Skulls & Shackles book 5 ending issue, what do I do? And the tale of the extended assault on the fortress


Skull & Shackles


Hey guys,

So Harrigan escaped. The PC's assaulted the fortress not once, not twice but 6 times. It was a mix of good and bad tactics.

On the first time they went in invisible, were smart but sadly when the invisibility ran off (Using invisibility sphere, flying in and they split up.) one of them failed their stealth roll and Jakaw spotted them raising the alarm. I had them attacked in waves but one too many fireballs led to the walls being blown off and the enemies from the outside being able to fire on them. So seeing as they were in trouble they all got around and teleported out of there back to their ship.

The second time they decided it would be fine to teleport back into the fortress an hour and a half later. The place was swarming with enemies try to clean up. Rather than teleporting instantly they decided to fight. This lead to one of them being dominated by the tongue (leading them to run into the fortress) and another one being captured with another running away from being hit by a fear affect. The enemies knew they favoured invisibility from Lucarria's scying and so on of them. So the Furies began patrolling the building looking out for invisible creatures. I think this was fair because Harrigan was smart enough to know that a Ninja would assassinate him in his room.

The party was left with two PC's and I let the Ninja and the Ranger left rest up. The Ninja then stealthed around the fortress, avoiding the gaze of the Furies and gathered information. But after a while he got caught again. And tried again and again.

I let them take control of Sandra Quinn and Rosie who still traveled with them. And they played them well and to character. At this point I felt that Luccaria was wise enough after a day or so would set up a forbiddance effect in the area, using some of the assorted plunder for the cost of it. I felt it would be important to remove the ability for the PC's to keep teleporting in and out of the building over and over again.

So finally on the the sixth attempt the PC's (with Rosie and Sandra) stormed the fort, took on the enemies in waves and freed their friends. Taking down the Scrags, Clerics, Guards and The Tongue with little difficulty. Adelita had escaped previously and I felt they needed more of a challenge if they were dealing with people in waves. I had been extremely generous with time with the players and with the craft feats they had made some seriously powerful items (Robe of the Archmagi..).

So they finally got to Harrigans and he was backed up by Adelita. One well placed Prismatic spray later and previously unbroken curses (but they had tried to break them) from the clerics the party was back down to two members. One was feared by Harrigan and the other one was turned to stone due to prismatic spray. And after an assault by Harrigan both the Ranger and Sorcerer fell. With the Ninja once again running off due to fear. Due to Harrigans cowardness though and his essential "freedom" from the chelish I had him pack up his stuff with haste while Adelita used things like Icy prison on the unconscious PC's and he ran away.

Now the PC's have been smart enough to work out that the Chelish will be attacking from The Eye. And they are backed up by the PC's that believe them. But I feel that they will suffer once again with assaulting Bonefist, plus they don't have the information to the super secret entrance into Harrigans fortress. I didn't feel this would be something left hanging around (He had it in a glove of storing AND a bag of holding) and with Harrigans will basically broken he is pretty much never going to see them again.

So after this tale of woe. How should I go about running this? The Chelish will attack as normal and I think the PC's are on a good playing field with them when it comes to combat. But Bonefist seems like a real challenge to them, even more so now that they can't attack him. It seems like at the moment the PC's, once defeating the Chelish are going to leave the Shackles for good. And to be honest I'm quite happy to let the game conclude their as they take their treasure, fame and so on there.

But! I'm open to everyones opinions on this as well as your stories of the attack on Harrigans fortress.

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