time two fighters, a cleric, and a ranger came together in Sandpoint and became world saving heroes. Now, again, a group of adventurers come together in the sleepy town of Sandpoint during a festival. Whether they will become heroes or a footnote in history is yet to be seen.
@scarlet-the-girl
The campaign unfolded as Sandpoint’s Swallowtail Festival began. Speeches were made—notably one Lonjiku Kaijitsu was absent from the speech he was meant to give, having claimed illness, although many in the crowd believed he was feigning it to get out of making a public appearance. Amongst the crowd were two travelers and two locals—our heroes. First is Tabot, the fresh faced and good willed rabbitfolk paladin of Aroden—a god well known to have died a century ago. He had come from out of town, going where the wind takes him, seeking a place to belong. Next is крыса (pronounced Kyrsa, and I will spell it as such going forward only because my phone cannot type Slavic letters so I would have to copy/paste their name every time). They are a small ratfolk wizard whose entire den was wiped out by a giant and who is now traveling seeking revenge. The two locals are Nanel and Mau Ornelos-Servos. Nanel is a human oracle with an unusual plant pinned to his ragged shirt. He eats people. But his…oddities…have gone unnoticed thus far. And Mau is a catfolk alchemist with a noticeable limp who walks with a cane—which doubles as his weapon as it conceals a blade within.
These four each found themselves at the festival. Nanel, Mau, and Kyrsa all separately made their way to the food stall of one Ameiko Kaijitsu. Tabot played tug of war and won easily with a Herculean show of strength. Ameiko greeted Mau and Nanel as familiar customers, and offered a sample of the fish curry she had made to serve at the Rusty Dragon later. She also told them about an alcoholic concoction she had brewed up. Mau took the challenge, stating that he was keen on ‘concoctions’. Nanel and Kyrsa followed suit. Mau drank the mixture down without flinching—he’d done worse to himself with his own alchemy. Nanel and Kyrsa were both a little queasy as the alcohol hit them. Mau chuckled and told Ameiko that it packed quite a punch—to which Ameiko decided to call the concoction Punch, and she offered Mau a jug of it since he’d handled it so well. She asked if any of them felt up for another. Mau accepted, and the other two refused to be outdone by the alchemist so they accepted as well. Mau once again drank it down without batting an eye. Nanel was ready for the alcohol’s kick this time and handled himself much better.
Kyrsa darted off and hurled in the nearby bushes as the alcohol was too much for the poor little rat.
The soon-to-be-heroes milled around some. Tabot made his way to a fencing range for a sword fighting contest. Kyrsa followed Nanel like a baby duckling to a game called Liar’s Dice. Kyrsa had immediately bonded with Nanel—unbeknownst to Nanel—due to Nanel also having trouble with the alcohol initially. Mau went to play a trivia game.
Tabot was given a practice blade by the town sheriff and sent into the ring to face a woman with some skill of her own in fencing. First point went to Tabot as he struck her right out the gate. They were separated, and this time the woman struck first. She did not strike Tabot—but instead disarmed him. Tabot, without considering the consequences, drew his actual blade. The sheriff immediately broke up the fight, told Tabot to get his practice blade, and disqualified him from that round, giving his opponent the point. However, final round Tabot took the woman’s technique and turned it back on her, disarming her and leaving her without a means to strike back. She yielded, giving the victory to the rabbitfolk.
While that was happening, Nanel and Kyrsa were playing dice. Each took a turn trying to trick the others, rolling hidden dice and either revealing the number or bluffing. Nanel won his round, and he also won Kyrsa’s round—calling their bluff. Kyrsa had a comeback, however, and won the house’s round. There was no prize, unfortunately, except bragging rights. Well—no prize officially. While the showman wasn’t paying attention Kyrsa snatched a small pouch off his belt and found themself a bit richer as it was filled with shiny expensive gemstones.
One person did win a prize legitimately, however. Mau found himself at a trivia game, where people had to name the number of residents in Sandpoint. Mau has a good head for numbers and a bit of a counting compulsion, so he gave the exact number. He won a potion of cure light wounds—something he would generally make for himself, but it never hurts to have an extra on hand as he would soon learn.
Tabot and Mau continued milling about the festival.
Kyrsa asked Nanel if this town had a brothel. Nanel just so happened to have been raised in the local brothel so he knew it quite well, and led the way. Nanel spent the next 45 minutes catching up with people while Kyrsa had some…intimate time…with a handsome halfling man with big naturals.
They returned to the festival just in time for Father Zantus to begin his speech, which would lead into a meal.
Or it would have. If he hadn’t been interrupted by the sound of a woman screaming and then many voices chanting:
“Goblins chew and goblins bite,
Goblins cut and goblins fight.
Stab the dog and cut the horse,
Goblins eat and take by force!
Goblins race and goblins jump.
Goblins slash and goblins bump.
Burn the skin and mash the head,
Goblins here and you be dead!
Chase the baby, catch the pup.
Bonk the head to shut it up.
Bones be cracked, flesh be stewed,
We be goblins! You be food!”
Everything descended into chaos as buildings and stalls were set ablaze by dozens of rampaging goblin raiders. Three made their way to where our party awaited, stunned for a moment by the sudden violence that had erupted around them.
Kyrsa reacted first, turning and throwing a spike of ice at the nearest goblin, staggering it. It limped forward, trying to muster up the fortitude to strike at the ratfolk, but couldn’t do anything as it dealt with the magically induced injury.
Nanel stepped up next to Kyrsa and asked them if they could keep a secret. They agreed. Then Nanel lunged forward and attempted to bite the goblin. His jaws closed around nothing but air as the goblin jerked away, but Kyrsa saw sharp inhuman teeth in that mouth.
On the other side of the battle, Mau drew his blade from his cane and took out a flask of a liquid that looked like bottled lava. In the goblin language Mau told the goblins that they were louder than the actual festivities, and to shoo. The goblins replied that since he spoke their tongue they’d cut out his tongue.
Mau took that as all the go ahead he needed to throw the flask. A string attached went taught and then broke a seal between two different liquids within the flask, making it volatile. When it hit the ground between the two goblins, it exploded violently. They leapt out of the way but still flames licked at them.
The two goblins charged in—one at Tabot and one at Mau. Tabot’s managed a small slash across his leg, while Mau’s left a rather nasty cut across his face—trying to make good on his threat.
Kyrsa backed away from the goblin threatening them and pulled out an alternate means of attack—a crossbow.
The goblin lunged at Nanel. But then Nanel stepped back, and with everyone but Kyrsa distracted with their own fights, he shot out a storm of thorns which punctured and killed the goblin that was attacking him, and also brutally injured the one attacking Tabot.
Mau turned and struck down the goblin that had attacked Tabot—having made a quick judgement call on which to attack based on it appearing more injured than the other. His attention to detail paid off, at he sliced straight through the goblin, leaving only one more in this particular batch.
The goblin struck Mau, leaving him bloodied, but it was his final act as Tabot stepped in and finished him cleanly.
There was no respite to be had, however, as the party heard more chanting and laughing and turned to see four more goblins setting a wagon on fire. One was the source of the chanting.
Once again Kyrsa acted most quickly, turning and trying to hypnotize the chanting goblin. Unfortunately he was too wrapped up in his chanting to be affected by their attempts to enthrall his mind.
Nanel dove under the nearby stage so no one would be able to see as he let his patron, Donyoku, take over, becoming a being of vines and a snapping maw.
Mau limped towards the fighting, and as he did he pulled out a vividly green concoction, which he downed. The mutagen caused him to take on lion-like features, becoming larger and stronger than before. He took a stand next to the stage, facing the goblins with blade at the ready—unaware of Donyoku beneath the stage mere feet from him.
Tabot charged forward and took a swing at the nearest goblin, striking it down.
Kyrsa decided to forego magic and instead aimed their crossbow at the chanting goblin. They landed a devastating blow against him.
Two of the goblins ran for the stage, having seen Nanel dive under it. One crawled under, saw Donyoku, and yelled that he was going to ‘kill it with fire’.
The goblin in question got eaten by the plant moments later. Mau heard disturbing eating noises coming from below the stage but had no idea what might be going on down there.
Instead he worried about the problem at hand, and stepped forward to meet the second goblin lingering near the stage, striking him down with a well-placed strike.
All that was left was the goblin who had been chanting. His chanting fell silent as he ran out of stamina to continue his bardic performance.
Tabot stepped forward and swung at the goblin, but swung wide over the smaller combatant.
Donyoku flew out from beneath the stage, pushing past Tabot with an ‘out of the way, pretty boy’. He attempted to chomp down on the goblin, but his vicious teeth clamped down on nothing but air as the goblin dodged again.
Mau made his way around to the other side and tried to strike the goblin down, to equally ineffective results. Kyrsa’s bolt shot true, however, leaving the goblin bleeding badly but still standing. After another ineffective bite from Donyoku, Mau decided the traditional method they were using was clearly not working, so it would be insane to just keep swinging his sword and hope it would work this time.
Instead he stepped back, and produced another explosive. The goblin had conveniently stepped back into the bushes, leaving a relatively clear shot for the alchemist to throw his bomb—only Donyoku would have to avoid the backlash, and quite frankly Mau didn’t know what that plant thing was, or if it was actually a friendly or just conveniently fighting the same creatures for now.
He threw the bomb right in the goblin’s face and the goblin ignited, leaving little of his body and nothing of his head remaining.
Father Zantus gathered our group together. He thanked us and called us heroes—The Heroes of Sandpoint he named us—and he offered his healing prowess before we returned to the fray, as we could still hear the sounds of violence elsewhere. We agreed, and he channeled positive energy enough to top us all off.
Kyrsa told the party that they heard something approaching from one of the roads leading to the square. We prepared ourselves for another fight. Mau handed over two potions of Cure Light Wounds to his current allies, one to Nanel (who had stealthily returned to normal and slipped back into the group, claiming he’d been attacked under the stage) and one to Tabot, as they were the ones who had taken the most punishment last fight.
Not long after we took our positions a nobleman and his dog ran for their lives from more goblins. He introduced himself as Aldern Foxglove, then said he was going to hide while we took care of these nasty things.
Chasing him were two more goblins on foot and a goblin commando atop a goblin dog mount.
Kyrsa opened the fight shooting a bolt at the rider, but it shot wide.
The goblin commando and his mount rushed in and brought Nanel low, knocking the oracle unconscious.
Tabot darted in and used his own potion of Cure Light Wounds to heal Nanel, awakening his unusual new ally.
One of the regular goblins ran at Kyrsa and landed a dangerous strike against the ratfolk, leaving them bloodied and looking a breath away from toppling over.
Mau hurled a bomb at one of the goblins on foot who was menacing Nanel on the ground. The bomb shot wide, but this may have been a boon as the radius of the explosion caught both the goblin he’d been aiming at and the mounted commando.
Kyrsa stepped away from the goblin attacking them, dodging around his blade and getting farther away to cast mage armor on themself. The goblin hassling them lunged forward with killing intent—but their blade clanked off the newly summoned mage armor harmlessly.
The commando and his mount split their attacks between Nanel and Tabot. Nanel was looking like he was on his last legs. Nanel tossed him his own potion of Cure Light Wounds, calling over ‘trade you!’, since Tabot had used his own on the oracle moments before. Then, while Tabot was distracted catching the potion, Nanel turned and bit off the goblin commando’s head, leaving his mount riderless.
Mau turned, and seeing the precarious situation Kyrsa was in, he left Nanel and Tabot to finish dealing with the goblin dog and made his way over to help the ratfolk. He swung in with his blade, delivering a devastating blow against the goblin, although not the killing blow. However now he had the goblin’s attention, giving Kyrsa some breathing room.
Tabot was barely hanging onto consciousness. He heard a voice in the back of his head telling him it wasn’t yet his time, and to make the wise decision.
Despite the voice encouraging him to take a moment to heal, Tabot attacked, striking at the goblin dog. A moment later Nanel finished it off with his quarterstaff.
Nanel then made a beeline for where Mau was fighting the last goblin while Tabot drank his potion, causing the voice to sound relieved before fading away.
When Nanel came up behind the goblin, Mau requested his assistance. Nanel agreed, and slung his quarterstaff around the goblin’s neck. Mau skewered the goblin—with enough fine control of the blade to not send it through Nanel as well.
The streets grew quiet, the sounds of chanting and violence finally fading away, only the lingering roar of the still burning fires in the distance breaking the sudden emptiness in the air.
Over the next few hours, as clean up began, the party were hailed as heroes—Father Zantus’ title for us, The Heroes of Sandpoint, getting around. Ameiko told us anyone who would like could stay at her inn for free for the next week while we figured out where we were going from here. Tabot and Kyrsa immediately agreed, as travelers with no other lodging, as did Nanel, whose normal living conditions were…not great. Mau didn’t intend to join them, as he was more of a solitary person and he had a home of his own to return to, but he did assure Ameiko he would still drop by for a visit, and maybe another drink.
The party split up for a bit, going about their business in town. Tabot went straight to the inn and met the tavern’s maid, a halfling woman named Bethana Corwin, who was holding down the fort until Ameiko got back. She showed Tabot to his room, which was a good sized room with two beds even though he only needed the one. Tabot asked her if she could give him a smaller room, with the intention being that this room would then be available for the inn to rent out to someone else and they would make more money.
Bethana was taken aback, but she told him she’d talk to Ameiko about it when she got back. Then she asked about the holy symbol emblazoned across Tabot’s tabard—the symbol of Aroden. She noted she hadn’t seen any Aroden worshippers in about a century, most had converted to Iomedae, and pointedly asked him if he was insane. Tabot assured her that he was perfectly sane, and he hoped that soon she would be seeing more worshippers of Aroden again. Bethana said she believed him that he had all his mental faculties, but that made her question just what else she believed.
Nanel and Kyrsa went back to the brothel to check up on everyone there. Everyone had been safe—they had barricaded the doors the moment they heard the commotion, and the fire hadn’t touched their building. Satisfied that his family was safe, Nanel went to his own home to gather his things to go spend a week at the Rusty Dragon. Kyrsa followed. Nanel lived in a small hovel—leaky, dirty, small, and hardly fit for a person to live in. Kyrsa acted as though it was the height of luxury. From their perspective, compared to the dens they’d lived in with their hundreds of family members in tight quarters, this seemed huge and homey.
After Nanel gathered his things, he and Kyrsa made their way to the Rusty Dragon. Again, the halfling maid showed them both their rooms. Kyrsa was intimidated by the side of their room—it was too big and empty. They asked Nanel—while Nanel was pushing the two beds together to make one big bed—if they could sleep with him. He said no, he needed his privacy, but suggested that if they were afraid of sleeping alone, maybe Tabot wouldn’t mind the company.
Kyrsa scurried away and found Tabot. They asked him if they could share a room because their room was too big. Tabot said he felt the same, that the room was too large. Kyrsa wanted to sleep at the foot of Tabot’s bed—not in a separate bed—because they didn’t want to sleep alone. Tabot was taken aback at first, but then agreed, if Kyrsa was fine with Tabot still asking Ameiko for a smaller room since they’d only need the one bed. Kyrsa agreed.
While all this was happening, Mau was selling the excess loot they had taken off the goblins—he had a good head for numbers so he’d felt he’d be best to sell the miscellaneous items and split the funds between them. As he finished the final store he needed to visit, a messenger stopped him. He told Mau that he had some bad news.
Mau’s house had burned down in the attack.
Mau and the messenger made their way to where the alchemist’s home had once stood, Mau in a shell shocked silence. They arrived to find a burnt out husk. The messenger said that they were going to go through and try to find anything that had survived the fire…but it didn’t look hopeful.
As Mau looked over the wreckage of what had been his home, he saw something suspicious. He picked his way into what would have been the interior of the home, and uncovered a wrapped torch deep within the rubble. Not thrown in through smashed glass or set ablaze from the outside, but placed *within* his home.
This wasn’t the behavior of a goblin raiding a city, causing random violence. This had been purposeful.
There was someone else pulling the strings. Someone with a grudge against the alchemist.
But try as he might, Mau couldn’t think of a single enemy he’d ever made.
But he knew one thing for sure—he was determined to find who was behind this and bring them down. And he knew just the allies to help him.
Tabot, Nanel, and Kyrsa came together in the Rusty Dragon, getting some food and drink. As they were talking, Mau entered the establishment with a stormy disposition. He told the others what had happened, and asked if they were planning to look into the goblin attacks further. They asked why they’d be looking into the attacks, and May told them about the evidence he’d found that someone besides the goblins was behind the attack. The others agreed that they would be looking into it in that case. Mau said he had a proposition, then, and offered to get them potions for half the cost they’d get them from the stores, which the others agreed sounded like a good deal.
As they were talking, Sheriff Balor Hemlock entered the inn. He thanked the party for their heroics the other day, and confided in the party that he suspected fowl play. Mau told him that he suspected the same, and told the sheriff what evidence he’d found. The sheriff asked the party to keep this on the down low for now, since we had no suspects yet it could be anyone and we didn’t want them catching wind that we were on their trail. We agreed.
The sheriff then let us know that wasn’t the only troubling news today. Father Zantus was to consecrate the tomb of the previous head priest of the temple, Father Tobyn, but he had noticed that after the attacks the door was ajar. The sheriff had convinced the cleric to stay away from the mausoleum until he could get some adventurers to look into it first and make sure it was safe. Those adventurers were, of course, us.
We agreed, thinking we might find a connection between whatever was happening in the mausoleum and the attack.
The sheriff noted that he knew Mau and Nanel as locals, but he wanted to know more about Tabot and Kyrsa. He asked them what they had travelled to Sandpoint for. Tabot told him that he was just traveling where the road took him, seeking a place where he might belong. Kyrsa bluntly said their entire family was dead, and they were looking to avenge them. The sheriff seemed to feel a bit awkward after that revelation, and left soon after. Not before letting the party know they had free reign to investigate the town—and he’d look the other way for minor transgressions done in the name of helping learn the truth of this attack—but don’t take advantage of his trust, no stealing or murdering or anything like that. Mau assured him that he didn’t believe any of them would do anything of the sort. No one gave Nanel or Kyrsa a second glance, completely unaware of how very wrong Mau was.
An hour later, Ameiko returned. She agreed to give Tabot and Kyrsa a smaller room—after some miscommunication between her and Tabot about his and Kyrsa’s relationship in which Ameiko was almost certainly yanking Talbot’s chain and Talbot kept making things more and more awkward.
The party bedded down for the night and slept soundly—unaware of someone scrying on the four of them somewhere far off.
The next day, Mau got up early, prepared his extracts, and then left the inn before the others got up. He wandered around town until he got close to the area where his house had been, then he downed a Disguise Self extract, and began asking around about if anyone had seen anyone suspicious around there that day or during the goblin attack.
Most people gave him little to go off of—everyone wanted to talk about the Heroes of Sandpoint but no one had any useful information about Mau’s burnt home. Until one man told him that he’d seen a cloaked figure surrounded by six goblin, and he could have sworn he saw the figure go into Mau’s house—although things were so chaotic who’s to say what really happened? Maybe it was Mau himself being chased by goblins?
Mau, of course, knew this not to be the case. So he had his first lead, vague as it was. It was definite proof that there was someone in league with the goblins, who had targeted him for some reason.
Mau returned to the inn not long after the others had gotten up and were eating breakfast. He joined them and told them what he’d learned.
The party agreed that their first priority should be looking into whatever was going on in the mausoleum. So they went to the temple of Desna, spoke to Father Zantus and Sheriff Hemlock, and then they approached the open mausoleum. They saw footprints leading into the crypt—one set human sized and six sets goblinoid, exactly the same as had been described to Mau in his investigation. Mau approached the open door, cautious but not hearing or seeing anything.
Until it was too late.
Two skeletons sprang from around the corner, both stabbing Mau, leaving him struggling to keep his footing as his blood spilled down his front.
Kyrsa sprang into action, shooting the one they could see most clearly with a magic missile. Unfortunately, it remained standing, if just barely. It was held together by negative energy and malice.
Both skeletons lunged at Mau again with swords and claws—and the cat alchemist crumpled in a heap at their feet, bleeding out.
Tabot darted forward, went through Mau’s pockets, and fetched a Potion of Cure Moderate Wounds he’d known the alchemist had taken off the last goblins they’d faced. As he poured the liquid into his mouth, his hand glowed, and the healing potion seemed exceptionally effective. All of Mau’s wounds closed as if they’d never been there, and his eyes flickered open, returning to consciousness.
Nanel moved past Tabot and Mau, taking it as the skeletons swung blades at him, and then he turned and tried to bludgeon the nearest skeleton—but his swing went wide.
The skeletons now had more than one target. One continued trying to remove all of Mau’s blood, while the other turned its blade on Nanel.
Nanel fell.
Mau determined that he needed to take these skeletons out NOW. So he took a gamble, recklessly scrambled to his feet—leaving himself open to attacks from both skeletons, but they both scraped against his armor rather than striking true, then he leapt backwards, pulled out a bomb, and threw it directly in the middle of the two skeletons. Both were caught in the edges of the blast, and were blown apart.
The party took a moment to catch their breath. They searched the tomb and found a used up Cloak of Bones. They also found Father Tobyn’s coffin—empty.
As the party reconvened with Sheriff Hemlock, Kyrsa voiced a troubling truth.
The attack had been a diversion. The real goal was something else entirely.
Oh man tonight was a doozy of a Pathfinder session. We had Hounds of Tindalos, a wraith, a slug out with two proto-shoggoths, horrible transformation causing infections caused by said proto-shoggoths that could only be cured via negative energy knocking you unconscious, an accidental party member kill by another party member while trying to cure said infection, Alazhra, meeting the alchemist jerk we’ve been following for a week now who is mildly insane now and we feel too bad to outright murder him anymore, also his assistant is kind of a sweetheart despite also being evil, so we’re bringing them both along for now even though it’s probably going to be a mistake once we run into Lowls and he inevitably betrays us. But until then he’s our little helper.
We entered the Mysterium and were locked in—just in time to be jumped by four Hounds of Tindalos. Berin shared his Smite Evil with us and we went to town. Jo, Ileark, Dia, and Berin killed one each. Then we began searching through the library seeking the angel statues that would open the way forward. We split up to cover more ground. Ileark found two on the southern side of the room—as well as the mirror that the Hounds spawned from, which to him made his body appear distorted and hag-like, much to his displeasure. He decided not to look at it.
In the middle section, Berin and Jo found a hidden cache with some healing supplies—including restoration scrolls, which on a meta level put me on edge.
Ileark went into the room across from the mirrors and found it haunted. He got out with 20 hp of damage—nearly 1/3 of his total. He mentally asked Igil to warn the others away from that room, but Igil had split up with the others to deactivate another angel statue he’d spotted along the western wall. Fortunately, although Dia walked into the Haunt room a moment later through a different door, the Haunt was no longer active and she left uninjured. She and Ileark both found some more healing supplies stashed nearby, as well as the ladder up to a spherical room where it would be safe to rest away from the Hounds.
Igil found the final angel, and Jo heard something nearby grind and shift. Ileark went to investigate the nearby valves. He noticed that now the mouths of the angels, which had been closed, were open. The others goaded him into sticking his hand into one, but all he found was a stone tongue. Jo tried another but found the same. They repeated this until Dia found a metal tongue that acted as a lever inside of the final statue’s mouth, which opened a spiral staircase downwards.
As the party descended the stairs, they heard a crashing noise and then the familiar howls of more Hounds of Tindalos up above. It would seem the mirror had a one minute reset once we killed them. We tried to hurry down the stairs, but the Hounds were hot on our heels. Ileark cast prayer to buff us and debuff them, while everyone else focused on running. At the bottom of the stairs was a key and key hole. Jo tried turning the key, and when she did the stairs retracted and the door above slammed shut. The three Hounds that got in behind us fell to the ground—one landing on Ileark who wasn’t fast enough on his feet to evade. The fourth Hound was locked upstairs.
Clearing out the Hounds a second time was fairly easy work. The bigger issue was that as we were down to one Hound, a Wraith reached out from a nearby wall and also began attacking us as well. However after sniping us and taking a few swipes and attacks of opportunity at us, it vanished and quit attacking, leaving us to come back another time.
Seeing as we couldn’t go into the wall after it, we had to just continue onwards. We found some items on the ground, Berin found the first angel immediately and activated it, and we began seeking the other three.
Ileark found the next one. However as he went to go turn its head, he found there were creatures in the room with it. Horrible melting fleshy pink oozes with too many eyes. He called the others over as the creatures turned hostile.
Jo immediately ran in and attacked with her spear, but missed, and was instead grabbed by one of the creatures’ tentacles, crushed, and infected by a mysterious affliction. Igil and Dia came up behind to try to identify the creatures, but couldn’t make heads nor tails out of them. Berin tried to get to us, but he’d been on the opposite side of the area and when he tried to take the shortest route to us he stumbled into a haunt that trapped him inside of a forcecage.
Ileark tried to Holy Smite the creatures—only to discover that these monsters weren’t evil and were barely effected. Dia tried to dodge past the creatures to get to Berin to help dispel the Forcecage as we heard him yell for help, but she got caught in a grapple as well, also failing her save against the mysterious affliction. Igil thought it through and realized dispel magic wouldn’t work on forcecage, so instead began Magic Missiling one of the creatures.
The creature that wasn’t grappling someone already went after Igil and grabbed him. It would have killed him outright, but Berin used Paladin’s Sacrifice to take the damage he would have taken, also suffering from the infection he would have been inflicted with.
Ileark feared for Igil’s life and decided to reach into a side of his spells he doesn’t touch often, and cast a Major Curse on the creature. The curse took hold, and caused the creature to only act 50% of the time. For the next two rounds it failed to act on its turn. In that time, Ileark used freedom of movement to get Igil out of the grapple and Igil got away—although he took an attack of opportunity and ended up infected by the attack too.
Jo finally got out of her grapple and began stabbing the shit out of the cursed foe, while Berin squared off against the other one. Berin’s opponent climbed the wall and began grabbing Berin from above. Initially Berin focused on getting free and healing, but eventually he lost his patience and just began attacking from his grappled position.
Down below, the cursed creature finally managed to act for one round, and it grabbed Ileark after he made the mistake of stepping too close to take a full attack action. Ileark saved against the infection, however, with the help of Dia’s Gallant Inspiration. Ileark then dimensional hopped away from the creature and healed. He tried to flame strike both creatures, but failed to overcome their spell resistance and ended up only hitting Jo :( He healed her with his last swift action channel for the day as an apology.
Then Jo finally killed the cursed slime monster dead, stabbing it through its many eyes with her spear until it oozed out onto the ground. Then she joined Berin on assaulting the other one. Ileark cursed it as well, and a few moments later it fell as well.
The party was absolutely spent after that long slugfest of a battle. Virtually all of their resources were gone, and almost all of them had some form of constitution drain. They decided to Dimension Door up to the spherical room, rest, and regroup in the morning.
Once they were in the spherical room, Ileark wondered if there was anything they could do to identify the strange rashes the others had gotten from those creatures, as they looked rather nasty. Stefan offered to ask the stars about it—a suggestion Berin wasn’t keen on, but given that we’d exhausted all other avenues, it was our only choice. Dia and Igil had no idea what those thing had been or what they could do. Stefan’s abilities, although they were a strain on him, were our only option.
Stefan began meditating. Then he began clawing at his skin. “It’s inside of you. It’s making you like it. We have to stop it.”
He explained that this affliction wasn’t quite an ordinary disease. The infection could be halted by a remove disease, but the only way to purge the body of it entirely was by being knocked unconscious by a negative energy ability. This would have a chance to burn away the affliction.
We brainstormed the idea of allowing the wraith to knock each of us out, but that thing had constitution damage of its own. It was too risky. Ileark suggested he prepare harm, which reduces someone to 1 hp, and inflict light wounds, which is the weakest negative energy spell. He figured that would be enough to knock someone out without killing them. The others agreed to this plan. For the night, they had Berin use his Remove Disease mercy to halt the spread.
The next day (after leveling up, yay lv 12 🎉) they began plan Cure by Inflicting. Berin was up first. Ileark cast Harm, got him down to 1 hp, then cast Inflict Light Wounds.
It still did enough damage that if it had been able to do 1 hp more would have killed Berin outright.
However it did expel the infection from his body, and Ileark healed Berin back up.
Next up was Jo. Jo didn’t want Harm cast on her. So instead she went gung-ho using her mace to hit the spot where the infection had taken hold until she was sufficiently tenderized. Then Ileark cast inflict light wounds. He did max damage, but thankfully left her within a safe range to survive. She expelled the infection, and was healed back up.
Next up was Dia, who took the same route as Jo, worried Harm would be too dangerous after seeing how close Berin had come to death. This proved smart, as even with the hp Dia had left herself with, Ileark rolled max on his Inflict spell and left her 1 away from death just like Berin. However she also expelled the infection, and was healed up.
Ileark was not having a good time.
Last up was Ileark’s brother, Igil. Ileark suggested Igil do the same as Jo and Dia and find some way to deal damage to himself because Harm was too risky with Igil’s delicate constitution. Igil agreed and cast a maximized mind thrust on himself. At the same time, Jo quite literally stabbed him in the back ‘to help’.
With Igil properly tenderized, Ileark tried to knock him out. But he must have been holding back this time, probably because it was Igil and he was afraid of seriously hurting him, because this time he didn’t do enough and left him conscious. They healed him a little to keep from risking his life and tried again. Same results a second time.
This was Ileark’s final Inflict for the day. If this one failed, they’d have to wait an entire day to cure Igil. Ileark cast the spell.
He dealt max damage.
Ileark killed Igil outright.
Ileark was immediately stunned in place by the backlash of his mental connection with Igil breaking as he *felt* the moment of Igil’s death. The moment *he* killed Igil, with his own magic, with his own hands.
And then things started moving again and he grabbed out a scroll of Raise Dead to fix his mistake.
But as he was doing that, Igil was having a chat in the afterlife.
With Alazhra.
Igil’s soul had gone to Alazhra’s cabin in Abaddon. Alazhra seemed to get a twisted amusement out of it being her son who killed Igil. She tried to find out how to get Igil to come back to her. Igil told her that he’s considering going back to religion but in the other direction. But if she really wants him back, she’s a Night Hag. Make him a deal. She told him that she’s so much more than a Night Hag. Had he forgotten that she is also a goddess? She was going to leave Igil with a parting gift, to remember this little foray by. And a single lock of Igil’s orange hair turned stark white, like in his night hag form. Then she ordered Igil to follow her, and she led him outside of the cabin, to see the shadowy nothingness beyond. This is what awaited in the afterlife here with Alazhra.
And then Igil was pulled back, and Ileark was hugging him and apologizing profusely. And then when he let go and Igil stood up, Dia hugged Igil even tighter.
Ileark and Igil spoke and there’s no hard feelings on Igil’s end. The infection was purged, and it was a necessary thing they did. As far as Igil is concerned, Ileark saved him, the specifics of how it happened in the first place don’t matter as much. Ileark doesn’t feel that way at all. He feels like he hurt his brother and sent him to a terrible fate facing Alazhra again, after all he’s done for him, after how many times he’s saved him, after he stood up to Alazhra for him, saved him from slavery, saved his life…Ileark feels he did something monstrous in return. Despite whatever his intentions were, this use of Desna’s power was wrong.
And it seems Berin has some conflicting feelings of his own, as he’s been in a rather dark mood since that day as well. They all decided to rest for a day afterwards, giving Ileark a day to reprepare spells and Igil a day to rest.
As they healed up, Jo tried an experiment with her Topaz Judgement for fast healing, getting into a fist fight with Dia to try to activate it and gain fast healing to heal herself and then share the healing with Dia. When she shared Topaz with Dia, the other being spoke to her. Her began furiously writing instead of fighting. A name, a member of the rabbitfolk, and 3 dimensional coordinates. Then she snapped out of it. Jo, of course, had questions. Dia decided now was time to reveal to her companions the truth of who and what she was. After asking Igil to scan the room for anything spying on them, she removed her glasses and revealed her true rabbitfolk form to those who didn’t already know the truth. She didn’t go into detail about her family for now, except to say ‘they’re mostly all awful people’. She also revealed that her people are originally not from Golarian, which could be why one of her people were one of the beings who made up Jo’s consciousness.
The next day, they Dimension Doored back down to the second floor, and returned to the room where they fought the creatures Stefan had now identified for them as Proto-Shoggoths. Igil also informed us that he’d seen two more dead down the hallway. As we discussed, Jo noticed an invisible eye on the wall. She used her witch hunter skills to track the trail of magic it left behind to see where it came from, and pinpointed the door its caster must be behind. She pointed it out to the rest of us, and we went to investigate. We heard voices behind the door. Berin senses evil beyond the door, so we decided not to play it safe and were ready to go in full force.
The door was barricaded. We didn’t have time for that bullshit, and we had an Igil with full spellslots. One disintegrate later and the door was no longer an issue.
What we found within was the alchemist we’d been chasing for the past week, Lowls’ associate Mund, and presumably one of his creations, a man who looked much like Mund but with clawed hands and a cheerful, subservient disposition.
Mund had no idea who we were. He was scattered by the week in isolation and terror, his mind damaged by the stress and trauma. He believed Lowls was coming back for him, and wouldn’t hear otherwise. Jo told him that we could get him and his associate out of here under the church’s protection—although since he’d been helping with Lowls’ project he’d have to be taken into church custody afterwards. Mund seemed agreeable if only because he saw no other way out at the moment, especially since we’d destroyed his barricade. So he had his assistant pack up his alchemical supplies, and they both followed us out.
Mund and his assistant showed us how far the haunt that had caused Berin to temporarily be trapped in a forcecage extended, using chalk to line the floor where it’s influence ended, giving us a safe path to the third angel. He also knew the location of the fourth. He drew us a map. With that knowledge, Igil cast Telepathic Bond, leaving himself out of the link since he was already mentally bonded to Ileark and could communicate to them through him. Then he suggested he Dimension Door over to the angel and turn its head, by passing all the dangers between here and there. We decided if he promised to come back immediately if anything went wrong then that was fine. Igil teleported away, then returned a moment later to report that the angel’s head was jammed. We brainstormed what that could mean, and Mund figured it meant something was wrong with the gateway leading downstairs.
So we made our way towards the gate down. What we found was a mass of tentacles, which immediately turned invisible upon seeing us. Although Igil has permanent See Invisibility, and Jo had See Invisibility on as well. Ileark cast his True Seeing on Berin to make optimal use of it. Berin, in turn, granted his Smite to everyone—expecting this to be a long fight like with the Proto-Shoggoths. But it turns out that was not the case. Jo and Igil had already done a number on it, and when Berin stepped up and smote it, the thing shriveled and died.
Berin insisted they don’t waste his smite. They should go deal with the wraith while they had the chance in this minute. The others agreed. They decided to put Jo up front as bait to lure it out, and then they’d all smite it and unleash their best ghost-killing attacks on it. Dia could even grant Jo ghost-touch on her weapon, making its incorporeal nature no longer an issue for her.
With this plan in mind, the party approached the ghost’s preferred wall. The moment Jo got within range, its arms struck forth. Five Smite Good abilities hit their mark. Igil used his abilities that allowed him to use mind affecting spells on the undead to Mind Thrust the wraith. Ileark channeled positive energy into it. Berin and Jo attacked it with sword and spear. And between the four of them, the spirit fell before it got a chance to do anymore damage.
The party then returned to the portal to the stairs. It was covered in rubble, caused by the Spawn of Yog-Sothoth we’d fought, which explained the jammed angel head. Everyone but Igil and Mund helped to clear the rubble—Igil because he’s physically weak and Mund because he’s an ass.
Once we were done clearing out the rubble, Igil Dimension Doored to the angel statue again and turned its head. This time it clicked into place and the angels opened their mouths once again. Dia found the one with a strangely waxy tongue which was a lever that opened the next stairway down. This one had statues of angels on either side holding out their hands acting as the stairs.
And so we descended ever deeper into the depths of the twisted Mysterium.
Man so tonight’s pathfinder session was EVENTFUL. After sending the Hand of the Inheritor back to Heaven, we fought and killed Baphomet, which restored Sarenrae and Lamashtu to power. We returned to the material plane, spoke to Iomedae and the Hand of the Inheritor—
The Hand had lost his holy power due to Baphomet’s influence over him, so Iomedae was in need of a new Herald. So she chose Draven to be her new Herald, The Adamant Shield, in his place. We didn’t have time to celebrate however because Drezen was under siege by Aponavicious—
Each of our personal villains was leading a force—Tachtel, Lady Jerribeth, Lady Salzala, and Dirge. Because they were assaulting the city all at once we had no choice but to split up and face them all at once—
So we had a massive combat in which each part was happening in a different location. Hiskaria faced her parents’ killer Tachtel, who somehow remembered the alternate doomed timeline we’d seen and fled from—
Hiskaria fought Tachtel until he possessed Cassandalee’s Herald. Hiskaria made reference to a slightly 4th wall breaking quote that had been said to her earlier in the campaign by a different villain, and suddenly Tachtel froze and came apart—
When Hiskaria examined what was left of his body, she found a bullet hole in his head, but no bullet or casing. We have no idea what to make of it, except that our GM likes 4th wall and timeline shenanigans so who knows what he could pull.
Luna faced Lady Salzala, who had destroyed her moral body and ascended to a point where she could no longer be harmed. Luna fought hordes of Salzala’s experimental angel-demon hybrids while Arushelae gathered the last pages of Salzala’s journal we’d missed in her previous labs.
Luna put the journal together, but it was still warded by magic. Salzala taunted Luna that she was just a useless meathead child that couldn’t do anything to harm her since she couldn’t do even simple magic to get into the journal. Luna told her to shut up and watch.
With a quiet chant to herself ‘It’s a CAN-trip not a can’t-trip’, Luna tapped into the celestial heritage Salzala had locked away from her in her experiments, and cast break curse, removing the wards from the book.
Holding such a personal piece of Salzala’s life and accomplishments in her hands, Luna bound her to the material plane, making her corporeal again. Salzala panicked and created a shadow copy of a younger Luna using all of Luna’s anger to possess and attack her.
However Luna used Salzala’s book to work out a reverse soul jar and cast her out of her body, and accepted her anger back into herself, a part of herself still. However before she could kill Salzala, Arelu Vorlesh appeared in a portal and gave her an escape route to Iz—
Melody faced her demigod cousin Dirge in the Danse Macabre to determine the fates of Shelyn and Zon’Kuthon. They fought and performed admirably, both giving it their all, both arguing their best for why the world needed hope, why the world was hopeless and destined to suffer—
In the end they came to a stalemate. The Danse ended and they were perfectly evenly matched, neither able to beat the other. Melody tried to talk Dirge down one last time, tried to save him from himself. He found her attempt degrading. Instead, he offered a new solution.
Walk the world as equals. She would ease the suffering of some in her way. He would bring the end of the suffering of others in his. Twin gods who understood humanity in a way no others could. Dirge held out his hand. Melody asked if he would restore the Writ and free her family.
He said he would restore the Writ. Whichever members of her family wished to return to the way things once were could do so. Melody contacted the others, and apologized for if she changed too much. Then she took Dirge’s hand.
Black and white light engulfed them. The Danse had ended. Two new gods had been born.
Draven went to face Jerribeth. What he found was Leto, fused into the Glabrezu. His friend took control of her, and forced her to grant him a wish—he wished for her to fling them into the furthest reaches of the ineluctable Prison forever. A portal opened to drag him in.
Draven refused to let Leto sacrifice himself for him. He used his miracle spell-like ability and tried to use it to bring Leto back. The wish and the miracle clashed, and caused the portal to collapse and suck Draven in along with the Jerribeth hybrid.
Draven found himself in a dark place, surrounded by chains. Leto-beth asked why he always had to be so stubborn. They clashed, their wills trying to force the other out, to be the one to overpower the other, so their spell would be the one to succeed.
Draven caught Leto-beth in Chains of Light, paralyzing him. However he couldn’t get past his incredibly tough armor to do any damage—“so this is how my enemies always feel, huh?” he noted—this was basically a mirror match starting out, high AC low attack
Leto remained paralyzed for a bit but Draven never managed to get through his armor, nor could he get through his stubborn disposition—something else they have in common. Finally Leto managed to dispel the paralysis, and began his own assault—
But again—mirror match. He couldn’t get past Draven’s AC either. But unlike Draven he had something to do about that. He began dumping his AC into his attack. Big mistake—
Because then Draven started finally being able to hit once he let his guard down and getting reckless. And Leto still couldn’t hit Draven most of the time because Draven kept his defenses up. And also Draven crit twice. Which went a long way.
Finally Deaven’s stubbornness won out. Leto yielded—although he told Draven this was a mistake, that he should just let Leto do what he was going to do, that if Jerribeth got control again he wouldn’t be able to protect him.
Draven and Leto left the extradimentional plane, and Draven called to Melody to come help him. He needed a miracle and he’d used his only one.
Melody arrived, and used her final mythic point to try to counter Draven’s old wish that created the chains that bound all three of them—Jerribeth, Leto, and Draven—and free Leto once and for all—
She rolled barely above average on her dispel check even with advantage, and without any more mythic points she couldn’t surge it.
It wasn’t enough.
Leto told Draven. He TOLD Draven it wouldn’t work. He should have listened and let him remove them from the equation. Now what were they going to do?
Jerribeth took back control. She taunted Draven, telling him he should have listened to poor Leto.
She said she was going to Iz before Draven decided to do something reckless, since he tended to get aggressive when she was around. “Don’t die :)” Then the Glabrezu hybrid teleported away, leaving a distraught Draven behind.
We didn’t have time to even process that though, because Luna contacted Draven and Melody telling us that a portal had opened up under the Citadel while we were dealing with that and we needed to get back NOW.
So we headed back. And arrived just in time to hear that the portal was connected to Deskari’s personal realm. And then see three locust-like demons step through, and one spear our wizard friend Aravashnial right through the chest. And that’s where we ended :(
Man Draven is having big feels after Pathfinder last night less in reference to what happened and more in reference to what is to come. Long post ahead about last night’s session leading up to said big feels.
So last night we came upon a hive of Vescavor which was creating a colossal swarm too large for our army to fight through or maneuver around. If we’d tried to fight it, the army would have been driven mad by their droning or their equipment would have been eaten. And trying to go around was a no-go because our scouts let us know that the only way up the canyon wall we’ve seen this entire time was the single extremely poorly kept stairs we’d found up to a cathedral a day back, which we couldn’t possibly get an entire army up.
Our scouts did however spot the entrance to the Vescavour hive outside of the swarm itself. They suggested it would be possible for our smaller strike force to get in and kill the queen, which would in turn disperse the entire swarm in one strike. We agreed, and the party split off from the main army and made for the Vescavour Hive.
We almost made it inside without incident. Luna of course climbed down with ease because she’s Luna. Melody lost her footing at the last second and Luna caught her. Hiskaria just used the scale of Trendalev to levitate down. Draven thought he’d be all well and good because Luna was at the bottom AND Hiskaria had feather fall.
Then a part of the swarm spotted him. Because that’s just his cursed luck.
A portion of the swarm flew at him. He leapt over the edge and managed to climb halfway down before the swarm knocked his climbing hook and rope from the cliff side. He tried to get hold of the cliff face with his hands but the resin-like material the Vescavours made their nest out of was too slick, and he fell. Fortunately, Luna just barely caught him with a little guidance from Melody.
Inside of the cave, they managed to follow the sound of the droning to try to find the source of the demon-insect infestation. They came across where they’re born, which I won’t go into detail on except to say Vescaours are nasty. We snuck past, succeeding because Hiskaria was clever enough to have prepared vanish today and she cast it on Draven who is in a word NOT stealthy (War Priest/Paladin heavy army solidarity)
Beyond that chamber we found the queen. We were still sneaking, Draven was still invisible for a moment, so we decided to try to creep a little closer and possibly get a surprise round so Luna could get in some tasty sneak attack damage.
We succeeded in sneaking closer, and Luna got in her sneak attack. The rest of us struck as well, with Draven making his weapon ice and hitting but also getting into three separate auras of chaos which ended up making him confused. The queen was killed, but when Hiskaria approached Draven after combat to see if he was alright he mistook her for one of the Vescavours and struck her before the confusion wore off, for a ton of damage because of course he rolled max on his weapon damage when he was hitting a friend even if the ice damage didn’t hurt the tiefling woman. He immediately apologized multiple times and burned one of his highest spell slots to heal her.
Hiskaria informed them that infestations like these usually occur near portals to the Abyss, so there’s likely a portal nearby. A fact made more obviously true by the Riftwarden symbol on her back pulsing. So we continued deeper in, until we found this place in the wall where something seemed to be trying to push its way through. Melody used her mythic power to pull a spell she didn’t normally know from her god’s spell list, dimensional anchor. Which for a Shelynite looked like her crosstitching the portal closed.
With the insects and the portal gone, we thought we were done for the day. Until there was a blast of bitter cold from up above, and the sound of our army in battle. We made a run for the entrance.
Outside were the scenes of icy death. And a white dragon head peaked its way over the ledge at us. Then a man atop it. Stauton Vhane. The dwarven traitor to the crusades who was currently at the head of Citadel Drezen. He had our NPC bard Nurah captured.
He taunted us, thanking us for taking care of the pest problem, and commenting on how without it he was able to see that a little army had mobilized right at his doorstep, and that he needed to be a good host and come say hello. He’d expected Nurah to put a knife in our backs by now, but ‘paladins’ (read: a really self righteous anti-paladin) have the ability to detect alignment and he can see the little spark we’ve set alight in her. He’s going to have to snuff it out.
Draven on hearing he was going to take Nurah and torture her made a desperate attempt to save her and cast arrow of law at Stauton Vhane. It would have been a direct hit. But purple crystals with mythic power inside, like the ones Aruelu Vorlesh used against us back in the Grey Garrison, blocked my attack. “Ah, it’s the One-Eyed Knight. Well. See you back home.”
Then Stauton and his mount—which was not a white dragon but a chimera with a white dragon head infused with mythic power named Soltengrebbe—flew off. And we were left to check on the army and lick our wounds and plan a counter strike.
The mythic chimera had wiped out 10% of our army, and couldn’t be hurt by traditional weapons. If anyone was going to slay it when the time came, it was going to have to be the four of us. No one else was going to be able to put a scratch on it with its epic defenses.
We discussed what to do next. This spot was not defendable, so although Draven was feeling vulnerable after using a number of resources to fight the queen and close the portal, they marched on Drezen.
At the outskirts of Drezen the army found a defensible position and made camp, then had their scouts check the area around the citadel. What they found were a number of possible objectives leading up to actually striking the Citadel proper.
For one reason or another—probably because he’s a cocky bastard—Stauton hadn’t mobilized his armies yet despite having three outside the citadel. We could pick each of them off and capture the arms and free the prisoners they held. The third army were an army of the undead with some sort of crypt spewing darkness behind them, which didn’t have resources for us but which clearly shouldn’t be left behind us when we went to strike the citadel.
There were also a few smaller things for our strike force to handle. There was a bridge we needed to capture for our army to even reach Paradise Hill where the prisoners were being held by sheer demons on the most defensible spot besides the citadel itself. There were ballista we needed to take out on the outermost wall of the Citadel that would otherwise be able to pick apart our armies. And there was said vault of darkness behind the army of the undead, which would take a smaller force to actually go in and investigate once the ghouls were cleared out.
We decided on the day we arrived to take the bridge so we’d have all our movement options open day two. We managed to take it without dying or the enemy knocking the bridge out, although the commander got away. We did take two prisoners, tieflings named Lester and Yosef. Lester tried to jump off the bridge but only managed to break his leg, because he was a little dumb about the height the bridge actually was. I had some of our clerics heal him because I’m not cruel, but they’re still our prisoners and I still don’t like them because they were still Deskari worshippers * pouty face *.
Melody can try her whole redeem them thing if she wants. We got a little info from them but only confirmation of stuff we already suspected nothing really new, they were low rank and file and don’t really know anything. We’re being nice because we’re not assholes who treat prisoners badly unlike the Deskari worshippers. Hiskaria who’s been a prisoner before decided to share some wine with them since she didn’t have cigarettes to give them.
We had a war meeting, and decided day two we were going to march on Paradise Hill, take the hill, free the prisoners, and fortify the most defensible location. Then from there we’d have a straight shot for our strike force to go after the ballistas. And if we felt up for it maybe one more thing.
After that they slept for the night. And got attacked in the night by the ghoul army, which hurt morale. So we decided: change of plans. Fuck those ghouls. Time to strike back and avenge our fallen. So we marched on the cemetery and battled the ghoul army. We defeated their forces, but immediately after the darkness from the crypt drew more from the ground.
One of my soldiers Arles noted that this would likely never end unless we dealt with whatever was in the crypt. So Draven gave the order for the armies to continue their assault with the officers in charge while our strike force broke off and infiltrated the unhallowed crypt.
Inside there was a permanent darkness spell, which everyone but Melody could see through since we’re mostly not humans. Hiskaria carried a torch in her tail to light up around her so Mel Bell could see as well.
Luna snuck ahead, using the darkness to virtually perfectly mask her stealth with her mythic powers. Looking inside, she saw the commander from the bridge talking to an undead creature. The creature noticed something was amiss. Luna managed to down a potion of invisibility before he reached her, and he didn’t end up actually spotting her. Then Luna retreated back to us and told us what she saw. Melody identified the creature as a berbalang from Luna’s description of the winged long tongued undead creature that had been talking to Barret.
Luna told us to sneak as close to the door as we could, and she was going to try to take Barret out in one strike. Then we should attack at the sound of violence. We did as she asked, making it to the door. Then we waited, until there was the sound of a yell from the other room as Luna imbedded her axe into Barret’a back. He wasn’t dead yet. Melody followed up and finished him off before he could act however. Draven swung around the corner and faced the Berbalang—which had realized something was wrong and was now incorporeal, it’s real body unconscious somewhere but nowhere to be seen. Draven attacked and got a good strike. The Berbalang taunted him, asking if he liked the attack on his army the night before, or if he’d missed it and simply let his men die. He said something about Draven playing with his men like toys which set Draven off, telling the undead monster that his men were not toys for anyone’s amusement. The undead creature seemed pleased to have gotten under the legion commander’s skin. Then he got shot by Hiskaria with arrows a few times for the trouble. He tried to attack Draven, but only hit his shield. Then Luna destroyed his incorporeal form. We knew however that it wasn’t over, his body had to be somewhere. Melody used a mythic point to learn invisibility purge, but it revealed nothing. We thought maybe there was a hidden door, or perhaps he had taken Barret’s wand of dimension door and left before projecting. However Hiskaria found the wand and confirmed that wasn’t the case.
When she did, the Berbalang struck, having used alter self to appear as one of the crusader corpses along the walls of the crypt. He paralyzed her, and had her by the throat, ready to kill her in a single move if any of us acted. He told us to drop our weapons. Melody did. Draven carefully set down Radiance. Luna dropped her axe, then said she was taking off her cloak. She dropped it atop her axe.
The Berbalang pulled Hiskaria with him towards the door, talking about the horrible torture he had planned for her. Draven was doing the math in his head, knowing he had the magic and the mythic power to resurrect Hiskaria if the worst happened—and knowing he was not willing to let her be taken to be tortured. Fortunately it never came down to finding out if he was willing to let her get killed and revived to save her, because Luna had a far more clever idea.
When the Berbalang had turned the corner just enough that she was out of his line of sight, she pulled her axe from under the cloak, drank a potion of invisibility, and made her way across the room to intercept them. She put an axe in the undead creature’s back, getting sneak attack, killing it outright, and saving Hiskaria.
When Hiskaria could move again she told them not to ever do that again, that next time they needed to not drop their weapons, and just finish off the monster, even if it put her at risk. Melody and Luna disagree with this. Draven intends to honor this request if it comes up again, and likely ask the same of her in return later.
With this victory, they dispelled the unhallow effect, and with that the armies of the dead finally fell. As we exited the crypt, we saw hundreds of ghosts rising from the cemetery into the afterlife. It would seem that spirits of Crusaders whose lives were lost here had been trapped by the spell, and were now finally free to pass on. The army’s morale was at an all time high with both a victory and the visual embodiment of them saving the souls of their fallen comrades from the enemy. Irabeth suggested that while we take down the ballista, the officers could lead the armies in strikes against Paradise Hill and Southbank while morale was high. Draven agreed with this course of action, and the strike force split off across the bridge while Irabeth led the army to free the prisoners on Paradise Hill.
Strangely enough we were, in fact, able to just walk into Citadel Drezen’s watchtower. At the top there was just a single Brimorak, on guard but distracted. Given that last time we fought a Brimorak we killed it in a single sneak attack round, we decided to try that again. We had Luna turn invisible and sneak up on it, quite a few levels higher than last time. She did a full attack on it…and it was still up. It set off a fireball into the air, summoning four more Brimoraks to the watchtower.
They peppered us with fireballs. Luna killed the one in front of her. Hiskaria did the smart thing and moved away from Draven and Melody before the fireballs started going off. Melody at least has good enough reflexes to half a few of them. Draven…does not. But he’s an HP tank, over 100 HP at level 8, so if anyone needs to get hit but three full force fireballs it should be him and not someone else.
After that Draven decided he was done with fire and swift cast a spell he took for flying today but which serves a very nice secondary purpose of protecting from fire: Shield of Wings. Five wings of flame formed from his back, shielding him from flame and allowing him to fly. Then he attacked the Brimorak in front of him, who noticed the hidden bleeding mark of Deskari on his arm. The demon commented that he wasn’t the only one with burning blood. Before Draven could question the demon, however, Hiskaria put an arrow through its head. Draven justified it because the demon wouldn’t have likely given him any answers anyways.
Melody was hurting as she fought the last one. It slipped away from her with its teleport and took over the ballista, intent to try to shoot one of us with it before it would go down. Melody decided ‘not today’ and used a mythic point to succeed a cool feat of acrobatics to use her glaive to leap from the wall and basically pole vault forward and skewer it before it could shoot.
And that set off a chain reaction. It set off that ballista, which shot across at another, destroying another, etc, in a beautiful domino effect. Draven looked up at the citadel just in time to see Stauton glowering down at them before he turned away. Draven was feeling particularly cocky in a rare moment for him—he really liked the Shield of Wings spell, it makes him feel impressive. As they heads enemy reinforcements coming, Hiskaria could teleport one person with dimension door, and Draven could fly one, so he offered his hand to Melody with his best charming smile and asked if she’d like to fly down. The flirting was purely playful because he was in a good mood and Melody is the only one int the party around his age to flirt with lol. She’s beautiful and he’d say she’s the best of them without hesitation, but she also frustrates him to no end sometimes and he’s more of a ‘divine retribution’ holy person than a ‘offer a hand of forgiveness’ sort (his name means hunter/avenger of faith what did you expect?) so their world views are a bit at odds. He thinks she’s a bit naive. Sweet, pure, and definitely the definition of a good person. But naive. And he doesn’t want to be the one to hurt that nativity but with something coming up he’s pretty sure he’s the one he’s going to have to drop some hard truths.
…I got off subject lol sorry I’m really excited for what’s to come in regards to possible Melody and Draven conflict.
They met up with their armies. They’d been victorious at both Paradise Hill and Southbank. At Paradise Hill the prisoners had actually broken free and helped the army, being crusaders themselves who had been planning an escape attempt already and used the chaos of the moment to their advantage. At Southbank they managed to get arms to help outfit the army more thoroughly. Morale was at the highest it had ever been, with the soldiers feeling like victory was virtually assured.
We had some drinks, made some plans, and then talked to Irabeth about something we’d been meaning to bring up for a while. We’d had a vision back when the Wardstone broke, of her and Stauton talking like friends back in the days before he betrayed the city. We wanted to know what she knew about him, Melody wanted to know if she thought there was any good in him, and Draven just wanted to check in that she was okay after facing him again.
Irabeth told them about the Hammers of Heaven, who were once an all dwarven legion of crusaders lead by Stauton. They were originally the ones who headed the Raven Corps as well, which is where the Raven Corps’ bad reputation really stemmed from. Since Irabeth was in the Raven Corps initially, Stauton was her commanding officer before he revealed his true colors and she stopped his plot to destroy the Wardstone the first time.
When he attacked this time, he didn’t even give her the time of day. No acknowledgement at all, not even a second glance. That stung, after everything.
We decided to have some drinks and rest for the evening, then mount our attack in the morning.
Which we did. First thing, we charged on Citadel Drezen. We were supposed to make a beeline as the strike team for the entrance to try to track down Stauton, but as we approached we heard the sound of wings and Soltengrebbe the Mythic Chimera landed in the middle of our forces and started laying waste. He pinned Aravashnial and brutally injured Arles. We knew we had no choice but to turn around and kill the beast, or our army would be wiped out, they couldn’t do anything to harm it on their own.
So we did. Hiskaria did what Hiskaria does best and shot a bunch of arrows and spells all at once, including mythic slow, which he burned a mythic point to avoid failing the save on. Melody and Draven charged in, Draven with Radiance enchanted as Holy with his sacred weapon ability and Melody with a judgement going. Luna slipped around behind him and did an ungodly amount of damage flanking with Melody. Soltengrebbe saw things were already not going in his favor, and decided he was at least going to take one of us down with him. He turned around and laid into Luna. She used mythic dodge to try to avoid his gore but he burnt another mythic point to up his attack beyond her boosted AC. Despite all of this, Luna was still just barely up at the end. Then Hiskaria finished things off. An arrow to one head. An arrow to the other head. And a scorching ray into the white dragon head, ending the combat. As the body began to be covered in purple crystal, we went to see to those who were fatally injured. I burnt a 3rd level spell to get a cure serious wounds into Arles to make sure the old soldier would see another day, and Hiskaria tended to her mentor Riftwarden Arashniaval, who then proceeded to summon a number of celestial giant eagles and call the army forward to continue the assault alongside Arles.
And we were engulfed in a golden light as Radiance purified the dark crystals that had been growing out of the chimera’s corpse, and with that we gained our second mythic rank. I can draw arrows and spells to me now so they don’t hit my friends instead~ Who said it’s not possible to draw aggro in Pathfinder? You just need to be mythic and willing to be really annoying on the enemy’s turn with your AOOs and immediate actions. Draw fire plus cut from air is going to be so tasty.
After that we had a few minor encounters basically to show off our new powers, and then at the doorway we saw a strange vision. Two spectral dwarves, a younger Stauton and another dwarf. They were young, wide-eyed and optimistic about the fight against the demons.
This is where I think Draven is going to rub up against the party. Melody is a redeemer. She wants to at least see if it’s an option even if she has doubts. Hiskaria is someone seeking redemption, she’s said she wants to give one chance and after that she’s done with Stauton, but one chance is more than Draven thinks they should give if he’s manipulating them. Luna just generally likes Melody more than she likes Draven.
Draven does not think Stauton can be redeemed nor does he think offering the chance is the right choice. He thinks this is either A: a trick to prey on our soft hearts because he KNOWS Melody is a redeemer because of Nurah, or B: it’s real and it doesn’t change anything because Stauton caused the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Draven refuses to look his soldiers in the eye who lost loved ones and say ‘I chose him over you’. So he’s probably going to at least get into an argument with Melody next week.
And I’m excited. I don’t usually have characters who take hard stances that don’t align with the party. I think Kiyo and Hayden came into conflict a few times but it was usually small spats and usually the party was divided evenly on who sided with who (Sai and sometimes Gaeron with Hayden, Orda with Kiyo, and Lalaith and Icarus being the wildcards…I don’t know if Icarus has ever actually been there for any of these arguments actually so really only Lalaith as a wildcard…) Roland didn’t typically come into conflict with the party, Sai could be snippy but didn’t generally get into big arguments, Lucien basically never did, Haruki was in such constant conflict with Dreama that it was just a character trait for both of them but it was also generally minor petty things not big arguments, Umbrolus only got into a single argument and that was justified because everyone was hiding something about his heritage from him…
I think the last major party spat I had was with Kaius, and he mostly sat back and just let the Volstat split happen because he’d seen it coming a mile away the moment he decided he wanted to redeem Gabby and he decided he’d choose helping Gabby over dealing with Volstat, who had already proven problematic when trying to help people Kaius felt some amount of sympathy for in the past who Volstat had a grudge against. So he just let Eleanor and Volstat argue, threw in his two cents a few times, and then let it blow up.
This time I’ve written out talking points. Because I am BAD at RPing arguments. Because I’m bad at arguments irl. My fight or flight mechanisms are freeze and fawn so I’m so bad at arguments, I do everything in my power to not argue. But Draven wants an argument, he has things he wants to say and he wants his voice to be heard and he wants it known just how fucked up he thinks even considering trying to redeem this man is. So I’ve written down talking points so that I won’t freeze or back track this time. It’s gon be terrible, it’s gon be great. Can’t wait until next Saturday~
This week in Pathfinder Umbrolus almost died :) But it’s okay :) Everything’s okay :)
So we delved back into the caverns we’ve been exploring, which it turned out led into an ancient crashed spaceship. We fought and killed an alien tentacle monster thing, snuck through a pitch black artificial desert infested with undead alien Kusatha and a full grown version of the already very dangerous smaller tentacle creature we’d killed, and then faced off against an intelligent zombie kusatha and two more skeletons. The zombie skewered Umber in the first round with a javelin taking out more than half my hp in a single attack, but Kleio patched me up. One skeleton went down immediately when it tried to run past me to attack Kleio, and Vy went after the other skeleton to keep it away from our back row. I went after the biggun.
Only the thing about kusathas are, they have four arms. So they can make two two-handed attacks. And when one of those two handed attacks crit on a level 2 character, it doesn’t matter that I was raging and at only 1 down from my full health. I was immediately in the negatives—but not dead so that’s good. Kleio managed to pull me out of coup de grace range, and Vy and Celeste began attacking it while Kleio patched me up again with the potion I’d been holding on to. Then Kleio went in and attacked the zombie too, and did some damage with a healing spell so the creature threatened that Kleio would be next.
That sent Umber back into a rage, because no one hurts Kleio and lives, and he swung around and ripped the zombie alien to tiny little pieces.
Then after we found the means to make sure the zombie and skeletons stayed dead, something bad happened. Kleio was looking at their watch, and suddenly 5 minutes passed in an instant. A recording device in the room that had been playing was now smashed. Celeste reasoned that someone had cast modify memory on us. Someone had come into the room, and we had no idea who or what, what they’d done to us, or anything. Just that five minutes of our lives had been wiped from our minds, and the recording which had been playing on repeat had been destroyed, we assume to keep us from some information, although about what we don’t know.
So after that we trekked back to the surface to lick our wounds, rest, and get absolutely smashed playing never have I ever.
Umbrolus came out of this day with a couple of new scars. Only most of them physical.
I ran a one shot campaign for my mom today. She’s never played D&D and is fairly unaware of any fantasy tropes and all gaming terms, so it took a little looking at things from a different direction, but I feel it went well, and she had fun. I ran a story based off Little Red Riding Hood, in which her character (Scarlet, an older Little Red) had to find the Witch of the Forest deep in the woods beyond Grandmother’s House to gain a dose of Wolvesbane flower to make a cure for her grandmother who had been infected by the pack of the werewolf who originally came after her and Little Red when she was a child.
I designed the encounters with the fact my mom doesn’t like violence in mind, so every encounter could be solved with social skills/stealth/etc. Even with that in mind she surprised me a few times. From the start she was very tactical in choosing which path to go down in the woods, realized her highest star was Dexterity, so she was able to get across a precarious slippery path over a river without falling and found a shortcut through the woods. She met a Worg who worked for the Werewolves, and she figured it was probably food motivated like other canines, so she tricked it into working with her by telling him she’d heard there was food in the heart of the Forest, and promising to get food from the Witch of the Wood if the Worg would protect her along the way. She avoided a Kobold ambush, then she met the Guardian of the Forest, an angel named Arbiter Thrask, and flattered him into letting her pass and giving her knowledge about the Witch. She learned that the witch tricked the denizens of the Forest, then stole the Arbiter’s heart and had been using it to twist and corrupt the woods.
She met with the Witch, who allowed her to enter her home (a giant petrified tree) if she desired to make a deal. This part was admittedly a rehash of the Hag encounter I ran for my Council of Thieves group, but she played it so perfectly I was really impressed. She definitely came out of it better than the other party, although admittedly this was a watered down version of said encounter.
She told the witch when she entered that she was looking to make two deals with her. First, she wanted food for the Worg, and in return she offered to be the forest’s protector, to keep those who would harm what belongs to the witch away. The witch found her binding herself to the Forest for all times an acceptable price, and she gave the Worg a giant leg of lamb that would every night regrow the meat that had been eaten from it. The Worg was dismissed from helping her and returned to the Werewolves with the boon.
Then Scarlet sprung the second part. She’d wanted the Worg gone so she could request not just Wolvesbane for her Grandmother, but enough to poison the entire tribe of Werewolves so they couldn’t seek revenge against her or the village once Grandmother was cured. She offered her first born child in return, and this offer was accepted. So, she seeped the Wolvesbane into a tea, and then used that to poison the infinitely regenerating lamb leg, poisoning the werewolves and saving the village from their threat. (So what I’m saying is my mom is the kind of D&D player who won’t fight things but will commit a war crime)
After that she wanted to skip ahead to when her character had her first born, because she wanted to save her child from the witch. She spent the next couple of years studying the witch, speaking with the Arbiter, and learned that as a fae creature she could be harmed by iron.
So after she fell in love and had her first born, she went seeking out the other two Guardians of the Forest, a trickster kitsune simply called Fox, and the Queen of the Fairies. She spoke to Fox first, and made a deal that if Fox would trick the Hag into drinking from a cup made with copper on the outside and iron on the inside, she would work for Fox for as long as she was bound to the Forest. Then she went back to the Arbitor to learn Fox’s relationship with the witch, worried that the Trickster might try to fool her. She learned Fox had poisoned the witch once before as a prank, and was punished by having the spirits of the dead follow her, the will-o-wisps always revealing her location so she could never hide and play her tricks. Knowing that the witch had been poisoned once before, she changed her plan. She went to meet with Fox and the Fairy Queen. She requested the Fairy Queen hide her child from the witch, and with a nat 20 diplomacy roll, the Fair Queen offered her one better, and replaced her child with a changeling so that even if their plan failed, the witch would spirit away the wrong child.
Then she requested that Fox take the iron from her weapon, which she hadn’t used the entire game, and contaminate the witch’s cauldron and the tip of the paddle used to stir it. To allow Fox to get into the witch’s home unnoticed, she went to the far end of the Forest and hung Christmas lights, had her husband invite carolers, and made a huge event to entice the witch into investigating. While the witch was away from her home, Fox slipped inside and contaminated the cauldron.
While the witch was out, she stole away the Changeling that the fairy had replaced Scarlet’s child with, then returned her to corrupted heart of the woods. There she made a potion in celebration of procuring herself an apprentice. Over the next weeks and months, the Forest began to heal. The three guardians of the Forest returned to their full power. Scarlet’s village was blessed with fair weather, plentiful crops, and protection from wild beasts for the rest of her days. Her child grew up knowing only peace and love and joy. And for the rest of her days, on occasion, Scarlet was called upon to act on Fox’s behalf, to pull pranks and tricks on various denizens of the Wood. But it was all fairly harmless at the end of the day, and sometimes she even caught herself having fun with it.
I’m too tired to make a full play by play post tonight because we did an extra long session this week. But suffice to say: holy shit. We went into a haunted space ship and saw the tragic final moments of its captain, as well as getting our first real look at the campaign’s big bad. It was insane.
